Life & Death

Still reading. Will you post some more?

Re: Life & Death


It depends on how you define "really live."

I agree with some of your conclusions, and with some I do not agree.

Some would say that the struggle to survive is the only time we really live.

And the people who sit around and are preoccupied with the "sublime and transcending" and all that are the ones that never "really live."

Let's take an example of a wealthly learned prince in an ivory tower: all his needs are taken care of. He has slaves to tend to every need. So he is free to use his intellect to ponder the nature of existence for nearly all of his waking life. He visits art museums, debates with the most learned philosophers, and generally spends most of his time meditating on the sublime and transcending portions of his life. Is he "really living?"

Now lets take another person. He is very poor, and must work hard each and every day to attain food and meet his needs for survival. Let us say he is a nomad, a poor but courageous American Indian nomad of the past. He struggles each day to survive. But in the struggle, he loses himself. He becomes one with his world. He is part of nature. He is part of the sublime mystery that surrounds himself. He learns to move through the world in motion, as a warrior/art form. Yet he is spending most of his time and effort to survive. Yet he is aware of the extreme beauty of nature he moves in, and he is sometimes aware of the existential comedy he is participating in. But he has to spend much more percentage of his waking life tending to his survival needs than the rich prince above.

Can we truly say the rich prince "really lived" more than the poor Indian?

Also, the "sublime and transcending" can sometimes be found in the very act of surviving. When one merges with the act. You hear of it in sports for example. An athlete gets "into a zone." They forget who they are. Everyone around them appears to be moving in slow motion. And for a few moments, they are untouchable. Yet, they are in a competition to survive. I submit this zone is every bit as sublime as contemplation in a cloister on the nature of existence.

Much of a salmon or bear's life is involved with merely surviving. Perhaps they have never been aware of "what life is" and have never found the "sublime and the transcending." Can we sit back and judge that they have never lived.

What is it to "really live?" And who defines this?

We must define it for ourselves.

One person may define it as noticing the patterns of the existence and the universe.

Another person may define it as anything else.

Who is correct?

Life is an open-ended question.

Satyr,

You need to consider the possibility that "self" is a sub-pattern in a hierachy of "life" ranging from simple cells to ecosystems. The meaning of "survival" will then depend on which level of the hierarchy is under focus.