Personally I find all your attitudes toward death sad.
When a young child sees something or someone die, a typical parent might respond something along the lines that it is natural, that it is the way of things, that we all get our share of life and then move on to give others their turns. The same parents might tell their child that it is morally required to help others who are in need, that capitalism is ok but some regulation is needed, that you can never know what is right or wrong for sure so respect all opinions. The children grow up to be socialists, moral relativists and religious deathists.
Rand's teachings were a catalyst that broke through a persistent and nearly impenetrable cult of altruism for many of us. A similarly evil cult still persists in many objectivists, the cultish worship of death. If we are to hold ourselves and our own existence as our own highest value, we should, each and everyone one of us desire an eternal existence. If your life is your highest value, your actions should further that value. Yet I see things like
"but really it is the impermanence of these things that make them special"
Is freedom to be revoked so we can appreciate it? Does my wealth need to be revoked so I might know of what value it is? Must we stop thinking in order to value thought? Rubbish! Intelligent rational men can understand what it is to be without something regardless of having that something taken way, they can empathize, emulate, and create emotional simulations of situations and get approximates of which to gauge their values on. While we can not imagine ceasing to exist, do we really need to imagine such a thing to prefer existence over non-existence?
“His thoughts while facing his own imminent death contain great wisdom, and are an enduring window into what was a remarkable soul.”
Whatever nonsense we delude ourselves with to come to terms with our inevitable demise is just that, nonsense. It is an attempt to find value in something that is the destruction of all values, so we convince ourselves we must lose values to truly value them. If you have ‘come to terms’ with your death the only thing you have accomplished is the devaluation of your own life.
In this generation, the next, or one very close, men will have indefinite life spans at their disposal. I hope to live to see that day, and do what I can to help bring it about. Scientifically defeating death and aging does not have a mainstream acceptance because of the cult of religious deathist worship we were all raised in, including the scientists and doctors in charge of that research. The only strides forward are reluctant and awkward, people who directly advocate immortality as a scientific goal are chastised. But just like the cult of altruism, the cult of religious deathism must die its deserved death.
We are but one planet among hundreds of millions in this galaxy, and our galaxy one among hundreds of millions of galaxies. There is plenty out there to do, to see, to create, to investigate, to enjoy that would keep any intelligent rational being happy and occupied for eternity.
In my post in a Buddhism thread I presented my thoughts on how the embracement of life, and the utilization of technology in any manner to indefinitely expand it, is a logical extension of eudaimonism and objectivism.
http://solohq.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0396_1.shtml#28
http://solohq.com/Forum/GeneralForum/0396_1.shtml#38
The organized groups that embrace this ideology, while lacking philosophical direction, nevertheless know they value their own existence above all else, and will never convince themselves that they are inherently valueless and thus be OK with dying. Extropianism and Transhumanism are common terms used to describe these movements. I prefer the former, since I feel the latter implies a value judgment.
www.extropy.org
It is not some great attribute of objectivism to be ok with dying, one can recognize the truly and utterly cosmic injustice in the cessation of existence. It is more of a testament to objectivism to value your own life so much as to feel compelled to do something about it’s allegedly inevitable end.
I invite anyone interested to read a recent thread posted on the extropy-chat mailing list, in which a list member sadly announces the lost of his nineteen year old brother, who was murdered. This post and thread will hopefully instill a true appreciation for the life that many here are so readily able to accept the end of.
http://forum.javien.com/conv.php?new=true&convdata=id::URDpfCfx-Y3hv-yDHF-sUJn-bXHsiQa5QiPW
“Yehuda's death is the first time I ever lost someone close enough for it to hurt. So now I've seen the face of the enemy. Now I understand, a little better, the price of half a second. I don't understand it well, because the human brain has a pattern built into it. We do not grieve forever, but move on. We mourn for a few days and then continue with our lives. Such underreaction poorly equips us to comprehend Yehuda's death. Nineteen years of life and memory annihilated. A thousand years, or a million millennia, or a forever, of future life lost. The sun should have dimmed when Yehuda died, and a chill wind blown in every place that sentient beings gather, to tell us that our number was diminished by one. But the sun did not dim, because we do not live in that sensible a universe. Even if the sun did dim whenever someone died, it wouldn't be noticeable except as a continuous flickering. Soon everyone would get used to it, and they would no longer notice the flickering of the sun.”
Death is not OK, it never is and never should be for people who profess to love life. You must burn with passion for your life and fight those enemies who would take it away.
Michael F Dickey
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