Fitness

[greenstorm]

So I've always been death-aspected. Naming this about myself is one of the more powerful things that's happened to me. For me this means I have a bone-deep intrinsic understanding of the fitness and importance of death. I know that it is inevitable. I think the cycle of death/birth is beautiful and compelling, and not just the birth part. Death is one part of the meaning of everything. It's a time to view, honour, and create an organism's meaning.

This does not mean I don't feel grief when things die, nor does it mean I want to hurry my own death along. It may even mean I'm more able to experience my grief because I'm not trying to erase the presence of the death.

Our society tends to view death as meaningless or as a punishment. It wants to hide death as much as possible. That becomes increasingly evident when I wander around existing. Some folks view the existence of death as an affront, and some feel like death voids all the meaning of everything. I'm glad I'm not those folks. I value my understanding of the cycle.

Aaaaaaaand... there's a huge shortage of abbatoirs in the interior of BC. Lots of folks can't get appropriate poultry slaughtered (especially waterfowl) because there are not enough licensed facilities for them, and because what facilities exist are so widely spaced. One of the biggest things anyone could do to promote waterfowl breeds would be to open an abbatoir that serviced them somewhere around Prince George/Williams Lake.

In my mind this is one of the things I'll retire to: likely not enough work to be a full-time or well-paying business, but providing a service.

It seems like a good fit.

Comments

[graydon2]

Not to distract from the (very sensible-sounding!) potential provision of death-services to the waterfowl of BC, but I wonder: do your thoughts about death-in-abstract, and death-of-other-beings, smoothly extend to the impending death-of-your-consciousness? What do you believe will happen to your subjective experience when you die? That's really the only part I'm hung up on, and I've never found a comforting-sounding answer. It appears to .. vanish forever?

[greenstorm]

They do smoothly extend to death of consciousness. That's part of the point? I don't really have the mind/ body dichotomy as strongly as many seem to, though it's hard to language about it since that separation is baked into English. I don't really have beliefs like you're looking for; it's not super relevant to me, nor do I believe I can do a better job at knowing the answer than any other person and their record of agreement isn't great. My working belief is that whatever consciousness or self awareness I have is a function of my organic parts being assembled in this particular way. This is based on how much various chemicals and hormones change my experience of consciousness. Change a little progesterone or blood sugar and everything changes, so if there was to be any objective continuance I'm not sure how that would play in.

[graydon2]

Hm. I don't think I'm trying to get at the mind/body dichotomy (I don't believe I have a soul that exists separate from my body) so much as the extent to which the perception-of-all-things that each of us currently experiences has an end date on it, coupled to / identified with the death of the enclosing body. In other words: when I have seen someone die, it may be hard or easy for me; but I can still think about it, feel it, consider it, talk to others about it, go on living my life in the world and perceiving things both living and dead. The universe subjectively still exists as far as I'm concerned.

When it comes time for my own death, the universe will instantaneously subjectively cease to exist. I will not get to reflect on its cessation: neither mourn it nor celebrate it. Nothing will ever happen again, as far as I can tell. I may believe others will continue to exist and perceive the universe, but there's no sense in which I'll be able to tell either way: it would not be perceptively different to me at the time of death if the entire universe did objectively vanish, or subjectively for all of its other participants. That end-point has a finality that, I think, has a very different character from any other death I will experience. And I am curious if you too conceive of a difference in character between the deaths of others and the impending death of yourself.

(At least insofar as I perceive myself as existing, as a separate existence from other entities. Which -- as much as I don't really want to? -- I kinda do: both while they live and after they've died, I have a pretty clearly limited degree of simultaneous experiencing of the subjective experiences of others. They have to be very proximal in spacetime, and usually even go out of their way to communicate with me, for anything to be transmitted.)

[greenstorm]

I was answering "do my thoughts [...] smoothly extend to death-of-consciousness" and my answer was: yes, I don't really differentiate death-of-body, death-of-consciousness, death-of-human-abstracted-subunit-of-self.

Death is one of the things I conceive to have the same character for myself and others. It unifies me with human and nonhuman entities more than almost any experience, especially those which came before me and which I will never know. Its loss would remove a sense of belonging for me.

I walk, and deaths of many things are in the soil under my feet and in the air I breathe. Eating, breathing-- death enables everything I do, and so it infuses every thing I do. I don't feel a sense of exceptionalism about it. Grief, curiosity ("no sense in which I'll be able to tell either way"), sometimes reluctance or peace: those are present. Existential terror? No, it's what eases that terror for me.

I always wish I could give you some peace about this. I wish I could let you feel, just for a moment, that death is the world's way of accepting you as part of itself. I'm generally happy to talk about the topic just in the hope a little of that will wear off if nothing else.

A note, and I am not trying to be pedantic, but I'm looking at your words and trying to reflect my interior back with them: "the perception-of-all-things that each of us currently experiences". I have no perception-of-all-things; I have a tiny fragment of perception of some very few things. When viewed with a sense of proportion to the things I don't perceive, my death will almost not change that at all.

I welcome more discussion if it's not too disturbing for you.

[graydon2]

Re question asked vs. answered: ah, difference in emphasized word. I was asking if your thoughts extend to the death of _your_ consciousness, vs. that of others. But understood

Re perception-of-all-things: again I think I failed to convey what I meant. "All things" as in all the things we do perceive -- all of those things will cease. Of course we do not perceive all things. But when one thing in our awareness dies, I think, it is different than when _all_ the things in our awareness die. Which is what it will appear to be when our awareness, itself, dies.

Re wanting to give me some peace on the matter: thank you. It means a lot to know that you wish for this. I have had moments of feeling what you describe -- of the unity of the world's consciousness, of death as a return to that unity and mere unravelling of the illusion of separate identity, rather than the cessation of all subjective existence -- but it slips away, I cannot convince myself to feel it in a sustained way, no matter what I believe or hope intellectually.

I wish for you to continue to interact with death in the way most meaningful to you. I envy it somewhat.

[greenstorm]

Of the unity of the world's unconsciousness, perhaps?

[graydon2]

(Also if this is an annoying digression, feel free to drop it. I know I'm a broken record about it.)