[king_buzzo]

Aah, look at my amazing profile notes I just updated them

[atari 2600]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

We usually get the same types of recommendations in book threads. I've alluded to this book's importance a few times, but this thread gives me another opportunity to do so:

The Denial of Death

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



The Denial of Death (ISBN 0-684-83240-2) is a psychology/philosophy work written by Ernest Becker and published in 1973. It was awarded the Pulitzer prize for general non-fiction in 1974, two months after the author's death. The book builds largely on the works of Søren Kierkegaard, Sigmund Freud, and one of Freud's colleagues, Otto Rank.
The main theme of The Denial of Death is that most human activity ultimately concerns the denial of one's mortality. The full realization of one's own mortality is mostly unbearable, absolutely terrifying and horrific. Man transcends this problem in the concept of heroism. By being heroic, man feels he has meaning, a purpose, something that will never die. One can be a hero to the eye of God, to the State, to the eyes of his peers, to his family, etc. Mental illness is thus most insightfully interpreted as a bogging down in one's hero system(s).
Another theme running throughout the book is that humanity's traditional "hero-systems" i.e. religion, are no longer convincing in the age of reason; science is attempting to solve the problem of man, something that it can never do. The book states that we need new convincing "illusions" that enable us to feel heroic in the grand scheme of things, i.e. immortal.

Trivia

• In Woody Allen's film Annie Hall, death-obsessed Alvy Singer buys the book for his girlfriend, Annie Hall.

[!@#$%!]

and what about thread death? scary too??

[!@#$%!]

oh never mind, it didn't happen. for a moment i thought its heard had stopped beating...

[atari 2600]

Socrates' Final Speech at the Trial

Friends, who would have acquitted me, (ed. Socrates is addressing the minority who voted against his death sentence) I would like also to talk with you about the thing which has come to pass, while the magistrates are busy, and before I go to the place at which I must die. Stay then a little, for we may as well talk with one another while there is time. You are my friends, and I should like to show you the meaning of this event which has happened to me. O my judges- for you I may truly call judges - I should like to tell you of a wonderful circumstance. Hitherto the divine faculty of which the internal oracle He believes that what is happening to him will be good, because the internal oracle gives no sign of opposition.is the source has constantly been in the habit of opposing me even about trifles, I was going to make a slip or error in any matter; and now asyou see there has come upon me that which may be thought, and is generally believed to be, the last and worst evil. But the oracle made no sign of opposition, either when I was leaving my house in the morning, or when I was on my way to the court, or while I was speaking, at anything which I was going to say; and yet I have often been stopped in the middle of a speech, but now in nothing I either said or did touching the matter in hand has theoracle opposed me. What do I take to be the explanation of this silence? I will tell you. It is an intimation that what has happened to me is a good, and that those of us who think that death is an evil are in error. For the customary sign would surely have opposed me had I been going to evil and not to good.

Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is Death either a good or nothing: - a profound sleep.great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things - either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man, I will not say a private man, but even the great king will not find many such days or nights, when compared with the others. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain; for eternity is then only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, How blessed to have a just judgment passed on us; to converse with Homer and Hesiod; to see the heroes of Troy, and to continue the search after knowledge in another world!can be greater than this? If indeedwhen the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give no judgment there, Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus and Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I myself, too, shall have a wonderful interest in there meeting and conversing with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and any other ancient hero who has suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be small pleasure, as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs. Above all, I shall then be able to continue my search into true and false knowledge; as in this world, so also in the next; and I shall find out who is wise, and who pretends to be wise, and is not. What would not a m an give, O judges , to be able to examine the leader of the great Trojan expedition; or Odysseus or Sisyphus, or numberless others, men and women too! What infinite delight would there be in conversing with them and asking them questions! In another world they do not put a man to death for asking questions: assuredly not. For besides being happier than we are, they will be immortal, if what is said is true.

Wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know of a certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble, wherefore the oracle gave no sign. For which reason, also, I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm, although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die, and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.

I don't know what you mean. I talk about car accidents a lot, and i've seen some loved ones getting ruined by them and facing death. Death is a subject that i'm comfortable with.

edit- tp94849040498049

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

I don't know what you mean. I talk about car accidents a lot, and i've seen some loved ones getting ruined by them and facing death. Death is a subject that i'm comfortable with.

edit- tp94849040498049

Cuando Pedro salió a su ventana
no sabía, mi amor, no sabía
que la luz de esa clara mañana
era luz de su último día.
Y las causas lo fueron cercando
cotidianas, invisibles.
Y el azar se le iba enredando
poderoso, invencible.

Cuando Juan regresaba a su lecho
no sabía, oh alma querida
que en la noche lluviosa y sin techo
lo esperaba el amor de su vida.
Y las causas lo fueron cercando
cotidianas, invisibles.
Y el azar se le iba enredando
poderoso, invencible.

Cuando acabe este verso que canto
yo no sé, yo no sé, madre mía
si me espera la paz o el espanto;
si el ahora o si el todavía.
Pues las causas me andan cercando
cotidianas, invisibles.
Y el azar se me viene enredando
poderoso, invencible.

[el duderino]

we spend all of our youth tryin to attain wealth, and then spend all of our wealth tryin to stay young - anon

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by el duderino

we spend all of our youth tryin to attain wealth, and then spend all of our wealth tryin to stay young - anon

Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them, as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing, - then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by el duderino

we spend all of our youth tryin to attain wealth, and then spend all of our wealth tryin to stay young - anon

i thought that had been douglas coupland in generation x -- o well

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

Why can't you say stuff about death that isn't written already? Wait, i know, because you're scared of it.

True, that.

I was hoping the Socrates might open a dialogue.

Have you read The Denial of Death, pork?

Have you even read the post before you're off on starting another topic?

Originally Posted by atari 2600

True, that.

I was hoping the Socrates might open a dialogue.

Have you read The Denial of Death, pork?

Have you even read the post before you're off on starting another topic?

I was forced the book as a kid. I hate it. I'm a deadly person anyway, so therefore i've discovered happiness through denial of my own exsitence. Beat that, master.

[!@#$%!]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

I'm a deadly person anyway, so therefore i've discovered happiness through denial of my own exsitence. Beat that, master.

porkie, is this you???

 

[atari 2600]

If he has read it (I believe he has when he was young...this is all deja vu for me), then he's dismissed it. That's not an intentional put-down either. That's exactly what he expressed...that he is in denial and he likes it that way. I think most of us honestly fall into that same boat. But, if that is so, then why start the thread? And then why complain?

Death is a pregnant emptiness. Object-loss, world-loss, self-loss...it is the precondition for all creation. Creation is in or out of the void, ex nihilo, thus all part of the process.
Eros and Thanatos are one, hence their great magic and great terror.

Love that is never told can never be. It is the fool King Lear that asks his daughters to tell how much they love him. And it is the one who loves him who is silent.

Creation out of nothing...the dimensions of time and space are integrated into that ultimate unity, bindu: a point, dot, drop, germ, seed, semen...the primal oudad.

Our world, the material that composes it, is primarily empty space. At the subatomic level, most of the mass of every atom, even of the most solid of matter, of a mountain, for instance, is overwhelmingly mostly empty space.

The Law of Conservation of Matter and Energy: the total energy in the universe is exactly zero. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, and merely changes from one form into another.

[atari 2600]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

I was forced the book as a kid. I hate it. I'm a deadly person anyway, so therefore i've discovered happiness through denial of my own exsitence. Beat that, master.

Newsflash for porkmarras: You are alive. You do exist.

Therefore, you cannot possibly be in denial that you exist.
Therefore, what you've written is poppycock, which is par for the course with you.
Therefore, not only do you deny death unconsciously, you "deny" it consciously, which really makes you a worse person than someone who is just blissfully ignorant by default.

Originally Posted by atari 2600

Newsflash for porkmarras: You are alive. You do exist.

Therefore, you cannot possibly be in denial that you exist.
Therefore, what you've written is poppycock, which is par for the course with you.
Therefore, not only do you deny death unconsciously, you deny it consciously, which really makes you a worse pers
I cabn lieon than someone who is just blissfully ignorant by default.

I can lie on pillow and think about death as much as i like. Doing so with other people gives strength to what i think.

[atari 2600]

Okay, sounds good.

I'm glad we agree on something.

[atari 2600]

Freud presents a certain hypothesis in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.
(In Thalassa, (especially) Ferenczi echoes some of the same sensibility only through his lens, as it were. Countless of other books do as well.

And it raises a point/question.
If the tendency of the sexual instinct is to restore an earlier state of things (before life ws sexually differentiated) in the culmination of the orgasm, then isn't that just like going back to the creation of the universe before the big bang and before the substance of the universe was exploded into separate particles?

Isn't our dream state analogous as well?

And isn't death also analogous?

Do we not unconsciously will our own deaths at times?
I think philosophy and the like can be very dangerous.
Do not tread if one is not prepared.
Everyone knows the famous Burroughs quote about writing being the most dangerous profession.

If Eros and Thantos are one, which they are, then it only follows that it's possible for one to open a doorway into which one unconsciously wills their own death.

Freud illustrates his hypothesis with the myth from Plato's Symposium, deriving sexual differentiation from the bisection of a primal hermaphroditic body. His Moses & Monotheism is interesting and a good primer because in the later work he attempts to translate the concepts of individual-psychology into mass-psychology. It's also interesting because one can psychoanalyze Freud himself by this late point in his career.

[Pookie]

Death is so terrifying because of its ordinariness.