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Confessions of a mortician

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Re: Confessions of a mortician

#51

Post by Pxtl »

christiangenco wrote: post #19

The raw terror of the inevitability of death without comfort of distraction or mental illusion — "fleshing," as Puchner describes it — was brilliantly captured here in a way I've never before heard or read expressed by another person. It's relieving, in a way, to know that I'm not the only human to chronically go through it. I especially enjoyed his comment on the difficulties of erecting a comforting fantasy of an a…

Yossarian was cold, too, and shivering uncontrollable. He felt goose pimples clacking all over him as he gazed down despondently at the grim secret Snowden had spilled all over the messy floor. It was easy to read the message in his entrails. Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. Drop him out a window and he’ll fall. Set fire to him and he’ll burn. Bury him and he’ll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden’s secret. Ripeness was all.

"I’m cold," Snowden said. "I’m cold."

"There, there," said Yossarian. "There, there," He pulled the rip cord of Snowden’s parachute and covered his body with the white nylon sheets.

"I’m cold."

"There, there."

Joseph Heller, "catch-22"

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#52

Post by reinhardt »

meowface wrote: post #23
ams6110 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite interesting to me that people (you, Puchner, some others here) would experience literal "breathless terrors" at the thought of one's own death. It's never come close to that for me. I've seen both my parents as well as several friends die rather unpleasant deaths (cancer) and I myself have been robbed at gunpoint but I have never felt terror contemplating my own death. It just seems to me to be the natural…

For me, the fear is not of dying, but of permanently losing the potential to ever experience any aspect of life again. It's an unsettling thought that I will never be able to experience fun, laughter, love, or success again. I won't have ideas, I won't hope, I won't dream. My conscious mind will simply join the eternal void and cease to exist. I really dislike the idea of not only having no experiences, but never eve…

Interesting how most people fear death but for different reasons. I fear death as much as the next guy and yet it's not about "missing out". I don't get much pleasure out of life or everyday experiences anyway so the prospect of this ending sooner or later is a non-issue, or even a good thing. It's the idea of nonexistence, nothingness, void that I can't conceive and keeps or wakes me up in the middle of the night.

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#53

Post by noir_lord »

christiangenco wrote: post #19

The raw terror of the inevitability of death without comfort of distraction or mental illusion — "fleshing," as Puchner describes it — was brilliantly captured here in a way I've never before heard or read expressed by another person. It's relieving, in a way, to know that I'm not the only human to chronically go through it. I especially enjoyed his comment on the difficulties of erecting a comforting fantasy of an a…

It's interesting to me how differently people feel about death.

I've never been frightened of it even when I've had serious health scares, I actually find my atheism comforting in that regard, you live your life and then you die and that's it.

“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” - Mark Twain

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#54

Post by placebo »

Gatsky wrote: post #29
christiangenco wrote: post #19

The raw terror of the inevitability of death without comfort of distraction or mental illusion — "fleshing," as Puchner describes it — was brilliantly captured here in a way I've never before heard or read expressed by another person. It's relieving, in a way, to know that I'm not the only human to chronically go through it. I especially enjoyed his comment on the difficulties of erecting a comforting fantasy of an a…

Fear of non-being, whether through death, losing one's mind, dementia etc is one aspect of the problem of living. I have found in my own case that the purely rational, aspiritual approach in life leaves me with a pretty anemic and empty philosophy on how to live, composed of a few cliches and self-aggrandized 'staring into the abyss'. Eventually I found this rather unsatisfying. I was hoping for something more than a…

>The logic of atheism is inescapable, but then what?

Is it? I find that when people refer to atheism, they implicitly add to it things it does not mean. The broad definition of atheism would be the absence of belief that any deities exist, but in practice, most people who define themselves as atheists lump it up with a set of false beliefs that, although being far better than believing in a "bearded old guy in the sky who cares what I do", are still very far from being solid truths.

For example, atheism usually comes bundled with the belief that consciousness is some unreal emergent property of real stuff that is "out there" or the belief that there exists a separate material world "out there" which is different than my subjective experience "in here" (while any honest introspection into where is it that "you" leave off and the rest of the world begins would start to show the cracks in this belief).

Personally, I find the various nondual teachings far more advanced in understanding these truths than atheist-materialist philosophies and definitely far more than childish religious beliefs, and therefore better at dealing with suffering, change or acceptance of the end of a personal existence.

Of course these are deep questions and while I admit to not having clear answers, I do think answers are achievable (though not at an intellectual level) and there are enough hints to follow for who really wants to find them or (to paraphrase from an old Hassidic story), at least learn where not to look for them.

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#55

Post by sunstone »

marvin wrote: post #44
quonn wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I have a Masters degree in science, excellent academic results, IQ well above average and still believe in God Academic results and IQ are mostly about solving puzzles quickly, though. That's what most exams are about after all [0]. But the problem we are talking about is different, since you have as much time to reason about it as you want and IQ and grades probably don't affect what you finally arrive at very…

If this is an invitation to debate whether there is a god (or even if the observable universe is all that exists), I'm not taking the bait. My point was about personal faith not being incompatible with most definitions of rationality. You could of course define rationality to be only caring about what is observable, measurable and understandable with the currently accepted models, but the history of science would hav…

What you are suggesting is a false dichotomy. The Romans had dozens of Gods as did the Greeks, not to mention the Gods of the Sumerians, the Phoenicians and the Celts among others too numerous to mention.

Thinking deeply and honestly starts with considering all the Gods and then considering their existence.

If you find that you can blithely dismiss the existence of all of these Gods except for the Christian (Jewish, Islamic) God and not be stunned by that hypocrisy then you have not yet begun the journey of understanding.

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#56

Post by yason »

nagrom wrote: post #37
cdoxsey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a curse, in a way, to have (be?) a brain trained to recognize and solve problems, optimize expected outcome, and see through bullshit when the popular solution to existential debilitating dread — religion — crumbles at the slightest analysis. Ignorance is bliss, to add to Puchner's ostensibly empty bromides. There are a lot of very intelligent people who believe in an afterlife. They aren't ignorant about the re…

They may earnestly believe in it, but they cannot provide a shred of evidence that it exists and all authority that claims that it does is inevitably found to be either a) mistaken or b) fraudulent. Very intelligent, otherwise rational people believe in false propositions that make them feel happy, relieved or secure all the time. Unless there's evidence, that belief is as unfounded as the belief of most people that…

If you only ever look at the fraction of the universe for which we have a plausible explanation that is passing scientific criteria, you're missing out on a lot of what is part of human existence all around the globe.

Science is a good tool for positive filtering (as in "hey, because of these observations I think how this works, and I think that by doing the following tests I can get some further confirmation of that") but as soon as you use it as a negative filter (as in "hey, there's no proof of it so for all practical purposes it doesn't exist, sorry"), you're just rejecting things based on a technicality.

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#57

Post by hndissapointed »

sunstone wrote: post #55
marvin wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is an invitation to debate whether there is a god (or even if the observable universe is all that exists), I'm not taking the bait. My point was about personal faith not being incompatible with most definitions of rationality. You could of course define rationality to be only caring about what is observable, measurable and understandable with the currently accepted models, but the history of science would hav…

What you are suggesting is a false dichotomy. The Romans had dozens of Gods as did the Greeks, not to mention the Gods of the Sumerians, the Phoenicians and the Celts among others too numerous to mention. Thinking deeply and honestly starts with considering all the Gods and then considering their existence. If you find that you can blithely dismiss the existence of all of these Gods except for the Christian (Jewish,…

>Blithely dismiss

In regards to Greek Mythology (adopted by the Romans), the majority of people I know have learned about this in their public school curriculum (multiple years). So "blithely" is a fallacious argument.

>Considering all the Gods and then considering their existence

Many people do study multiple religions. I happen to be one of them. Everything from modern day Jewish, Mormon, and Scientology beliefs, to more Ancient Hindu, Buddhist, Mayan, Nordic, and Egyptian beliefs, etc., etc. There are a lot of similarities between these belief systems (too many to discuss here -- and probably more than most people who have never studied these belief systems would be comfortable admitting too).

It takes a lot of courage to call other people hypocritical, when dismissing ALL gods without sufficient study of various belief systems, no?

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#58

Post by hndissapointed »

nagrom wrote: post #37
cdoxsey wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a curse, in a way, to have (be?) a brain trained to recognize and solve problems, optimize expected outcome, and see through bullshit when the popular solution to existential debilitating dread — religion — crumbles at the slightest analysis. Ignorance is bliss, to add to Puchner's ostensibly empty bromides. There are a lot of very intelligent people who believe in an afterlife. They aren't ignorant about the re…

They may earnestly believe in it, but they cannot provide a shred of evidence that it exists and all authority that claims that it does is inevitably found to be either a) mistaken or b) fraudulent. Very intelligent, otherwise rational people believe in false propositions that make them feel happy, relieved or secure all the time. Unless there's evidence, that belief is as unfounded as the belief of most people that…

> Very intelligent, otherwise rational people believe in false propositions that make them feel happy, relieved or secure all the time.

Exactly. I too have found that many people like to have their "ears tickled". It feels like people don't want to put up with sound reason and instead believe in doctrines and beliefs that suit their own personal tastes.

>An afterlife doesn't need to be proven false. There just has to be some evidence,

Very true, many belief systems over the millenia have taught an afterlife scenario (commonly following a 'Good Afterlife' vs. 'Bad Afterlife' theme). This comes from many belief systems carrying the notion of a "part" of the human that carries on immortally beyond the physical body (believed to be an immortal soul by Christian groups -- interestingly, the bible carries no support of this notion).

Even people who believe in this immortality notion cannot provide evidence of it's existence, yet work on the assumption that it can't be proven false. (Although, depending on your authoritative scriptures, it sometimes can be.)

A political Jewish group in the days of Jesus were known for strongly believing in the Torah, but not in this immortality notion [0].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadducees#General

>You're made of meat, death is final, there is no do-over.

I agree. Humans cannot stop death on their own, if they were to ever have a hope of overcoming death it would have to be via some external force that was vastly more powerful and smarter than they. Many ancient belief systems attribute this power to either a God, multiple gods working in unison, or to 'The Universe' (as in: that is simply the ways thing are).

In summation, it's NOT okay to say: GOD EXISTS! or GOD DOES NOT EXIST! or whatever oversimplified nonsense you can angrily yell in under 5 seconds and proceed to use as the foundation of the ideals for your entire life.

A truly rational person understands this.

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#59

Post by broseph »

petercooper wrote: post #36

Being one to get distracted by irrelevant details, I wondered why the "CHECK FOR PACEMAKER" sign was so prominent in one of the pictures. It turns out pacemakers causing explosions in cremator furnaces is a major problem, in some cases damaging the cremator entirely or injuring staff: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/

The article discusses this in its very first paragraph.

Re: Confessions of a mortician

#60

Post by meowface »

reinhardt wrote: post #52
meowface wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, the fear is not of dying, but of permanently losing the potential to ever experience any aspect of life again. It's an unsettling thought that I will never be able to experience fun, laughter, love, or success again. I won't have ideas, I won't hope, I won't dream. My conscious mind will simply join the eternal void and cease to exist. I really dislike the idea of not only having no experiences, but never eve…

Interesting how most people fear death but for different reasons. I fear death as much as the next guy and yet it's not about "missing out". I don't get much pleasure out of life or everyday experiences anyway so the prospect of this ending sooner or later is a non-issue, or even a good thing. It's the idea of nonexistence, nothingness, void that I can't conceive and keeps or wakes me up in the middle of the night.

> I don't get much pleasure out of life or everyday experiences anyway

That's a very existentially depressing statement. I tend not to experience "true" happiness on a daily basis, but at least in the course of a year I can accrue many experiences which make me very happy.

I sincerely hope you eventually come to find general pleasure with life.

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