even if you do find the answer to living longer.......I'm behind you all with a switchblade.......
Death: Friend or Foe?
by Narkissos 86 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
Earnest
While birth, decay, death and new growth can be seen in nature quite clearly...and without death there would be no growth...I cannot think of it as a friend of any of those I know who have died. So while death may well be a friend to man as a species it is almost always an enemy to us as individuals. It may be of interest that Aubrey de Grey, who has been mentioned a number of times in connection with his ideas on prolonging life, studied with the Witnesses long before he became known as a proponent of "negligible senescence".
-
goldensky
What a fascinating thread! I'm enjoying reading all your comments on it. Oh, Narkissos, how I wish I could be as cool about death as you are! I mean it. I enjoy each day so much I can't resign myself to losing all that inexorably. I may achieve your mental state one day though, I guess it's still too early for me (only six months ago I still believed in eternity with all my heart and soul). I'd love to read Les fleurs du mal. I'm going to see if I can find it on Internet (did you receive the e-mail I sent you a few days ago?).
-
Narkissos
Earnest,
Interesting indeed. Did he refer to that himself, or is it JW insiders' knowledge? (I understand from your post it is more than rumour) -- which might imply some interest from the JW community in his theories.
Goldensky,
I replied to your pm days ago! Check the envelope icon on the top right corner of the screen, and refresh the page if it doesn't appear right away (the current pm system doesn't work very well).
I believe it takes exactly a lifetime -- long or short -- to really come to terms with the prospect of dying. But even starting to think about it makes a difference. And this is exactly what dreams of everlasting life prevent you from doing.
***
There is a social and political dimension to this issue as well as a purely private psychological one imo. The thought of aging and death is one of the most consistently avoided, and often forcefully repressed, in today's culture (from education to commercials). It doesn't cease to exist but becomes invisible, confined to secrecy and loneliness. It becomes shameful, to the point of not even arising to consciousness in some cases. Even aging people are pressured not to look old, not to think old, and never to speak about death, to behave in every way as if they should be living forever. They have to sound unchanged, intact, otherwise they get embarrassing to everyone (i.e., everyone's sense of unchanging identity and integrity).
Now I believe there is an obvious, simple, straightforward relationship between freedom and the acceptance of death. The more people have consciously integrated and embraced their mortality, the less carrots and sticks of all kinds work on them. The more dangerously free they are. On the other hand, a flock of "unique" and "irreplaceable" individuals who do not want to die, think they may not have to and depend on a medical, technical, social, economic, political system to postpone death or avoid it altogether would be very easy to control, and its individual members all the more alike and replaceable.
-
-
Mary
Imo it takes more than vanity or self-centeredness -- an incredible amount of ignorance, or lack of reflection about what they are, for individuals to (seriously!) assume they want to live forever. Can one really want his or her combination of genes and family, educational and cultural circumstances to remain forever, rather than the continuation of life through other combinations? And yes it is either/or.
I guess I'm a selfish, ignorant person then, because I see no problem in wanting my "genes and family" to remain forever rather than dying. The human race would have no problem continuing to advance as a species if we could use a continual amount of acquired knowledge over the centuries. Our survival and advancement as a species does not have to solely depend on us dying.
-
PSacramento
It seems to me, within the context of the OT, the jews were at points, divided about Death, see the case of the ressurection and the belief by some that it doesn'thappen.
With Christians it seemed to change as other doctrines began to be formualted, Paul seemed to feel one way at times, see 1Thessalonians in regards to the imminent coming of Christ and as he got older he seemed to "long" fo death in the sense that he was looking forwrd to being with Christ, indeed he seemed to view his "earthly" state as a dimminshed one, along the lines of other religions and philosohies.
Revelation gave us the "view" of multiple ressurections (two at least), and final torrement for all eternity in a "lake of fire" for those were were unbelievers, certainly not something spelled out by Jesus in the Gospels per say.
While Jesus did mention people being thrown out into Ghenna where there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth and his parable of Lazarus showed the rich man suffering in "hell", no where did it give the idea of more than one ressurection or even that this would NOT happen upon death but only after tribulations.
Paul also mentions that to him, eternal punishment is being absent from God's love/presence (Paraphrasing here).
-
Narkissos
The human race would have no problem continuing to advance as a species if we could use a continual amount of acquired knowledge over the centuries. Our survival and advancement as a species does not have to solely depend on us dying.
It just did for the last 40,000 years or so. Language and symbolism in general were built to get around spatial and temporal limitations of experience and knowledge. What you see is not what I see, that's why you may feel the need to tell me. What you have learned from your experience you may feel the need to tell future generations, rather than let them find out. Much is lost in this communication process, still this is what made "progress" possible (for better and worse): even marginally we do learn from each other, and a new generation doesn't start where the previous one did, and from there it has the desire to move further. This of course presupposes that we are somehow interested in others, contemporaneous or yet to come.
You stopped the quote at a critical point. Do you want a childless world? If not, you want to die someday -- even though you may not know you want to.
PS: Thanks, but I fail to see Revelation significantly enlarging the scope of Christian views of death. Lake of fire = Gehenna; qualitative (if not temporal) differences in resurrection are found in other places too; even the eulogy of martyrdom occurs elsewhere (Synoptics, Hebrews, 1 Peter)...
-
PSacramento
Narkissos,
Do you deny that the view of death and the afterlife of the JW's is largely based on Revelation more than anyother book?
-
Narkissos
Do you deny that the view of death and the afterlife of the JW's is largely based on Revelation more than anyother book?
Sure I do. The JW "no Hell, no soul" perspective is inconciliable with Revelation. The idea of the millenium derives from Revelation, but the notion of resurrection during the millenium, or of resurrected people being judged on what they do after they are resurrected flatly contradicts Revelation 20.