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How do we gain power over death?

coberst

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How do we gain power over death?

Psychology informs me that it is the nature of humans to be influenced greatly by the recognition of the self and that the self must die. All of us have a great energy directed toward not dying. We dread the conscious thought of dying because our instincts reject death. When we consciously entertain the thought of death we are driven into anxiety and the task of the ego is to reject this anxiety and thus the ego represses such consciousness.

We have the narcissistic urge to reject death and to gain power over death. In gaining this power over death we do many things and one of these things we do is kill others to prove that “Our God is bigger than Their God”. Accumulation of power in all of its manifestations is a form of fighting death and gaining immortality in a sense. Of course we know we must die but our efforts are directed at repressing this awareness by fighting the evil of death and thereby killing others in this effort.

We create all kinds of artificial things to hide within in this process. Nationalism and religion are perhaps the most dangerous of our creations. I guess almost all killing in war is done under the banner of nationalism or religion.

Becker compares three great thinkers Otto Rank, Wilhelm Reich, and Carl Jung to conclude that the three provide us nothing with which to connect their conclusions except that they dissented from Freud. However, there is agreement on the answer to the fundamental question, “What causes evil in human affairs?”

This agreement is also the agreement in all of the human sciences; “man wants above all to endure and prosper, to achieve immortality in some way”.

Wo/man wants, above all, to reject the knowledge of mortality; s/he does so by seeking to assure immortality in some way. Mortality is connected to our animal nature and thereby wo/man reaches for some way of being transcendent of that nature. As our mental capacity increased we rejected other animals with a vengeance because these other animals “embodied what man feared most, a nameless and faceless death.

Our fears are buried deeply within our unconsciousness by repression, that great discovery of the science of psychoanalysis. This repression “is achieved by the symbolic engineering of culture, which everywhere serves men as an antidote to terror by giving them a new and durable life beyond that of the body”.

I have recently finished reading “The Art of War” an article in the March 12, 2007 edition of “Time” by Lev Grossman. The article is about a, largely computer generated, movie regarding a war in ancient Greece. The movie’s title is “The 300 Spartans” and Zack Snyder is the director. The movie is, except for the human actors, a virtual world created by digital movie techniques. The Art of War - TIME

“Snyder is one of a small, hypertechnical fringe of directors who are exploring a new way to make movies by discarding props, sets, extras and real-life locations and replacing them with their computer-generated equivalents.”

“With so much computer-generated make-believe going on, the actor’s physicality is the movie’s only link to the real world…every frame was manipulated and color-shifted to create an intense, thunderstorm palette…The result is a gorgeous, dreamlike movie that’s almost perfect. Every frame is neat and composed, like an oil painting, not a hair or a grain of sand out of place. All noise and dissonance have been digitally eliminated. Maybe that’s the only way to make a war movie right now, or at least, the only way to make a war movie that’s not an antiwar movie…That’s why it’s a piece of mythology. It’s what we would hope for. “300” is a vision of war as ennobling and morally unambiguous and spectacularly good-looking.”

That’s one hell of a special effect. And this movie is, I find, an insight into the meaning of “evil in human affairs”. We are all directors of our individual and our community’s virtual reality.

I suspect we have repressed such conscious thoughts about mortality that we are inclined to dispatch with a shrug any talk of such matters; do you ever consciously seek to “achieve immortality in some way”?


Quotes from Escape from Evil—Ernest Becker
 

Helios

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How do we gain power over death?

What does this mean?

Psychology informs me that it is the nature of humans to be influenced greatly by the recognition of the self and that the self must die.

What is it to "recognise the self", and, for that matter, what is meant by "the self"? I am also curious about the nature of this "psychology".

All of us have a great energy directed toward not dying.

I am tempted to disagree, but I am unaware of what "great energy" might mean.

We dread the conscious thought of dying because our instincts reject death.

Actually, I am quite relaxed about death.

When we consciously entertain the thought of death we are driven into anxiety and the task of the ego is to reject this anxiety and thus the ego represses such consciousness.

Not at all.

We have the narcissistic urge to reject death and to gain power over death.

Do we? I am unsure how such an urge would be "narcissistic", too.


In gaining this power over death we do many things and one of these things we do is kill others to prove that “Our God is bigger than Their God”. Accumulation of power in all of its manifestations is a form of fighting death and gaining immortality in a sense. Of course we know we must die but our efforts are directed at repressing this awareness by fighting the evil of death and thereby killing others in this effort.

:huh:


We create all kinds of artificial things to hide within in this process. Nationalism and religion are perhaps the most dangerous of our creations. I guess almost all killing in war is done under the banner of nationalism or religion.

Ah, yes. Nationalism and religion are products of this terrible fear of death. Since you have so convincingly argued the point, I am obliged to agree.

On an entirely irrelevant note, I find the creation of numerous, vapid, vacuous and pretentious threads to be rather irritating.
 

AOA

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"I know what I'm doing." - That's the term I coined for myself when I (admittedly) came face-to-face with the whole idea about death, at first hand.
 

NewEra

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Do not be afraid of death. Think of death as a pleasant destiny, a desirable place. Don't think of it as the end of your life, but the beginning of your afterlife. Think of death as a peaceful final frontier which you will eventually reach.
 

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Tap 1 black, 1 other and cast:

02085.JPG
 

avolkiteshvara

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We make up stories about jesus and magic after-life where we float up to heaven.

Some lucky guys get 40 virgins.
 
T

ThatGirl

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I believe people fear death due to the physical actions that come before it. Basically no one really fears being dead. Logically speaking we would have no consciousness to know if it sucked or not. However, when you ask people what they fear about dying it is usually, "I want to go peacefully." Drowning or other horrific deaths come from the fear and panic one may experience before hand.

I am writting this on my phone, so forgive me if it is poorly organized.

Now if we take that panic as the fear of death itself, are we not more motivated, more afraid, of our will to live. The instinctual will to live is tricky because the definition of living can be loosely associated. This will to live is what causes us to seek power, as each has an individual need to be in a place of security. Whatever that means to them. For some it is money, others power etc etc.

Over coming death is not the answer, simply overcoming the will to live. But then, what's the point. If we deny life, we may as not have existed at all, and while our fear of death may be moot, our lives still need substance. Each person will seek whatever that means to them in an effort not against death but against the will to live. To have lived.
 

AOA

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Hey, ThatGirl, I must say - that was a touching read... :cry: Didn't think you had it in you.

... It's (ultimately) to do with God's covenant on us, which only He Knows Best, after all.

We are here, and it's up to us to consider, as well as practice our omens to it. I (also) feel that when everything 'else' is gone, that is what matters the most... in our own haven(s) from the world, in the end. That is real 'power' - at least from the way I see it.
 

stellar renegade

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I'm not afraid of death because I'm not afraid of possibilities that may or may not occur within each instant. I usually find myself reacting to what's going on in the moment, and if I die, I die.

I've actually been intrigued by the idea of death and the thought of committing suicide just to see what would happen afterwards has crossed my mind before, though I would never act on it.

I'll find out when it happens, but for now life is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, hah. As long as reincarnation isn't true, of course. ;) :rofl1:
 

coberst

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We make up stories about jesus and magic after-life where we float up to heaven.

Some lucky guys get 40 virgins.

Amen brother/sister.

Few recognize that we have repressed our anxiety of death and as a result we have, among many things, created religion, which promises everlasting life.
 

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Therein goes the Marxism of religion being the opiate of the masses. Is it pretty sad when a fourth grader figures that out on his own, without ever reading nor hearing of Marx?
 

stellar renegade

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Amen brother/sister.

Few recognize that we have repressed our anxiety of death and as a result we have, among many things, created religion, which promises everlasting life.

Naw, I think that life will never end because that only makes sense. I can't imagine ceasing to exist, my will to live is way too strong that even if my present form were destroyed I would still go on just as strong as before.
 

NewEra

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Naw, I think that life will never end because that only makes sense. I can't imagine ceasing to exist, my will to live is way too strong that even if my present form were destroyed I would still go on just as strong as before.

I agree. There must be something more to existence than just this life and then leaving. What happens after death is very interesting and intriguing to me. If it's just lack of existence, then what a bummer, I better take advantage of life while I'm living. If it's something more, whatever that 'more' is, I will be pleased, and somehow (I know it sounds kind of silly at first) but I think there is something more.


I believe people fear death due to the physical actions that come before it. Basically no one really fears being dead. Logically speaking we would have no consciousness to know if it sucked or not. However, when you ask people what they fear about dying it is usually, "I want to go peacefully." Drowning or other horrific deaths come from the fear and panic one may experience before hand.

I am writting this on my phone, so forgive me if it is poorly organized.

Now if we take that panic as the fear of death itself, are we not more motivated, more afraid, of our will to live. The instinctual will to live is tricky because the definition of living can be loosely associated. This will to live is what causes us to seek power, as each has an individual need to be in a place of security. Whatever that means to them. For some it is money, others power etc etc.

Over coming death is not the answer, simply overcoming the will to live. But then, what's the point. If we deny life, we may as not have existed at all, and while our fear of death may be moot, our lives still need substance. Each person will seek whatever that means to them in an effort not against death but against the will to live. To have lived.

Very good points, all of them.
 

stellar renegade

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I agree. There must be something more to existence than just this life and then leaving. What happens after death is very interesting and intriguing to me. If it's just lack of existence, then what a bummer, I better take advantage of life while I'm living. If it's something more, whatever that 'more' is, I will be pleased, and somehow (I know it sounds kind of silly at first) but I think there is something more.
Yep, and if it turns out there isn't, then I'll have been happy to have lived life to the fullest anyway. :D
 

Son of the Damned

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By letting go of our fear. Death will one day claim us all, and there is nothing that can be done to change that fact. Only once you accept the notion that you WILL die, regardless of what happense, you can begin to live.
 
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