Life

[FunnyDigestion]

The basic question is, isn't life frightening?

I don't mean in the sense of, "oh, what awful thing might happen to me tomorrow..."-- I mean simply the onward movement of life, the relentlessness of it-- isn't there something terrifically fearful about it all?

People used to talk a lot about the idea of devolution. That as human civilization advances, people invariably get worse, we get dumber, we get lazier & weaker & more confused.

The idea of devolution is that unless it's kept in check by death, life just gets worse. Because that's what evolution is-- it's billions of years of progressive death. Things killing other things, for no reason other than self-continuance. The bad things die, the good things live. But what does that mean?

I read once about the idea of the Omega Point.

The Omega Point is the point of ultimate complexity & comprehension at which the evolution of the universe eventually, effectively, ceases. A point at which nothing else can be done-- everything is finished. & this point is arrived at by the intellect.

Think about what a thought actually means. It's a physical happenstance in an individual's brain, a pattern of neurons. So what makes a successful thought? It's a pattern that can overpower other patterns-- or at least defeat them.

Because there are thoughts that begin in one person's brain, spread to others, take shape into ideologies, & eventually penetrate into great masses of people. Even the idea of "goodness" or "truth" or "beauty" could be simply an iteration of the will to survival & dominance, propagating up thru human history to take finer & finer forms, deceiving generation after generation of living beings.

It's difficult, for me at least, to see humans as being much different from any other kind of life-- monkeys, worms, trees, bacteria.

I think I'm starting to creep myself out.

Morality is the last feeble protection against the illimitable self-continuance of the intellect.

The intellect however is something happening WITHIN life-- when life is comfortable, that's when the intellect thrives. When circumstances are upset by chaos, the intellect loses position, loses superiority. That's what will invariably defeat mankind. Something unforeseen-- or ignored.

Anyone who's read all of these give a shout-out. Is life-- in the most basic, undeceived way-- frightening?

 

[Synapse]

No.

One of your greatest enemies is fear. strangely it is reinforced in absoutley everything you see, hear and touch...death consciousness, your are in it too much, break out of the fear into journey consciousness and life will be in fluidity.

Too much thinking places too much fatigue into your self importance of yourself without understanding that is what is creating the fear. It takes a strong person to step aside from such a feeling and move through the fear and know that nothing is frightening. It is an illusion of the mind.

 

[Saslou]

In some ways yes and some ways no.

Yes .. Where the hell has 32 years gone? Only yesterday i was in Secondary school debating with friends. Now i look at the young kids and think about how silly i was to be caught up in the 'I'm fat and i'm ugly mentality'. I openly accept the choices i made in life to bring me to this point however i look at these youngsters and think to myself will they take advantage of life and all the opportunities it presents.

No .. Long after i am gone, life will continue, advances will be made in many areas to which i won't be a part of and this i openly accept. I will be someone who once was but am no more.

 

[ewomack]

We really don't know what will happen, nor do we usually know the ultimate outcome of events, though we often like to pretend we do with fancy numbers, algorithms and charts. The Buddhists have a saying "good or bad, who's to say?" How many times have things turned out okay when we thought everything would explode? And how many times have things gone horribly wrong when evidence to the contrary seemed everywhere? We also are small and sometimes fear of life and oblivion comes from our acknowledgement of our smallness. That's okay, but don't let it ruin your life. No one else understands the universe, either. Entropy could end up as some sort of human illusion, though it doesn't seem to be at present. And the world could end someday, or at least human habitation of it could end. We're not invincible nor indestructible. We're just animals living in a biologically determined world that we really don't understand... though I think we understand it better than we used to... in any case, accepting that human beings are not the be all and end all of the universe can help allay fears of oblivion and death... and speaking of death, it needs life to exist. We get death centered phobias because it depresses us for obvious reasons. But if things weren't first born they wouldn't die. The two go together inextricably. Will humans ever overcome death? I don't know, but probably never completely.