Is It Really So Hard To Believe That Life Just Ends?

[Restrikted]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

If I took pictures of ten random monkeys and ten random humans, and then showed them to you, could you tell the difference?

If I took pictures of ten random chimpanzees and ten random spider monkeys, and then showed them to you, could you tell the difference? We're all part of the same family. We're the same even if we're different. Also, what is that a picture of?

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by Restrikted

If I took pictures of ten random chimpanzees and ten random spider monkeys, and then showed them to you, could you tell the difference? We're all part of the same family. We're the same even if we're different. Also, what is that a picture of?

I told you. It's a human being. Just carbon dust.

If you are incapable of making distinctions, then you cannot discover nuance. And I'm not as obsessed with monkeys as you are, so no, I probably wouldn't be able to tell.

Difference is not binary: it is a spectrum, a continuum. To focus on our similarities is to avoid the empowerment of the individual. To focus on our differences is to forget what brotherhood means. So again, certainly, there is a binding similarity that draws us together--we could call it life, we could call it molecular bonds, we could call it string resonance--but the differences are also appreciable.

If you see something you detest, you may have much similarity, but the direction in which you wish to go is to distinguish yourself, to discriminate and to distance. Why? Because you disagree with it. Without distinction, we have absolute inertia, the heat death of the universe, utter homogeneity.

[palimpsest]

Originally Posted by Michael Chui

To focus on our similarities is to avoid the empowerment of the individual. To focus on our differences is to forget what brotherhood means. So again, certainly, there is a binding similarity that draws us together--we could call it life, we could call it molecular bonds, we could call it string resonance--but the differences are also appreciable.

I see the spectrum as more of a triangle -- in one corner is dependency (similarity-focus, no individual empowered,) in the other corner independence (difference without fraternity) and in the other corner is interdependence (our individuality contributes something unique and necessary to the whole.)

Just some random thing I've been percolating: I think it can be hard or easy to believe that life just ends, but just plain impossible to know... because once you're in a situation where you can know that life ends, you can't know 'cause you're dead. If you know that life doesn't end, then you haven't really died

[Michael Chui]

Originally Posted by palimpsest

I see the spectrum as more of a triangle -- in one corner is dependency (similarity-focus, no individual empowered,) in the other corner independence (difference without fraternity) and in the other corner is interdependence (our individuality contributes something unique and necessary to the whole.)

It's not really about dependency, though. As the word "interdependence" suggests, empowerment isn't about removing dependencies, but rather about creating choice through knowledge.

Knowledge can be thought of as the recognition of contrast. In similarity, you have homogeneity: all things are the same. Thus String Theory makes the case that all particles are resonating strings at different frequencies: protons are at frequency X and electrons are at frequency Y. Yet, therein lies information: the distinction between X and Y creates a contrast that allows you to distinguish the proton from the electron.

Thus, through contrast arises the gap between ignorance and knowledge, wherein the former territory is a place of no choice, because everything is the same, and the latter creates the possibility of change, and thus the concept of change for the better, because there is a better.

Originally Posted by palimpsest

Just some random thing I've been percolating: I think it can be hard or easy to believe that life just ends, but just plain impossible to know... because once you're in a situation where you can know that life ends, you can't know 'cause you're dead. If you know that life doesn't end, then you haven't really died

Certainty may arise only from belief. Nothing else provides it. Science is good and fine, but in the presence of the possibility that the Flying Spaghetti Monster changes the results with His Noodly Appendage right then and there, you can only be certain if and only if you believe otherwise.