What is death?

[GnipGnop]

Is death to settle on what you think you know as truth, never changing your mind?
As soon as we hold a thought in our minds, that has already passed. Therefore, to our knowledge we exist in the past. When we think about the future, it is in the past. The present tense does not exist because as soon as something becomes present, it has already passed. If the past is only accessible from our own senses and our own idea of what reality is, it can't be trusted because it is our own subjective view. So if the only thing left to be trusted is the unknowable future, we must always be re-evaluating what we know and what we think we know to be true. So then, does to hold beliefs and settle on knowledge without questioning anything become death? Are we really living if we don't question everything around us?

[jesse]

get a job

[GnipGnop]

I have a job.

[VISITOR]

Death is reading this thread

[3rd Coast Skimmer]

The present tense does not exist because as soon as something becomes present, it has already passed.

Has it??? If one can let go the perception of time, and not think so linear... one can truly live "In the moment"...
Example...
I was surfing today on my longboard... waist high wave... I get slotted and then step out to the nose... I make my attempt at a Soul Arch... It didn't last long in the normal perception of time, about 3 seconds arch time before I pearled it, but in that moment, time stood still and it was sweet.

True that in the normal perception, that moment has passed, but if I close my eyes, and clear my mind... I can return to that moment and feel the sensation of the sun on my face as the water spray is hitting me and the feeling of freedom in that moment was truly undescribable.

Now with that being said... in a different perception of time, can I travel to the past?

[GnipGnop]

Even if you return to that moment in your head, returning to the memory of what happened is only available to your conscious after the thought has happened.

[3rd Coast Skimmer]

Even if you return to that moment in your head, returning to the memory of what happened is only available to your conscious after the thought has happened.

Don't be so linear... time has no boundry... from a certain point of view.

But you still didn't address the time standing still part!

[Ill Perfection]

I tend to disagree with some of the posts above. Great topic PingPong. I'll return to this with something deeper later. But I'll drop this to add on or possibly summarize gnipples post.

If you think you know it all, pick up a shovel.

[Chrith]

try to remember before you were born. thats death

[TheSeaCowww]

holy frack... GnipGnop = PingPong hahahha.... that's awesome!

[GnipGnop]

Don't be so linear... time has no boundry... from a certain point of view.

But you still didn't address the time standing still part!

Time is linear though. I think I know what you're trying to say, but even when you feel like you are outside of time in your thoughts, in the big picture you are still thinking about something that has already occured, be that a memory, thought, or activity.

I'm concerned with the idea that as soon as you begin to live a static life, one where you question nothing, then are you really living in a sense? If we can't trust the past then we have to consciously question is with given the onslaught of contexts adding to the past. We can only trust that, that which is unknowable is unknowable if you get what I'm saying. The only truth in life is that we can never know the future. So to think and hold beliefs close to us as truth seems like death, to me at least.

[LAXitives288]

im amazed i never caught that either

edit - pingpong

[TheSeaCowww]

you can think about the future and act upon that in the present... like playing soccer. I can foresee a play happening in my head and then we execute it at that moment in time.

[GnipGnop]

the very moment you execute it it has aleady happened man. as soon as you even understand it it has already ocurred.

[Thrillhouse]

In that very moment which life doth fade away
Ejected from my human shell exempt from time or space
Floating absorbing omniscient in display
A grandiose presentation unravels before me

Not in chronology but so wildly all at once
An open dioramic rendition of events
Some horrible integral just the same a
Ll pieces are key to the sum of the being
A strobe of emotions vivid extreme
The rapturous voyage through life's victories
The man that I once was I have left him behind

What kind of man does the assembled puzzle read
With soul spread open wide I calmly contemplate my destiny

Death panorama

[3rd Coast Skimmer]

I'm concerned with the idea that as soon as you begin to live a static life, one where you question nothing, then are you really living in a sense?

In this part of what you are saying I understand where you are coming from... My belief is NO... you are not living... you are merely existing.

Life... is in that moment of timelessness that I mentioned earlier.

[TheSeaCowww]

the present is an instant. as soon as it is here it is gone. but as you think ahead of yourself you can live in the present.

[3rd Coast Skimmer]

the present is an instant. as soon as it is here it is gone. but as you think ahead of yourself you can live in the present.

Yet a third possibility.... interesting.

[Adam Hayward]

Time is linear though. It.

time is only linear in our modern (incorrect) way of measuring it. The Hopi, The Mayans and many other early cultures that were much more in-sync with the world and the cosmos understood time as more of a circle: what has happened will happen again, in a sense.

I think the issue with our conveniently naive concept of time is properly addressed within your debacle, specifically:

the very moment you execute it it has aleady happened man. as soon as you even understand it it has already ocurred.

If we are to measure time in a linear manner, there would be no use for the term 'present'.


I think the only way for you to expand upon your thought process of time and death, is to study ancient cultures who were more in tune with the earth, lest you run your mind in proverbial circles and wind up (pun intended) insane.

[Adam Hayward]

Further, if you break down time to its very base, certainly the present has already passed before we can conceive it, but if you broaden your scope to say- one thousand years, even an entire day can be considered the present time, and possibly then you can see your point in time as being significant and worthy of being lived.

[Jim Gordon]

Don't live in the past or the future.....or you will dilute the present.

[BART]

As soon as we hold a thought in our minds, that has already passed.

what is 'a thought'?

time is not a series of events, nor is thinking a series of thoughts.

nor is the universe a series of nouns.

we segment reality in the mind in order to think about it. so trying to figure out when segments of thinking happen in segments of time seems to me just the mind running in circles, mistaking how it thinks about reality for actual reality.

[DjMattyD]

What is the mind? Is it just a system of impulses or is it something tangible?

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

[Jim Gordon]

What is the mind? Is it just a system of impulses or is it something tangible?

What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.

Are we not like a machine? Our brain works by electricity, does it not?

[chemkexx]

death is a part of life


wooo

[cheesychz]

Time is an artificial, man-made classification of life.

Whether you think of time as linear or circular is irrelevant. if time is a small line (or circle) drawn on a chalkboard, then the universe is the chalkboard itself and man is the only one looking at the line (or circle).

So, what is death? Well, technically death is merely the absence of life. What does that mean in terms of humanity? Well, no one really knows.

[Mapdash]

Chuck Norris knows.

[kylebaz]

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
Aldous Huxley

[Ill Perfection]

Being a punk, I always think of this song when I think of death. Listen closely to the lyrics. Couldnt be more true. "when you see the diseased suffering and decay, you whisper to yourself, blissfully it's okay, and still refuse the possibility THAT THE DEAD ARE BETTER OFF THAN WE!"

[GvnrSkinkTyree]

The past is the past, the future is now.

[Jim Gordon]

Maybe Earth is Hell, and if you don't get it right the first time.......you must relive it. And when you get it right, you go to heaven.......not sure where that is though. Not sure of what I just wrote either.

[cheesychz]

No one knows what death is, because no one has been through it and lived to tell about it.

And don't give me any "yeah, but what about those people with near death experiences" crap. We both know those people are full of it and just repeating the same stories they have heard over and over again in their culture.

[Black]

1) As we all know, time is an illusion with purpose.

2) Do you really want to have a talk about the noumenal world, using metaphysical abstract concepts to try to explain it? (it could easily be argued that this is a phenomenal topic, but reference below...)

c) I DETEST this kind of philosophy. This is why people outside of the field look at philosophy as pointless, and they are justified in believing such. Like Rand said of Kant, this type of philosophy is destroying America.
How do "Are we really here?" questions that encourage you to question existence of anything and everything get you a bigger paycheck? How do they decrease the suffering of starving populations, or help form political policy?

They steer you away from the fact that: I know, to the utmost degree of certainty, that this chair is really here. And even if it's not here, in the world and dimensions that I live in, my survival depends on my belief that the chair really does exist. Any philosophy that encourages otherwise, albeit mildly entertaining, is quite irrelevant and retards rational progression in the world as it is today.

[Black]

Also, (I'm sure you know) you're playing linguistics with your talks of "life" and "death". You can redefine them to mean, whatever poetic sense you desire, but the generally accepted concept of "death" is the termination of all physical processes. When the heart stops beating and doesn't start. I do not accept that it would necessarily follow that one is "dead" because the concept of "the present" has been challenged.

[nukka-cp]

Is death to settle on what you think you know as truth, never changing your mind?
As soon as we hold a thought in our minds, that has already passed. Therefore, to our knowledge we exist in the past. When we think about the future, it is in the past. The present tense does not exist because as soon as something becomes present, it has already passed. If the past is only accessible from our own senses and our own idea of what reality is, it can't be trusted because it is our own subjective view. So if the only thing left to be trusted is the unknowable future, we must always be re-evaluating what we know and what we think we know to be true. So then, does to hold beliefs and settle on knowledge without questioning anything become death? Are we really living if we don't question everything around us?

I'm a little confused as to why you interpret death as "to settle on what you think you know as truth" or "to hold beliefs and settle on knowledge without questioning..." If that were the classification of "death" then more than half of the worlds population would cease to "live" in your sense of the word.

And in regards to linear time, circular time, infinite time, hexagonal time, blasphemous time, etc. We really have no idea what it is, or what caused it, or why it's here. There may most definitely be theories describing it or clocks to track the procession of it throughout our life, but in reality time is meaningless. It's a word, a number, an idea that we're all ticking down to zero, or up from zero, or sideways from zero, or through the z-axis from zero. Who cares about the past? It's just a marker of an event that happened. Who cares if this thought I just had is now in the past?

The only reason I care about time is because it helps me show up on "time" for work so I don't get fired and can make the all important dollar dollar bill yall. We should have a debate about the importance of money, inflation, and all that good stuff.