Death, Memory and a Meaningful or meaning of life
Two articles sparked these thoughts, one is from
The New York Review of Books, Jan 9, 2014, Thomas Nagel's review of Death and the Afterlife
Harper's Feb 2014, Sarah Manguso's review of Pieces of Light and The Faraway Nearby
(Ironically or maybe not so, what sparked these thoughts was Frenkel's Love and Math. I was thinking while I was reading it that math/physics are ways of making meaning of the universe, literally. But most people don't seem to take them that way. If we understood "the universe", then these questions might also be answered . . . very related to Horn's A Guide to the Perplexed )
What happens after we die?
Why do we fear death so much? (Great passage on this in My Struggle).
How do we lead a meaningful life?
How do you know if you've lead a meaningful life?
In Memory's Passages, Manguso discusses how unreliable our memories are but that they are also the only thing we have. Perhaps we don't remember in order to relive past events like watching an old movie but perhaps memory serves the purpose of developing a narrative that makes sense of our lives so it doesn't feel so meaningless and random. Regardless of its accuracy, these memories
can be recycled (and revised) as needed to shape the narrative that gives us the history we want/need/expect. Manguso also talks about the Faraway Nearby, a book about the writer's mother who has Alzheimer's, and in the book she writes, "Liberated from the burden of her past, things became incomparable, each slice of cake the most delicious. . . " So memory also serves to limit and circumscribe our lives. I think I've always thought of Alzheimer's as horrible but maybe it's only horrible for those who are forgotten and not for those who do the forgetting.
Memory does seem like a burden--it never seems quite accurate so you aren't sure what it is you are remembering; you often "remember" stuff you wish you could forget, and other people remember stuff about you as well. We all have done things in the past that it would be nice to jettison from our minds.
Scheffler, according to Nagel, argues in his book that it is our concern for the collective afterlife that makes death seem so overwhelming, the notion that after we leave this life, it is our concern for what is happening afterwards. Imagine the world was ending 30 days after you die, would you care that you were dying? Would you have lived your life differently? Raising an interesting question, how much of our choices in how we live are determined by the idea of their being a future in which we will be "remembered"? If we weren't going to be would we act differently? Is this somehow related to the idea of "going to heaven" because again the idea of having to be held accountable after death for what you do in life may be influencing your daily actions.
To what extent are we leading a life today because this is the "right" life to lead today?
And, back to Manguso's article, how would our choices be different if each day were actually new (in our brains anyway)? Would we enjoy our ice cream more if we thought it was the first one? Is there some sense in which life becomes dull because of repetition?
To what extent is what we do today ultimately depend on their being a tomorrow? Does that make something meaningful? Would I write in this blog if there were no tomorrow? Would I still read Love and Math if I knew I wouldn't get to finish it? (Good fiction book on this topic too, The Last Policeman--second volume in this set, not so much).
Scheffler also raises the issue about how mortality informs our lives in the sense that if you could live forever, you could just do everything tomorrow, really causing us to rethink what we value and how we value it. Time is meaningful only because we know it's limited. Is this what seems to happen in retirement too? Because time is no longer circumscribed we don't live in the shadow of its limits like we do when we are busy with work and family?
3/27/14 Now, I've read the book "Death and the Afterlife" and I'm reading Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts, all of which have to do with what it means to die, I think. Or how we prepare ourselves for death or how we find meaning in this life (which seems to be inherently related to death). Scheffler's contention that we live in relationship to a presumed future does not resonate with me. He argues that we would live differently if the world were going to end 30 days after our death and we knew this. But, I can't see why that matters, for me, anyway. But it does raise the issue of to what purpose is life oriented? In Sacred Hearts, it's obviously oriented to a complete giving up of oneself to God. But, if we think of Frankel and his book, math and solving math's problems is what moves him forward, gives him meaning. Would he care about math if all life were ending? Would nuns care about God? Why wouldn't they?
If people live in some sense for their prodigy or their reputation to carry on in the future, then of course, their meaning would change if the world were to end. But in some ways, asking that question reminds us of how totally unimportant our existence is. It has absolutely nothing to do with the future, which is completely unknown.
Dunant's Sacred Heart was also making me think about the notion of the soul. In Sacred Heart, one of the nuns encourages another nun to fast, stating that the starvation of the body leads to the burgeoning of the soul, as if the two were in some strange negative correlation with one another. But, in some way, she seems right in that the less one is thinking about the body, the more one can focus on something other than that, but it also tends to make one crazy, So, in that case it seems like the soul is what is left when you lose your mind.
But, to think of this differently, how we live today could be seen as an attempt to orient the energy of our existence in a positive way, regardless of past or future. Living in a way that increases positive energy and decreases negative. In that instance, none of these other concerns matter. This is not Buddhist. The idea is not to lose "the self" whatever that would mean, but to nourish the self. We would have to agree, as Dworkin argues, that there is an orientation that is better. In some ways, that orientation can be connected to God or any other spiritual medium to the extent that this connection encourages the actor towards positive energy and not negative (unlike the mean nun who wants the other nun to starve herself . . .).
Can physics answer the question of whether energy has an orientation of negative or positive and can beings impact that energy?
The New York Review of Books, Jan 9, 2014, Thomas Nagel's review of Death and the Afterlife
Harper's Feb 2014, Sarah Manguso's review of Pieces of Light and The Faraway Nearby
(Ironically or maybe not so, what sparked these thoughts was Frenkel's Love and Math. I was thinking while I was reading it that math/physics are ways of making meaning of the universe, literally. But most people don't seem to take them that way. If we understood "the universe", then these questions might also be answered . . . very related to Horn's A Guide to the Perplexed )
What happens after we die?
Why do we fear death so much? (Great passage on this in My Struggle).
How do we lead a meaningful life?
How do you know if you've lead a meaningful life?
In Memory's Passages, Manguso discusses how unreliable our memories are but that they are also the only thing we have. Perhaps we don't remember in order to relive past events like watching an old movie but perhaps memory serves the purpose of developing a narrative that makes sense of our lives so it doesn't feel so meaningless and random. Regardless of its accuracy, these memories
can be recycled (and revised) as needed to shape the narrative that gives us the history we want/need/expect. Manguso also talks about the Faraway Nearby, a book about the writer's mother who has Alzheimer's, and in the book she writes, "Liberated from the burden of her past, things became incomparable, each slice of cake the most delicious. . . " So memory also serves to limit and circumscribe our lives. I think I've always thought of Alzheimer's as horrible but maybe it's only horrible for those who are forgotten and not for those who do the forgetting.
Memory does seem like a burden--it never seems quite accurate so you aren't sure what it is you are remembering; you often "remember" stuff you wish you could forget, and other people remember stuff about you as well. We all have done things in the past that it would be nice to jettison from our minds.
Scheffler, according to Nagel, argues in his book that it is our concern for the collective afterlife that makes death seem so overwhelming, the notion that after we leave this life, it is our concern for what is happening afterwards. Imagine the world was ending 30 days after you die, would you care that you were dying? Would you have lived your life differently? Raising an interesting question, how much of our choices in how we live are determined by the idea of their being a future in which we will be "remembered"? If we weren't going to be would we act differently? Is this somehow related to the idea of "going to heaven" because again the idea of having to be held accountable after death for what you do in life may be influencing your daily actions.
To what extent are we leading a life today because this is the "right" life to lead today?
And, back to Manguso's article, how would our choices be different if each day were actually new (in our brains anyway)? Would we enjoy our ice cream more if we thought it was the first one? Is there some sense in which life becomes dull because of repetition?
To what extent is what we do today ultimately depend on their being a tomorrow? Does that make something meaningful? Would I write in this blog if there were no tomorrow? Would I still read Love and Math if I knew I wouldn't get to finish it? (Good fiction book on this topic too, The Last Policeman--second volume in this set, not so much).
Scheffler also raises the issue about how mortality informs our lives in the sense that if you could live forever, you could just do everything tomorrow, really causing us to rethink what we value and how we value it. Time is meaningful only because we know it's limited. Is this what seems to happen in retirement too? Because time is no longer circumscribed we don't live in the shadow of its limits like we do when we are busy with work and family?
3/27/14 Now, I've read the book "Death and the Afterlife" and I'm reading Sarah Dunant's Sacred Hearts, all of which have to do with what it means to die, I think. Or how we prepare ourselves for death or how we find meaning in this life (which seems to be inherently related to death). Scheffler's contention that we live in relationship to a presumed future does not resonate with me. He argues that we would live differently if the world were going to end 30 days after our death and we knew this. But, I can't see why that matters, for me, anyway. But it does raise the issue of to what purpose is life oriented? In Sacred Hearts, it's obviously oriented to a complete giving up of oneself to God. But, if we think of Frankel and his book, math and solving math's problems is what moves him forward, gives him meaning. Would he care about math if all life were ending? Would nuns care about God? Why wouldn't they?
If people live in some sense for their prodigy or their reputation to carry on in the future, then of course, their meaning would change if the world were to end. But in some ways, asking that question reminds us of how totally unimportant our existence is. It has absolutely nothing to do with the future, which is completely unknown.
Dunant's Sacred Heart was also making me think about the notion of the soul. In Sacred Heart, one of the nuns encourages another nun to fast, stating that the starvation of the body leads to the burgeoning of the soul, as if the two were in some strange negative correlation with one another. But, in some way, she seems right in that the less one is thinking about the body, the more one can focus on something other than that, but it also tends to make one crazy, So, in that case it seems like the soul is what is left when you lose your mind.
But, to think of this differently, how we live today could be seen as an attempt to orient the energy of our existence in a positive way, regardless of past or future. Living in a way that increases positive energy and decreases negative. In that instance, none of these other concerns matter. This is not Buddhist. The idea is not to lose "the self" whatever that would mean, but to nourish the self. We would have to agree, as Dworkin argues, that there is an orientation that is better. In some ways, that orientation can be connected to God or any other spiritual medium to the extent that this connection encourages the actor towards positive energy and not negative (unlike the mean nun who wants the other nun to starve herself . . .).
Can physics answer the question of whether energy has an orientation of negative or positive and can beings impact that energy?
Comments
Post a Comment