On Thomas Manns transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.
I recently read an interesting correspondence between the german authors Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann. You can check it out here: This I Believe: Thomas Mann on Time and the Meaning of Our Existence
Thomas Mann wrote: [i]What I believe, what I value most, is transitoriness. But is not transitoriness the perishableness of life something very sad? No! It is the very soul of existence. It imparts value, dignity, interest to life. Transitoriness creates time and time is the essence. Potentially at least, time is the supreme, most useful gift.
Time is related to yes, identical with everything creative and active, with every progress toward a higher goal. Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either. Timelessness in the sense of time never ending, never beginning is a stagnant nothing. It is absolutely uninteresting.[/i]
We have to keep in mind the fact that Thomas Mann saw death as an artistic expression. But in the correspondence maintained with Herman Hesse it looks like he increased the sense: without death we are meaningless.
He continues: [i]Life is possessed by tremendous tenacity. Even so, its presence remains conditional, and as it had a beginning, so it will have an end. I believe that life, just for this reason, is exceedingly enhanced in value, in charm. One of the most important characteristics distinguishing man from all other forms of nature is his knowledge of transitoriness, of beginning and end, and therefore of the gift of time. In man, transitory life attains its peak of animation, of soul power, so to speak. This does not mean man alone would have a soul. Soul quality pervades all beings. But mans soul is most awake in his knowledge of the inter-changeability of the terms existence and transitoriness.
To man, time is given like a piece of land, as it were, entrusted to him for faithful tilling; a space in which to strive incessantly, achieve self-realization, move onward and upward. Yes, with the aid of time, man becomes capable of wresting the immortal from the mortal.[/i]
I think Thomas Mann ended his letter with a paradox but probably he wanted to express that if we manage our transitoriness wisely we could achieve goals that would last for centuries despite the fact of our mortality. He tried to make a distinction between natural death caused by the pass of time and the power of wresting immortality detached of human being.
I start this OP because I am interested in your thoughts regarding transitoriness. We already discussed some threads about the concept of death where I quoted Mishimas books. But this time is different because I learned a new state of mind: self-realization on the pass of time.
Thomas Mann wrote: [i]What I believe, what I value most, is transitoriness. But is not transitoriness the perishableness of life something very sad? No! It is the very soul of existence. It imparts value, dignity, interest to life. Transitoriness creates time and time is the essence. Potentially at least, time is the supreme, most useful gift.
Time is related to yes, identical with everything creative and active, with every progress toward a higher goal. Without transitoriness, without beginning or end, birth or death, there is no time, either. Timelessness in the sense of time never ending, never beginning is a stagnant nothing. It is absolutely uninteresting.[/i]
We have to keep in mind the fact that Thomas Mann saw death as an artistic expression. But in the correspondence maintained with Herman Hesse it looks like he increased the sense: without death we are meaningless.
He continues: [i]Life is possessed by tremendous tenacity. Even so, its presence remains conditional, and as it had a beginning, so it will have an end. I believe that life, just for this reason, is exceedingly enhanced in value, in charm. One of the most important characteristics distinguishing man from all other forms of nature is his knowledge of transitoriness, of beginning and end, and therefore of the gift of time. In man, transitory life attains its peak of animation, of soul power, so to speak. This does not mean man alone would have a soul. Soul quality pervades all beings. But mans soul is most awake in his knowledge of the inter-changeability of the terms existence and transitoriness.
To man, time is given like a piece of land, as it were, entrusted to him for faithful tilling; a space in which to strive incessantly, achieve self-realization, move onward and upward. Yes, with the aid of time, man becomes capable of wresting the immortal from the mortal.[/i]
I think Thomas Mann ended his letter with a paradox but probably he wanted to express that if we manage our transitoriness wisely we could achieve goals that would last for centuries despite the fact of our mortality. He tried to make a distinction between natural death caused by the pass of time and the power of wresting immortality detached of human being.
I start this OP because I am interested in your thoughts regarding transitoriness. We already discussed some threads about the concept of death where I quoted Mishimas books. But this time is different because I learned a new state of mind: self-realization on the pass of time.
Comments (61)
This is where sentients like humans enter and can seriously affect what changes happen. This creates a situation whereby an individual human life can have very significant affects.
Individuals CAN therefore live a very interesting and significant life (judged as good or bad by supporters/dissenters). Change, time and self-awareness allows for the advent of choice and perhaps even free will.
Interesting. Then, you consider that life significance depends on time and transitoriness. Otherwise, everything would be worthless and paradoxically, the things which are perpetual are at the same time the ones we are tired of the most.
As foundational properties of being alive, yes but there is also what has mutated from those fundamentals such as self-awareness, intent/will/choice. All these aspects of the human experience is what is available to you from birth.
All naturals, no supernatural's needed or available. With these properties/potentials, such a vast number of life paths/experiences become available and confirmed by mathematical permutation.
The number of possibilities, which seem to me, available to an individual human, seems immense and very exciting BUT there is also irrefutable evidence that so many restrictions/impositions can restrict and reduce the choices available to so many individuals to as low a number as zero.
These restrictions/impositions can be imposed by the intent of others/yourself/happenstance etc.
This to me, suggests that only human will and human legacy, can change this and frustrate the malintent of others, help individuals combat their inner doubts/primal fears, and defend yourself and others against happenstance that would be detrimental to living a fulfilling human life, within the span that medical technology can provide.
This is transitory, transformation through human will, intent, ability to change, ability to affect.
A good OP and an interesting topic. One I've thought about quite a bit recently.
Quoting javi2541997
I've experienced this since I retired three years ago. Cyclic time without waystations or progress. Stagnant? Uninteresting? Well, I know what he means but I think he's missing something. Living in cyclic time, with less external superstructure to hold my life together, has made me, allowed me to, fall back on my own internal resources. Sometimes it feels like looking out at a vast, flat, empty plain, but that's the challenge and opportunity.
Quoting javi2541997
Something else I've been thinking about, since I'm within sight of the end of my life even without my glasses. There's a lot of talk these days about the end of death through medical technology or artificial intelligence. That seems like a bleak prospect. I don't want to die now. I'm having a good time. But I certainly don't want to live forever.
As I said, a good idea for a thread.
I know of no example that I can apply the word 'perpetual' to, as it suggests 'never ending and never changing.' I can't even apply it to the posit of a never-ending cyclical universe as that would fail on the part of the definition which insists on 'no change'. For me, perpetual is a word which is about as useful as the concept of an omni. I consider such concepts almost useless, yet I cannot deny such concepts
Thank you friend :up:
Quoting T Clark
I have two questions:
1. Do you feel nostalgic?
2. How do you face the challenges/opportunities? The same way as you did ten or twenty years ago?
Quoting T Clark
I am completely agree. But I didn't want to get deep in this issue because it seems to be a "taboo" topic the fact of accept that we don't want to live forever.
I want to put an example I was thinking about.
The main substance of flowers is to perish, right? Well, that's what it makes them so beautiful. Whenever a rose, nettle or sunflower flourish you enjoy it because it is beautiful and colourful. But trust me on the fact that we will end up getting tired of "perpetual" flowers in our garden for seeing them everyday in our lives.
I think this examples fits the concept of transitoriness so well. The aesthetic concept of a flourished flower is ephemeral.
Is this a mere coincidence or a two-factor synchronicity? I just flipped through a book I read almost 15 years ago, and in the next moment clicked on this thread. Both are concerned with "timelessness", but from different perspectives. Gevin Giorbran's book, Everything Forever, Learning to See Timelessness, was published in 2007. He was influenced by Einstein's concept of Block Time, and David Bohm's notion of Wholeness and the Implicate Order. Giorbran seems to emphasize, not the "transitoriness" of Time, but its comprehensiveness (wholeness). He looks at Time from the outside, instead of the inside.
His universal view of Time is expressed in terms of both Zero and Eternity : "what zero is not is nonexistence", and "our universe is in the process of merging with the timeless sum of all, with the infinite whole, with everything forever". Some of his assertions will sound mystical to those with a pragmatic empirical bent, but his book is so dense with quotes & images & diagrams & facts & details, that he comes across as a visionary genius. Unfortunately, like too many geniuses, he committed suicide shortly after writing this book. I hope he's enjoying the peace & harmony of timelessness, without getting bored by stagnation.
I find some of his extrapolations & conclusions hard to accept, but his presentation is provocative, and hard to refute. That's also true of Einstein's theory of Block Time : "everything everywhere all at once". Giorbran says, "Usually we imagine the whole of physical reality moves along with us through time. Yet that assumption might be like someone reading a book and believing that once a page is turned it no longer exists, or someone believing the pages that haven't been read yet do not exist until one turns the page".
Thomas Mann's notion of Time seems to come from a personal experiential point of view. But Giorbran's version is from a global, universal, and philosophical perspective. Mann's concept feels more sensuous & real, while Giorbran's idea seems more abstract & ideal. Could both aspects be true simultaneously? :smile:
THIS IS NOT A PICTURE OF GIORBRAN
First of all, just wow! I really enjoyed the perspective of Giorbran. Thank you for sharing it with us. I like his interpretation of the psychical reality with the pages of a book when he said: Usually we imagine the whole of physical reality moves along with us through time. Yet that assumption might be like someone reading a book and believing that once a page is turned it no longer exists, or someone believing the pages that haven't been read yet do not exist until one turns the page It makes me wonder what is around me in the universe. For real, I am questioning the metaphysics of my reality right now.
In the other hand, I do not have the complete words of Thomas Mann because it was written to a letter to Herman Hesse (another excellent philosopher). I dont have the response from Hesse either
So yes, I interpret his words and notion of transitoriness are personal but sadly, I didnt find why they were debating about the realization of time passing by. Another quote related to the topic says: The best thing about time passing is the privilege of running out of it, of watching the wave of mortality break over me and everyone I know.
I guess they were just conversing as good philosophers. :smile:
You use transitory here in the sense of a brief but notable existence.
How often has this idea been dramatised since classical times?
'Your life shall be short, but it shall be glorious, and you will be remembered forever.'
Many people are attracted to such but for me, it's a bit too much about self, I favour a different balance to that suggested by the glorious, beautiful, brief existence of a flower.
Quoting T Clark
Quoting javi2541997
I am some variant of these viewpoints. I do get bored with 'routine' or that which first impresses but eventually becomes routine. I am attracted to increased lifespan but there has to be a balance of quality as well or a least a good future prospect of quality.
Increased lifespan would allow me to 'fight for my cause' a lot longer and I am very attracted to that.
I am also very attracted to the further 'choice' increased longevity would offer, including increased choice and control over when and how my life will terminate.
There are so many more adventures I would like to go on as well.
My balance is somewhere between that which I consider my responsibility/imperative/reason/main cause or purpose etc and that which I consider my ways to personally celebrate being alive.
variety/transition/change/choice/will are all very important to me, as is legacy/continuance/durability etc
Me too! I am agree with you. :up:
Quoting universeness
That's sounds so revolutionary and political. Do you take part on politics actively? I respect how you still have power and strength to keep fighting for a better world. I completely lost every hope in my life. This is why I see the main subject of this topic as individual. I am aware I can sound selfish but I do not see any value of living on a community. I even think we are currently in the most individualistic era because in the end of the day nobody would join us in the transitoriness of life.
If you want to keep fight for a cause you have to be aware with the fact that it is impossible to do it alone and when you are surrounded by people some members tend to betray you... another fact of why is better to pass the by as a lone wolf.
So, I could no longer be a member of a political party.
Quoting javi2541997
Quoting javi2541997
These two quotes create your 'crunch' when they try to balance, it all falls down and frustrates.
Quoting javi2541997
I continue to be let down by some and I am very grateful, and I much admire the examples and demonstrated trustworthiness I continue to witness in others.
You cannot change much as a lone wolf, you do need others.
A very powerful lone wolf can be a very dangerous entity, unless it is completely benevolent.
Sometimes a benevolent powerful warrior for your cause can 'transition' to a nefarious pig, so I understand your exasperation, but there are too many in need to let personal betrayal, destroy your fight for your cause. THERE ARE TOO MANY IN NEED.
Well, I need others if I need to survive, live, feeding myself, etc... that's absolutely true. Nevertheless, I still see a good opportunity to make important actions in loneliness and that's only possible through the self-realization of time and existence.
What I mean is: while I am aware about my limitations on my life and what the future holds, I am not capable of experiencing the same virtue in your awareness or concious. You have to live it yourself in your own as well as I do so.
We can be agree here we need others but for pure interests. The real sense and experience of transitoriness is individual.
Also, a lone wolf is not dangerous unless he is not threatened by others.
Quoting universeness
I wish the law makers listen to your ideas and opinions because they are so brainy. I also think that political parties are not longer useful and we need more technocrats in the state.
Tom, we need more persons like you in the world. If you see satisfaction of doing good to others... wow is so emotional. I nearly in tears for real.
I am in "rumination" side and I don't know if it is endless but I am person who thinks deeply about everything a lot and I have a sense of uncertainty and mistrust. I know you think this is negative to me but I still see it as another step in my own transitoriness. A step I should live my own.
Maybe not related to what you're asking but transitoriness from the link you posted sounds like a proof of reality, as opposed to ex. theory of simulation which aims to say we and our surrounding aren't real.
The feeling of running out of time is thus sense of reality or proof that world is real.
Why not transition, or just "change"? What is the rhetorical advantage? The coinage elicits "uncertainty and mistrust".
All things must pass. Good name for an album. Not a new idea.
Quoting Tom Storm
...indeed. That things change is a precondition for improvement.
Mann seems to assume that immortality lacks "transitoriness" (e.g. personal losses happen, the world is a thermally dissipative mega-structure of countless chaotic systems, etc) and is not finite (re: to choose necessarily excludes other choices); he conflates, or confuses, aging with time and the prospect of death with the urgency to live. It's a 'romantic existentialist' assumption that doesn't hold up well under psychological or philosophical scrutiny. I suppose, until general senescence is medically controlled (i.e. immorbidity) and natural death becomes optional, the 'aesthetics of ephemerality' will remain the prime motivator of culture, especially religion and war, and decadence. :death: :flower:
Quoting T Clark
Same here. I want to live long enough to quit life on my own terms and to desire nothing more from living. Not "forever", I agree, but as long as it's psychologically possible for me to go on.
Quoting Tom Storm
:100: :fire:
.
[quote=Benedict Spinoza]A free man thinks of death least of all things, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.[/quote]
Within the past 10 years I've noticed that my life has telescoped. It feels a bit like I'm living all of my life at once. Things that happened 50 years ago are just as real as things that happened yesterday. I still think of friends I haven't seen in 60 years as friends. My father died in 2001, but he's as much a part of me as he was when he was alive.
That's not nostalgia. No longing for or regrets about the past. It's almost as if there's no past at all.
Quoting javi2541997
Ten or 20 years ago I had lots of things taking up my time. Two of my children were still at home. I was working full time. I was engaged in the world. I think my primary method for facing challenges in the past was not to face them at all. Avoidance. Now? I just sit here and wait to see what happens - in the world and in myself.
I accept what you have typed in the quote above Javi, but you are often not the best judge of your own 'limitations,' imo. The motivations or inspirations from or by others can often result in yourself taking actions which produce positive results that can completely surprise you and make you form thoughts such as 'Oh my goodness, I should have got involved in this or I should have done this, years ago!'
Quoting javi2541997
:smile: Thanks Javi! You are a good heart!
Quoting javi2541997
They are now just entrenched enemies and people vote for a 'side' rather than a person.
I think we need a permanent 'no overall majority,' and a government who start as complete 'independents,' who MUST work together to find common ground and concentrate on what would most benefit those they represent. Governance should have nothing to do with any concept such as 'party loyalty.'
The goal seems common amongst most of us then. Only science can provide the tech needed to offer such personal control and choice when it comes to death, and provide access to the interplanetary/interstellar space and resources needed. So, the human race must ultimately, globally unite in such common cause or go the way of the dinosaurs. Do you see any other way forwards towards what I think MUST BE the natural direction of our species almost as a natural imperative of all sentient life.
Would you not be interested in getting involved in volunteer work? If you are not already involved.
If I had the resources, I would love to open, run and fund a 'place,' were some in need could go and get some help from me. It wouldn't matter if it was a place near a village or township of struggling people or a local foodbank or .........?
I do intend to spend a lot more of my time doing volunteer work when I turn 60, so 2 years from now.
I don't think the survival of our species depends in any way on "the human race ... globally united". In fact, I'd bet against it. And when 'life extension' engineeriing really takes off, Malthusian population pressures will go critical and policies of 'strategic gigacide' will need to be implemented. What survives on the other side of that global cataclysm might not be recognizably "human" to us (i.e. their ancestors).
The alternative, however, may be that 'radical life extension' will only be available to people who work and live permanently in space (e.g. orbital habitats, moon stations, planet colonies, deep space travel, etc) AI-automated fleet of "worldships" populated by a total of a million? half-million? hundreds of thousands or less? "Post-human" immortals leaving billions of mortals behind on a flooded, toxic, storm-ravaged, burning Earth.
'The species imperative' does not require most of the current populations of the species (or their descendants) to survive, only enough of us to carry our DNA and cultural artifacts forward through the coming millennia and epochs. AI-automation + space habitation + immortality engineering are what h. sapiens' "Post-human" future looks like to me ...
Extinction or apotheosis? :eyes: :monkey:
When my brother retired, he got heavily involved in volunteer work with old people. I respect him for that and he really enjoys it. I don't have any interest in that.
It is not a bout rhetorical advantage. To be honest with you, I used the word "transitoriness" because I liked it. Whatever the word is better to use I guess we end up in the same point: self-realization of passing the time by and the consequences of change.
:up: :sparkle:
Interesting perspective. I am not sure if I am aware about the possibility of denying the existence of my past at all because it created myself in the present and how I will be in the future. So past is there. I guess you are trying to say to me that is possible to "get over it" and not being stuck in the past endlessly. Another important characteristic of the transition of our lives. Every has an end, so the past too.
So says the man who came from being born into this world and has only limited time. If humans are immortal, which is what it's about, we wouldn't know what "beginning" is. We're just are here. Thoughts of such nature wouldn't register in our immortal minds. He can speak of "transitoriness" because that is his nature, our nature. But that's all he can speak of.
:up:
I only want to add the important fact of self-awareness of this nature. Thomas Mann tried to explain that the main difference between humans and other species is realization of change due to the pass of time. I mean (and try to guess too) that a dog or a cat is not aware of something that complex as "transitoriness".
It remembers me when some philosophers tried to make another distinction using the arguments of emotion. For example Schopenhauer's essays on weeping and suffering.
I didn't mean literally that the past doesn't exist. It's my experience of the past that has changed.
I see what do you mean now :up:
Fair enough, but would you agree that since we emerged from the wilds, small groups of humans have merged into larger communities of humans and we are now at nation sized groups, with entities like the European economic union being formed and other such economic unions growing all over the planet. Based on that evidence alone, it seems to me that global union will happen at some point in the future.
Quoting 180 Proof
Had to visit wiki, to read about Thomas Robert Malthus. I had never heard of him:
Malthusianism is the idea that population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other resources is linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a population die off. This event, called a Malthusian catastrophe (also known as a Malthusian trap, population trap, Malthusian check, Malthusian crisis, Malthusian spectre, or Malthusian crunch) occurs when population growth outpaces agricultural production, causing famine or war, resulting in poverty and depopulation. Such a catastrophe inevitably has the effect of forcing the population (quite rapidly, due to the potential severity and unpredictable results of the mitigating factors involved, as compared to the relatively slow time scales and well-understood processes governing unchecked growth or growth affected by preventive checks) to "correct" back to a lower, more easily sustainable level.[1][2] Malthusianism has been linked to a variety of political and social movements, but almost always refers to advocates of population control.
Any threat of exponential population growth can be controlled through education/information campaigns which explain the problems to the current population. Malthus knew nothing about how fast information can be disseminated today, he also new nothing about the advances now being made on food production techniques such as vertical farming etc. I think life extension will cause people to have fewer children, not more. I had to look up gigacide as well but my guestimate was akin to what 'bing' came back with: Gigacide means a mass murder of a billion or more people.
Removing lives through mass murder has proven to be a very unwise action to take by those who have tried it in the past. You are looking through the mirror rather darkly.
Quoting 180 Proof
:smile: Reads like, If you were a future career advisor for the children of the future, you would push them to choose a career in space exploration and development. Are your thoughts about the future of the human race mainly dystopian?
Quoting 180 Proof
But the universe is so vast! We could assign every one of our current global population of humans at under 8 billion, responsibility/stewardship/ownership of their own solar system, just within our own milkyway (ok, I know there is a slight tech hitch of access but ..... given another million years or so of science....) and that would be no more than a drop in the cosmic bucket of available solar systems.
From the standpoint of the size of the universe, each human being is incredibly rare and precious.
Again, given the size of the universe and the fact that our current science suggests there is no way, now or in the future that creatures such as us will ever access the vast majority of it, I can't understand why you would think that apotheosis is even in our line of sight. Our transhumanism would have to reach the functionality of a fabled character such as Thor, to bring such possibilities into our reality, and goodness knows what discovery we would need and tech we would require to become able to even access our local galactic group and become an intergalactic species. But the pursuit of such sounds fun to me. I wish I were born, when such a pursuit was happening.
Ok!
[i]"Everybody wants to go to Heaven
But nobody wants to die"[/i]
~Albert King
Human (non-tribal) civilization is a 10-20,000 year old pyramid scheme where the global masses coralled into large, administrative political units form the base of the pyramid. The vertical development (height) has accelerated rapidly in the last three centuries and the interests of those at or near the summit are increasingly becoming divorced from the rest of us at or near the base. Those at the summit will reach sustainable "escape velocity" long before those who are below the summit are even fully aware that they have left us behind like a blasted rocket gantry built out of 10,000 years of human bones.
"Dystopian"? I suppose, but only from a certain point of view. The future, my friend, seems to me Posthuman, not human extraterrestrial, not terrestrial or our extinction. You're spinning self-flattering, cotton candy, cartoon daydreams, universeness, and you're welcome to them. :yum: :nerd:
[quote=Franz Kafka]There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.[/quote]
I have no children of my own, therefore no grandchildren either. Thus, I have no skin the game of "the future". Only the best, singular works of excellence from the pasts of all extant human cultures do I have some small hope will be saved and preserved in as many digital media as can be engineered
e.g. https://www.archmission.org/billion-year-archive
for the potential enrichment (or amusement) of the Posthuman immortals who might survive us and struggle in their own incomprehensible ways to understand us much more deeply and thoroughly than we human mortals can understand ourselves, and, in this hermeneutic and critical fashion, glean insights from one old (soon-to-be-extinct) metacognitive species to another ever-renewable metacognitive species which may help them avoid destroying themselves inadvertantly.
[quote=Freddy Zarathustra]Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end.[/quote]
The stars are for our immortals and intelligent machines but not for us mortals who might engineer them some decades or century soon. The prospect of 'radical life extension' (that I/we might have access to one day)^^ is attractive to me mostly so that I could live at least long enough to witness the global collapse of the human pyramid in the wake of its Posthuman summit finally separating from Earth as it rises and falls away endlessly into the Milky Way. :fire:
I look at death as having been pushed into the past. To live, to be, to exist, is to be present in time. And at the present, the future is a massive force exerting substantial pressure over all that is at the present. Feeling the pressure which is the force of the future, is the source of excitement, anxiety, and stress. This is the passing of time, the exerting of pressure over all that is, forcing all that is, into the past, and this is known as the law of entropy.
To be at the present, to live, to exist, requires effort. We disguise the effort required to be at the present, by taking the persistence of mass for granted in the law of inertia. This law reverses our perspective, so that being at the present is taken for granted, instead of requiring effort. From this perspective, "force" is required to alter being at the present. That is a negation of the effort required to be at the present, produced by taking being at the present for granted. This makes dying, (being forced into the past) unnatural, as requiring an external force.
Quoting javi2541997
Creativity, beauty, and all aesthetics, are a matter of the way that one exerts effort in being at the present. We can resist death, resist being pushed into the past, making oneself strong, solid as a rock, but we know that this is a futile effort. Instead, we as living beings, have learned that it is far more productive to exert our efforts towards making an appeal to others. This instinct has evolved so that now, being at the present is not a matter of long term perseverance, attempting to fight the futile battle of being solid as a rock and preventing oneself from being forced into the past, it is a matter of doing something productive for the sake of others, during one's brief time at the present. That's what we see in the beauty of the flower.
So effort is best placed, not in attempting to extend one's time at the present, indefinitely, as this is futile. Effort is best placed in doing something spectacular in a very brief moment of being at the present. So we sense the most beautiful things as occurring in the most brief periods of time, like the flowers, music, and all our moments of joy, which are but a flash in the pan, so to speak.
Quoting javi2541997
Yes, this is exactly the perspective one ought to take. To exist is to be at the present. The pages in the past no longer exist, yet we have learned from them. And the important thing to note is that the pages of the future have no existence until the prior page is turned. The living being, existing at the present, is not the one turning the pages though. The page turning is being forced upon us, and if we do not move to the next page, (which has no existence until the previous is turned), by creating a place for ourselves on that page, or even better, creating a spectacle for others, on that page, then we get forced into the past.
:up: :sparkle:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There are authors who have written books or novels about fleeting of life or moments. One of the aspects I am agree with them the most is the fact that ephemeral is beautiful. I mean, if we consider a nettle as pretty is not due to their physical appearance but the brief of the moment where the flower grows up and then withers. This transitoriness is another perspective of how we see death. Instead of being a taboo topic, it can be understood in an artistic portrayal. It sounds so poetic, doesnt it?
Yes, and with all due respect, I would suggest that certain point of view, is yours.
Your comparator choice of a pyramid scheme to describe human history from the ancients to the modern day is ok by me, although it trivialises the main events a little too much for my taste.
The bloody road caused by those at the top of your pyramid scheme is unlike the damage caused by any actual pyramid scheme I have read about. I prefer your Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting 180 Proof
I am trying to interpret you use of 'posthuman,' extraterrestial and 'or our extinction.'
So you suggest our future is one of extinction, due to extraterrestials or our own actions and the Earth will then belong to extraterrestials? Is my interpretation correct? OR are you suggesting a future where transhumanism produces that which in no way can be compared with what we now consider human?
Quoting 180 Proof
A harsh accusation mr proof and a cynical, incorrect summation of my intent and motivation.
You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one.
Quoting 180 Proof
Same for me but I have nieces, nephews etc, don't you? and is that not skin enough in the 'game'?
I also don't think you have to be blood related to every human whose future you care about.
You do have a responsibility to care for the future of your species imo.
Quoting 180 Proof
Your view of the future for humans, as we understand them/us now becomes clearer to me.
I would label you 'a bit of a doomster,' and someone who has let his exasperation and frustration with his own species, dilute and perhaps even dismiss the imo, fantastic and incredible achievements of that species. That fact that you are compelled to call for the protection and preservation of certain 'singular works of excellence,' suggests some cracks in your disdain of your own species.
Quoting 180 Proof
Yep, definitely a doomster :smile: and you would take some personal satisfaction in witnessing your own species firmly on its path to its own destruction. Is it all about hoping the timing of events works out perfectly for you?
Live long enough to confirm that most of the humans alive today will cause their own destruction but a small number will survive to eventually create a very robust future transhuman/posthuman community, that will be so superior to us that they will be worthy of inheriting the Earth and the right to become spacefarers.
You wear your 'we are doomed' conclusion, big and bright and with contented conviction Mr Proof.
But you have no Proof that its valid. Us in the "spinning self-flattering, cotton candy, cartoon daydreams" group may frustrate your wishes.
This is an excellent paragraph! :clap: :flower:
Well said, as usual MU.
At 85 turning a heavy page can irritate an arthritic finger . . . but worth the effort.
85! and still got pep, there are many colours of vibrant in a good human heart!
Not even remotely close to what I've said and I can't say what I mean any clearer than I already have in these posts to which you have responded (but apparently have not read carefully):
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/751826
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/751923
Yes, insofar as engineering radical life extension (i.e. immorbidity), as I call it, is "transhumanist". This will only be available, I suspect (for the Malthusian implications I've mentioned), to a very minute fraction of the global population mostly financial and technoscientific elites and their families who will then (have to) migrate to orbital habitats, Moon & Mars colonies, etc and progressively adapt themselves through further modes of engineering to living permanently (or existing post-biologically) in space. This is what I mean by "extra-terrestrial" (i.e. not on Earth).
At the risk of eschewing other things involved in this consideration, I'd say that in some ways, animals do have a sense of time passage. Just observe the animals in the wild. The pups would wait for the mother to come back, but once it's taken too long and no mom in sight, they would wander off, against the instruction. Same with the mother -- looking for a lost pup and when to give up relies on time. It isn't that the mother didn't find the pup, it is that time tells the mother to give up.
But yes, I see his point. Animals do not think of aging and when end is near. Or do they? There was a video of a mother cat who was seriously bitten by a dog. Sensing the end is near, the cat prepared the hiding spot for the kittens, and collected them in that hiding spot. Then she waited nearby to die.
We reached another important difference between animals and humans. The will of survive. An animal is not able to kill himself because his instinct prevent him to do such act. Nevertheless, humans have a big problem with suicide.
It is off topic and I am aware that suicide has many causes and it depends on each individual. But I am sure that self-realization of passing the time/life is determinant.
H. Sapiens differ from other mammalian species in degree not in kind just as adult humans differ from infant humans in degree rather than in kind. We don't know to what extent either nonhuman animals or human infants think, only that to whatever extent they do (including not at all), they do so, respectively, in ways we adult humans do not recognize (yet) as thinking. Anthropomorphic bias notwithstanding, I have observed e.g. dogs and cats perhaps from human socialization which very much tracked time throughout their daily lives as well as sometimes grieved lost companions, human and otherwise, and even in their own way had acknowledged their own dying by attempting to comfort their human companions.
"Time" is an abstraction of measuring changes but change itself is concrete requiring no representation. All complex organism perceive and adapt to change, whether or not they "talk about time", just as they all survive by making predictions about their environments even if they can't "use future tense".
Consider this article on animal grief:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/animal-grief/
I have read the article on animal grief and it says an interesting thing: In September of 2010 off San Juan Island, Washington, people watched as a killer whale pushing a dead newborn for six hours. If this whale understood death purely rationally, she should just leave it. But humans dont simply leave dead babies either. For us there is a concept of death, but also a feeling of grief. Our bonds are strong. We dont want to let go. Their bonds, too, are strong. Perhaps they, too, dont want to let go.
I am completely agree. Who doubts on this principle? Of course animals tend to grief. The same way we do.
But this is not related with the measurement of time. That's only a pure human concept. A dog is not aware if it is four or eight years old or when it is the "birthday" because these concepts where created by humans. For example: I doubt that my dog is aware that we are in 2022. I respect her intelligence but I don't think if my dog is truly aware about the "passing of the years"
That's why I am agree with Thomas Mann in the sense that the "self-realization" of time passing by is a distinctive between humans and animals.
I cannot make sense of what Thomas Mann means by "the self-realization of time" in the first instance and how in the second instance that is uniquely human. Sounds like (Proustian) misunderstood / faux Bergsonism to me ...
I understand that there can be a lot of perspectives to understand Kants metaphysics but I believe Kantian thoughts on time influenced on Mann's. Time only exists in human knowledge because we literally created to put an "order" to our circumstances and significance. That's why we are the only species of the earth who have self-realization of "transitoriness".
Anyway, I've already acknowledged "time" as a human artifact but that transitoriness change, impermanence, ephemerality, loss/advent is not exclusively human or dependent on "the human mind". For instance, Einstein's relativistic time-dilation thoroughly discounts Kantian "time", and so on. I stand by my remark that Mann "confuses time with change" and his anthropocentric notion of "transitoriness as distinctly human" is the result. The phrase "self-realization of time" still remains as opaque as before ...
I think we should remark the context of why Mann used the concept of "transitoriness". This debate started when he wrote some letters to another amazing writer: Herman Hesse. Sadly, we don't know why they were discussing about past, present, future, death, etc... (my guess is they were just discussing as good philosophers do) because we only have some extracts of the correspondence.
I am not sure if we have to consider that Mann is "wrong" because those words about time only come from a basic conversation. I guess he tried to explain that a great "concern" of humans is the pass of time. Maybe he was thinking in a literature view, not philosophical or metaphysical.
Mann was also an acquaintance of Einstein. It could be possible the big influence on Mann about the concept of Einstein about the relativistic time-dilation.
Quoting 180 Proof
It is metaphysical and I understand that is opened to a lot of interpretations. It remembers me when we debated some months ago about "whether the things exist or not" or "what does real mean?" Etc...
Beyond of debating about the concept I still remark that homo sapiens sapiens has some "self realization" of abstract things: past, present of future. Emptiness and fullness. Born and death, etc...
Despite those are opague concepts we still debate about because we have "self-realization" that they are around us.
Yeah, I was moving towards this understanding of you typings when I typed:
Quoting universeness
So perhaps we would both benefit from paying a little more attention to what the other types, before responding or editing.
As I accurately suggested, your vision of the future for our species is extinction for most, dystopian for most that are left on the Earth and an elite small group of survivors who live extraterrestially.
You must have found the following film quite in line with your depressing predictions:
It does sound poetic, but true. The most beautiful things are the most ephemeral. I think that it fills us with awe to see so much complexity packed into a very short period of time. This is what music gives us, and the overlapping of temporal themes is very important. A large part of beauty seems to be associated with this temporal layering, 'occurring at the same time'. We can say that a single flower is beautiful because of its own arrangement of parts, but it doesn't even compare with a garden, or field of flowers, because the single flower always has to exist within its background, or context. That's why the unique sunset is so beautiful, because it encompasses the entire field of view. The natural and the artificial arrangement, each has its own type of beauty. But no matter how you look at it, beauty consists of a synchronicity of elements.
I think you need to be careful though to distinguish between living and dying. The transitoriness which you refer to is a property of living. It is not a property of death, because having been forced into the past (death) is permanent. Dying is the process whereby the permanent overcomes the transitory.
If living (being at the present) requires effort, then dying is an incapacity in relation to this effort. These two perspectives, looking at life as living, and looking at life as dying, are fundamentally different, like the difference between believing in free will, and fatalism. Fatalism has been demonstrated to be an attitude which incapacitates.
So the proper perspective is, to ask the question of what can I do in my act of living, rather than what can I do in my act of dying. This is because the latter, to die, is to negate one's capacity to act, and such an act would be suicide, which contradicts "what can I do", as it provides only one option, death.
Quoting jgill
I think I'll be happy if I can still manage the keyboard at 85.
:up: :sparkle:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Interesting thought. It is true I wasn't clear about the distinction between living and dying. I only want to add to your argument that I see "transitoriness" as a horizontal line where the "staring point" is born and the end could be death.
(If we consider death as the pure emptiness. I mean, there will be nothing afterwards)
Interesting indeed. I think the main motivation for ending death through technology and medicine stems from fear of death, fear of the uknown and powerless state of non-being, fear of being forgotten and thus retrospective meaningless to your life after no one alive ever knew you even existed in the first place. In otherwords having no legacy.
As creatures that fear having no control, and fear our own mortality, the inherent stress of watching a clock tick and knowing with every motion of that hand, we approach our funeral makes death the "ultimate enemy number one".
But I think this is a negative view of death. As death has a lot of pros. It is the mercy at the end of suffering - of a painful decline in health and ability. If one were to ask a terminally ill patient if they are depressed about their imminent death, I'd imagine often you'd be surprised to hear they patiently await and welcome it because they will be free of their incurable illness. They also may feel especially grateful for their ordinary daily moments and derive great meaning from what we may see as trivial/ mundane.
Also death allows us to have children. For without it we would soon overwhelm the planet and its resources and be very hungry and cramped immortals indeed. We would be forced to be celestial nomads - bad news for alien life if such exist as we would have to take their resources and space for our immortality driven colonialism.
Without death our financial system, inheritance, economics would all be impaired as if no one died then none of their relatives could ever claim their assets as normally occurs when they pass away and exchange of wealth would have to be through spontaneous random gifting.
Banking credit would be based on an infinite length of time working/having an income which would make the mortgage you take out based on earning potentials and risk reach the trillions.
Your probably right about the reasons. I'm 70 and many of my family and friends are that old or older. I'm surprised by how many of them feel as I do. I don't think any of us are particularly afraid of dying.
I'm happy to hear it. It's a very positive and peaceful position to hold. Dying is as effortless, as passive and natural as birth was. One did not suffer before they were born and I suspect the same is the case in death. I don't think it needs to be feared more than it need be simply accepted as part of the privilege that is life itself.
(NB: Perhaps this is a solution to the Fermi Paradox: biological intelligence are survived by their engineered nonbiological intelligences which have no interests in, or needs to, communicate with other "alien" biological intelligences like us; thus, the cosmic silence (so far.) "Doomster?" No, realistic speculatively extrapolating from Earth's fossil record of 99% species extinction rate, etc. Biomorphs are inherently mortal and extinction-prone; we either develop nonbiological descendants or we become fossils in oblivion.)
I don't think I have misread what you typed at all, but you seem to want to insist I have, which is fine.
I don't think your future doomster projections for the vast majority of human biomorphs, is as strongly evidenced as you claim.
The fossil evidence on Earth, accumulating, to a finding that 99% of all species on Earth are extinct, could be thought of as a similar stat to the projection that, out of 8 planets in the solar system only 1 has life at all and I would warrant that 90%+ of all planets in the universe contain no life. Humans are perhaps, just lucky or are just able to survive more that 99% of all species that have ever existed on this planet. I think we will continue to survive and the future for the humans alive today will not be any more dystopian that it has been in the past. The human experience will continue to improve.
But my projection has no strong evidence either and is just my optimism, which I obviously prefer to your pessimism.
Fair enough, a good place to leave it. I disagree with you that I am panglossian or utopian and I still think your are pessimistic and a doomster, but thanks for the exchange. :smile:
I see what you mean 180 proof. You're optimistic that our human intelligence will be our legacy in whatever we create to expand towards the vast distances beyond earth - perhaps an artifical human intelligence - a computer or humanoid robot that can easily have its parts manufactured and replaced and thus permit it to be an intelligence that can travel beyond what our organic human bodies can endure considering we have a finite lifespan. That is optimistic indeed.
Quoting universeness
Similarly I appreciate universeness's optimism regarding humans. If we can stabilise the earths climate and ecosystem there's no reason to believe our organic humanness will not thrive and continue to evolve toward a better more advanced future not just for us but for the whole of mother earth- regardless of whatever we birth through technology going forth to spread human intelligence beyond the earth through their artifical/metallic inorganic endurance.
I don't think you are actually at odds with one another. You both see a future beyond what we have now. 180 proof simply says human intelligence can go intergalactic and universeness's says that human intelligence will continue to drive the future of earth.
Neither to me are incompatible.
Well, where I suggest that @180 Proof is being a doomster and a pessimist is that the over-population we experience today and the 'pressing' problems we experience today can only be solved by what @180proof labelled a Malthusian (which I had to google) solution. I suggest that is dystopian and in is no way necessary or inevitable or even the most likely outcome of our current conditions, even based on all the horrors we see today. I also don't accept that advances we make in transhumanism means that our 'early' stages of life cannot still be nurtured, protected and enjoyed. A baby becomes an infant, teenager, young adult, middle aged, old and then before death, starts to employ tech to become transhuman, IF THEY CHOOSE TO. That to me is not a utopia, it's just a projection of a possible future that gives humans more protection, control and choice in their lives.