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bumharmony t1_j1yx9lu wrote

Why would dying be insane or absurd? Seems like a machine produced article once again.

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Hehwoeatsgods t1_j1zu7yk wrote

Because there's nothing left after you're dead. You have the whole of eternity to be dead and the smallest fraction of time to be alive. If we didnt age so much and felt such physical pain of ageing most would probably choose to live than to die.

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bumharmony t1_j20y6jd wrote

There is neither anyone left to observe. It is impossible to meet death because it would require an oxymoronistic self to observe the process of dying and the post mortem status. How is nothing absurd or insane? Unless you have learned sayings by heart and now you are only repeating these mental scripts that don’t have a meaning.

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Hehwoeatsgods t1_j21j2vu wrote

Humans are free to give anything meaning, even death. Life is required to give meaning.

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bumharmony t1_j21tcaa wrote

But it does not belong to philosophy. Since philosophy is the study of the world, not study of the judgments about it as not all of them are very good. We know logically that not-life is not same as death starting after life. The meaning of life is to exist. So when it ends, the discussion about something existing ends. So we don’t even need empurical dispute about it, because it is conceptually coherent to say that after life there is nothing.

Life is every one’s viewpoint but death is the viewpoint of an outsider. But it has no value to the discussion.

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Hehwoeatsgods t1_j21xhes wrote

At this point I don't even know what you are saying. Meaning is just as made up as 1+1=2. You can't put meaning on a table and physically examine it to be true. Human language is all metaphoric, none of it actually exists except in one place, your mind. Anything we accept as truth has meaning because life grants it. Death kills meaning. Life does the opposite.

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bumharmony t1_j23q885 wrote

Yeah but apart from mathematics, symbols must have a concrete target it is connected to. If death is nothing then it cannot cause even any feelings, unless we have conditioned and suggested ourselves with that particular word, "death" so it causes for example fear. Of course the culture does this for us.

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ErinBLAMovich t1_j1ztvhc wrote

Maybe the author is part of the longevity movement? They believe that aging is just a degenerative disease and that death will be solved in the future. Check out the Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant and r/longevity for more info.

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bumharmony t1_j1zug71 wrote

Now that would be hellishly absurd and enstranging.

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Talosian_cagecleaner t1_j216k0q wrote

I am going to go with you on this. On the Why? part, not the robot part.

Rhetoric can do all kinds of things, including paradoxes and ironies, and that era of thinker used both rhetoric and philosophy quite well.

But that does not mean something can't be dated, or passe as it were.

It is one of those classic tropes in Western literature that death is somehow an insult. Theological reasons? Poetic reasons? Logical reasons? I am not confident saying why this developed as a trope, but it did. Death is an insult is how Schiller more or less described it, and that same thought is kind of implied in Kant. So death is this "categorical objection" of some kind?

In any event, I think such a notion was a creature of its time, and as time goes by is starting to appear to more people as very presumptuous. Absurdity is what happened to the Romantic notion of tragedy. But what "death is" simply can no longer be assumed. There is no consensus any more. We can use these old tropes, but the point kind of is, we are apparently moving out of their range.

Do we need to turn back?

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Chilledlemming t1_j23d2j9 wrote

I think the author could have easily said “why birth?”

The cross from non-existence to existence or vice versa is absurd. Actually any existence is absurd to begin with. Buy if we except that we are here. And there is something happening here. Then why phase in and out of it?

That’s how I took it.

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Talosian_cagecleaner t1_j245d40 wrote

I think we have a similar lack of enchantment on this train of thought lol. Yes, I agree.

Death why not birth? After all, I can potentially consent to death, but I cannot consent to birth. It seems to me "violation of consent" is what badgers 19th and 1st half 20th century philosophy, in essence.

Well birth is far more an outrage than death then.

As to the here and now, and how it tends to not have room for such thoughts, I guess we can modify the saying: there are no absurdists in foxholes.

edit: "Then why phase in and out of it?" -- excellent way of putting the issue.

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