Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Justme696 you always make me think..which is a good thing. Yes agree...there are so many ways to view it. Thank you for the alternative view. You're welcome. If I can inspire even one person to think about something important from another angle, I'm happy. quote:
Seriously I wouldn't know. But it makes one think. Perhaps I just will think back about life. It's something I thought about a long time ago, and it was a rather profound experience. Some people lose a loved one, only to realize there are a thousand things they would have liked to say, but never got a chance to. Or they are in an accident, and suddenly realize they've been going about life the wrong way. A close relative of mine was hospitalized around Christmas, with acute myeloid leukemia and multiply resistant pneumonia plus various secondary infections. It's sad, of course, but we don't have anything unresolved between us. It shouldn't take death to appreciate life, and the people we live with, but that's frequently the case. quote:
Everything you do in that 20 minutes..will have no impact..because there is no one to evaluate it purpose anymore. As it always has been. Some nations are rattling their nuclear sabers today. In 2036, there's a 1 in 45.000 chance of an extinction event on Earth. In 2038, the 32 binary digit time counters used in modern computing will overflow. By the end of the Halocene, humanity will either be extinct, or settled on multiple planets. In about 5 billion years, the sun will move into its red gigant phase, and the surface of the Earth will be scorched and the atmosphere blown away; any remains of civilization or traces of its existance are most likely going to be wiped out. At any point in time, a vacuum metastability event may destroy the universe. At some point, the universe will undergo heat death, a big crunch or a big rip. Entropy and its unidirectional flow through time ensures that whatever you do, it won't have a lasting impact. What matters is what matters to you, and what matters to those who matter to you. You don't have forever; you have here and now. quote:
But as a way to think of life..it is very good. Such has been my conclusion, as well. It's pretty much the only good thing about death. It also lends itself to avoiding compromise, because the pragmatic concerns that all too often make us compromise who we are and what we hold dear, are really rather irrelevant in the face of death. The thing that matters is exactly that which circumstances would tend to make us compromise. To exist, rather than to live, is how I view that. And while many samurai were simply drunk on power and afraid of the consequences of losing it, some were idealists who could not accept a living death. We get this moment to defy entropy, or to surrender to it; most pick the latter. quote:
I used to plan things way ahead...en getting disappointed unexpected influences disturbed the plans. Now I live more in the "20 minutes scenerio" and set ..kind of milestones....I am happy with succeeding in those...even though the main target may never be reached. So ..many succesfull small steps... reduce the risk to faill...instead of doing one big step..with all risk attached. There's nothing wrong with planning ahead, or taking big leaps. Aiming high ensures that, while you may miss your mark, you will go higher than the bulk of those who never aim in the first place, or those that aim low. If you're going to visit someone in another state, there will be turns in the road, gas stations and so forth. But you still have a place to go, and a plan to get there. Perspective is the trick. Not sacrificing life now for life tomorrow. Which again ties in with values and facing oneself in the mirror without fear or lies. Health, al-Aswad. P.S.: These things are not only part and parcel of living Gorean; they're the substance of life itself, IMO.
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"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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