Belief in an afterlife is nothing more than wishful thinking. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that there is anything after life, and to think otherwise is a very dangerous line of thought. It may be one of the most pernicious memes in existence today, I shudder to think how many people have thrown away the only life they have for nothing.
to say that the after life is just wishful thinking is to discredit the powers of brain chemistry.
for example: plants do not experiance time. our ability to register time is primarily caused by a neuro-chemical tryptophane (i might be wrong on the spelling or even the particular chemical). ever done a bunch of acid? you know how at its peak, time dialates and every two minutes is its own infinity? this is an example of when our brains ability to produce tryptophan is impeded. or the feelings of drowsyness accompanied by eating a bunch of freshly cooked turkey? warm turkey (and milk) cause the brain to produce more tryptophane, encouraging the individual to undergo time at a faster rate (sleep).
there is a space of time between when the body dies (heart stops, spinal column stops sending signals, blood congeals, body cools) and when the brain dies. after the body dies completely it takes an additional SIX MINUTES for the brain to become inactive. in that time, tryptophan is completely shut off (for the individual, time stops, or rather they are placed outside of time), then the brain produces dimethyltryptomine (DMT) until it runs out of resources.
it is entirely possible that the six minutes between death and the end of neural activity feels like eternity from the inside, in fact WOULD be eternal as they would no longer be experiancing within time, and that those six minutes make up the "eternal afterlife" discussed in religious texts.
take it from someone who's body has died twice already, and then made the decision to come back: there is an afterlife. it just isn't what most people think.
as for suicide? it's someone's choice, yes. but without ample motivation (terminal illness, excrutiating physical pain, 89 years old and seen enough already, must kill one's self so friends may eat carcass and survive), it is an easy way out. the easier way is rarely the more beneficial one. the low road (it's always easier to go downhill) leads to a swamp full of gnats, the high road leads to a mountain's peak with a pimpy view.
what's coming through is alive, what's holding up is a mirror... totally void of hate, and killing me just the same... coming over like a storm again now considerately.
I replied (before starting this thread) to say that though suicide may be a personal choice and right, most people that commit suicide suffer a fatal lapse in one or more of the virtues: reason, empathy, vision.
I wonder what thoughts if any Lucifer might have about this in regards to the case of St. Alan Turing's suicide.
Albert Camus takes as the starting point of this essay a familiar feeling of losing your bearings. At times the social, intellectual, philosophical, and religious constructs that we have which give the world meaning and coherence fall away and we are plunged into confusion. As Camus poetically describes it:
“It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm – this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the “why” arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.”
We are faced with the real possibility that life is meaningless. If this sense of meaninglessness persists, we are forced to ask whether life is worth living at all. Camus says that this question of suicide is the most basic philosophical question. He opens his essay with this fundamental point:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide“ Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer [the questions of suicide].”
Much of the beginning of the essay is spent framing up the existential condition which Camus calls the absurd. Man is caught in a paradox. On the one hand, all empirical evidence shows that the world is unpredictable and chaotic. Lives come into existence and pass. Ideas are proven to be true then determined to be false. One belief is held than another. Even our own moods are constantly shifting. On the other hand, man has a persistent nostalgia for unity, a need to make sense of the world. This is the human condition, Camus suggests, a constant attempt to derive meaning from meaninglessness. And it is absurd.
Given this situation Camus explores the possible responses. First he examines a religious answer proposed by people like Soren Kierkegaard. Camus argues that the religious leap of faith that Kierkegaard proposes is unnecessary. This leap is an escape from the fact of life’s absurdity, a “philosophical suicide” as Camus puts it. Next he looks at the opening question of the essay, what about suicide as a response to the absurd? He concludes that this too is an unnecessary escape from the reality of life’s absurdity. He points out that a life without meaning does not necessarily lead to the fact that life is not worth living:
“People have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments.”
Camus’s response to this condition of the absurd is to “live in revolt.”
[Blunderov] I seem to recall that Turing's suicide was a little ambiguous. IMS, he left no note, and again IMS, there was talk that he arranged matters thus so as to cause his mother less pain. It was almost certainly suicide though. To me, it seems possible he was not entirely in his right mind. Who knows what effects the hormones had upon him? They are very powerful chemicals. Getting back to the measures he took to spare his mother's feelings, I wonder if suicide isn't immoral if it causes distress to any of the people who know you?
Veering now back to Camus, "For Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, suicide is not a worthwhile solution, because if life is veritably absurd, it is therefore even more absurd to counteract it; instead, we should engage in living, and reconcile the fact that we live in a world without purpose".
If I interepret this aright, Camus' revolt consists of refusing to reason about whether to live or die or not because life is inherently unreasonable. (I assume Camus considers the matter of persons in unbearable pain to be a different philosophical problem, at least I haven't read anything that suggests otherwise.)
I'd suppose I agree that suicide seems to prompt many larger issues of existence. I don't find it so singularly important as Camus seems to make it, but I can't deny that suicide poses a powerful question in memetic terms in that it seems to demand our attention when the topic erupts. It seems inappropriate to simply ignore it. I think most of us can understand many rationales for suicide, whether or not we would actually recommend it in some particular case or not. Turing's suicide doesn't really bother me. It presents a simple issue of mercy from unjust suffering and while it disturbs me I can reasonably imagine someone in his situation coming to this conclusion. That's good enough for a saint in my opinion. It feels tragic that we lost so much human talent, intelligence and sheer wealth of life in the transaction but in terms of understanding Turing himself the suicide doesn't really add or subtract much from the picture. I find it interesting in a tragic sense that it didn't have to come down to this, but that relates mostly to the dysfunctional behavior of people other than Alan Turing. I don't feel any need to deal with the issue much more than this. Some suicides pose no difficult (if otherwise tragic) problems of ethics or existence, and in my opinion Alan Turing's suicide seems like one of those.
Williams suggests that to prefer illusions and lies is to prefer hell. Hell may be nothing more than having to live with yourself, and only yourself, for all eternity. As one character commits suicide only to discover nothing changes and he still has himself and all his angst to deal with even after death. Solve your earthly problems is the message, I guess .... not always an option though ?
Cheers ... maybe
Fritz
Descent Into Hell is a novel written by Charles Williams, first published in 1937. (ISBN 1-57383-110-7)
<snip>The basic premise is made clear in the second chapter of Descent into Hell. Here a London suburban estate is presented as multi-dimensional, time being contained within space, time occupying space, so that within this particular spot the present, the past, and the future are seen to be co-terminous. Whereas a similar concept can be presented materialistically (as in Alan Garner’s novel Red Shift [1973]) Charles Williams uses this concept of relativity in a theological context: the living and the dead influence each other in an eternal dimension to which both belong and of which the physical world is the sacrament. Accordingly in this particular book the moral suicide of a distinguished military historian chimes, as it were, with the physical suicide of one of the workmen who built the house in which he lives. So too the fear endured by a young woman who is subject to the visitations of a Doppelgänger is both shared with, and supportive of, the fear suffered by a sixteenth century ancestor, a victim of religious persecution. In each case the fate of an individual is related to a timeless spiritual process. Williams’s vision is essentially theological.<snip>
Interesting metaphors about the relationships between the living and the dead. Perhaps a less mystical way to describe this issue is that one's suicide often has emotional consequences for those in their wake who remain alive. True enough in any case. True and sometimes not entirely relevant but I think its worth some consideration in making the distinction. As Blunderov pointed out in re: Turing, he seemed to display some concern for how his mother would accept the news of his death.
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