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Tue 13 Nov, 2007 05:51 pm
Those wacky scientists will study anything! I see it as less of a physical coping response and more of a sequential, logical task. I think the effect on me would be similar to the meditative effect I get from doing sudoku or crossword puzzles.
Quote:....a recent study in Psychological Science, [sic] claim[s] that contemplating oblivion activates our unconscious mental defense mechanisms -- in essence, taking us to our "happy place" without us even knowing it.
The researchers asked 432 undergraduates to imagine their own deaths and write short essays about it. They then measured the volunteers' "nonconscious" emotional affect using a word-association task. Compared with the control group (who were merely asked to imagine a visit to the dentist),
the students who were preoccupied with death tended to generate significantly more positive-emotion words and word matches than the dental-pain group. [Lead author Nathan] DeWall thinks this mental coping response kicks in immediately when confronted with a serious psychological threat. In subsequent research, he has analyzed the content of the volunteers' death essays and found that they're sprinkled with positive words.
"When you ask people, 'Describe the emotions that the thought of your own death arouses in you,'" says DeWall, "people will report fear and contempt, but also happiness that 'I'm going to see my grandmother' and joy that 'I'm going to be with God.'"
So, superstition helps too. But DeWall thinks this same coping mechanism also kicks in to offset other common psychological bugaboos, like "the fact that you're not going to get that promotion, or that your spouse is cheating on you, or that your kid is on drugs."
Yup. Feeling happier already.
Scientific American 60-Second Science
Come on people? Doesn't anyone want to contemplate their own death for science?
I dunno.
I guess I never really contemplated my death, since I know it's going to happen anyway.
I suppose I contemplate more about what's going to happen to stuff, but once it's dead...what's to think about?
Maybe the closest I can come to is this great anger I felt about this scientist that cut down a tree that was over 2000 or 2500 years old, in order to find out how old it was.
He said he didn't realize the enormity of what he had down until he was counting the rings and was past something like 1500.
Today a cross section of the tree is behind some yellowing plexi-glass in some hole-in-the-wall casino in Nevada.
I felt like I could have killed that person for taking away the life of something that had stood and lived through so much, and cut down at a whim with a farging chainsaw.
I guess then life taken away before its time angers me.
littlek wrote:Come on people? Doesn't anyone want to contemplate their own death for science?
I do so as often as I can, as a sort of meditative practiceand for equanimity.
I spend hours meditating on "the little death"
I do it all the time, but not for science. I guess I'm strange.
not everyone that thinks there might be a god is bothered by the idea of oblivion.
there are days when the guarantee of oblivion would be just too easy. heck, heroin addicts are after it all the time.
There was I time when I contemplated my own death on the last day of
each month. I'd also tidy my things up as if leaving them in the state I'd
like them found after my death.
Isn't this what Buddhist monks do when they meditate seeking Nirvana?
That's good, George. Who is going to take care of the cats, for one thing.
roger wrote:That's good, George. Who is going to take care of the cats, for one thing.
Odd observation, for a rat.
Humans tend to make the best of grim situations--after all, "it" could be worse.
Well, folks, I'm glad to see I'm in good company! Maybe this is why cemeteries relax me.
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