The only true cause of death is birth.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
Would you apply this principle of causality to all finite duration processes? Would you conclude that the only cause of the end of finite duration processes is their beginning? So, for example, if someone were to propose that the cause of the sun dying was it running out of hydrogen fuel, would you propose that, no, the cause of the sun's demise is its original formation?Scott wrote:...Thus, the only cause of death is birth.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
This simple observation/conclusion:
It is true that we shy away from death, and from all associated with it, and this probably isn't great. But this, and your fundamental observation, are about all we get from it, I think. All living people will die. But before that, and after birth, they will live their lives. Perhaps this latter is a more productive area of consideration?
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
Sy Borg wrote: ↑March 16th, 2021, 9:19 pm The message I'm getting here from Scott is not a decrying of coroners' work, but squaring up with our inevitable deaths. Death has become something exotic, mysterious and shocking to us, and this impacts on how we live our lives. The need for security and retreating from nature tends to rob people of their courage. For instance, I notice these days that more small children cringe in fear when some small, benign-looking dog casually strolls past, whereas when I would young most children would want to pat it.
So people lead smaller lives, whose boundaries are defined by the scary unknowns of nature, including the "tragedy" of death. Of course, how expansively one chooses to live is one's own concern, but that appears to be the situation for better or for worse. Ultimately we are witnesses to major events far beyond our realm of influence so, like any good ant, we just get on with our tiny lives anyway and try to get out of the way when major events happen near us.
My feeling in response to the OP is one of Taoist awareness (of the issue), acknowledgement and acceptance. Wu wei seems appropriate here, to me.
What else is there to consider?Wu wei means – in Chinese – non-doing or ‘doing nothing’. It sounds like a pleasant invitation to relax or worse, fall into laziness or apathy. Yet this concept is key to the noblest kind of action according to the philosophy of Daoism – and is at the heart of what it means to follow Dao or The Way. According to the central text of Daoism, the Dao De Jing: ‘The Way never acts yet nothing is left undone’. This is the paradox of wu wei. It doesn’t mean not acting, it means ‘effortless action’ or ‘actionless action’. It means being at peace while engaged in the most frenetic tasks so that one can carry these out with maximum skill and efficiency. Link to original article
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
To say the birth "causes" death is meaningless. To say that the covid virus causes death may lead to a handle we can manipulate.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
I don't disagree. It similar to saying: possession causes theft.Ecurb wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 12:31 pm In general, we use the word "cause" to mean either the conscious act of someone ("she caused his death by shooting him") or to refer to a handle we can manipulate. In this latter sense, "germs" cause disease because we have antibiotics. We actually know that some people who are exposed to germs don't get sick and some do -- so disease is "caused" by a confluence of exposure and lack of immune response. When a car skids out around a turn the wreck is "caused" by excessive speed (for the driver), lack of banking in the curve (for the road engineer) or insufficient traction (for the tire manufacturer). For the experimental scientist the variable becomes the "cause", even though other conditions are necessary for the reaction.
To say the birth "causes" death is meaningless. To say that the covid virus causes death may lead to a handle we can manipulate.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
I agree. Birth is obviously one of the many things that has to have happened in order for death to happen. But to conclude from this that it is the only cause of death makes no sense to me. By the same reasoning, I could just as well conclude that my mother's birth is the cause of my death, or that the birth of the universe is the cause of my death. Of all the countless things that must have first happened in order for me to die, the one I choose to label as the cause of my death depends on my purpose.Ecurb wrote:...To say the birth "causes" death is meaningless...
Of course, if the point is just to draw attention to the fact that we're all going to die one day, that's a horse of a different colour. But if it is, then I'd have called the topic "we're all going to die one day" and probably wouldn't be able to think of much more to say about it than that, apart from things like "Puts it all into perspective doesn't it?" or "Sobering thought isn't it?".
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
I want to agree without further comment ... but possession does not always lead to theft, it introduces the possibility for it to happen; birth always results in death. There's the difference.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
Meh.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
The supposedly difficult question of "Which came first the chicken or the egg?" seems easy, to me. The egg came first. Whatever mutation or evolutionary change produced the first bird that could be called a "chicken" developed from an egg that was laid by a bird that was not a "chicken". However gradual the change, the egg came first!
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
The title can be generalized to: The only cause of the end of everything is the beginning of everything. No one can argue against that, except for the term "cause" in the title which Scott has applied so inadvertently and unworthily.Steve3007 wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 7:18 amWould you apply this principle of causality to all finite duration processes? Would you conclude that the only cause of the end of finite duration processes is their beginning? So, for example, if someone were to propose that the cause of the sun dying was it running out of hydrogen fuel, would you propose that, no, the cause of the sun's demise is its original formation?Scott wrote:...Thus, the only cause of death is birth.
"Cause" in dictionary: a person, thing, event, state, or action that produces an effect. There are many such causes leading directly or indirectly to death. Is birth the most distant cause? Not even so. You can allege that birth leads to life, and life is associated with death. THAT IS ABOUT IT.
Better to stay away from such sensational statements linking death and life. More soothing to say to your lover: There, but for you, go I.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
Yeah, I know.Ecurb wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 2:32 pmThe supposedly difficult question of "Which came first the chicken or the egg?" seems easy, to me. The egg came first. Whatever mutation or evolutionary change produced the first bird that could be called a "chicken" developed from an egg that was laid by a bird that was not a "chicken". However gradual the change, the egg came first!
I was hoping no one would say that.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
Yes, acknowledgement and acceptance, as opposed to denial and horror. Easier said than done, though. Our survival instincts have been honed for billions of years, and nature repeatedly shows how reproduction is favoured over comfort. So, if restlessness and discomfort helps result in offspring, then that's what's favoured.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 11:34 amSy Borg wrote: ↑March 16th, 2021, 9:19 pm The message I'm getting here from Scott is not a decrying of coroners' work, but squaring up with our inevitable deaths. Death has become something exotic, mysterious and shocking to us, and this impacts on how we live our lives. The need for security and retreating from nature tends to rob people of their courage. For instance, I notice these days that more small children cringe in fear when some small, benign-looking dog casually strolls past, whereas when I would young most children would want to pat it.
So people lead smaller lives, whose boundaries are defined by the scary unknowns of nature, including the "tragedy" of death. Of course, how expansively one chooses to live is one's own concern, but that appears to be the situation for better or for worse. Ultimately we are witnesses to major events far beyond our realm of influence so, like any good ant, we just get on with our tiny lives anyway and try to get out of the way when major events happen near us.
My feeling in response to the OP is one of Taoist awareness (of the issue), acknowledgement and acceptance.
Nature leads us by the nose towards certain activities through pleasure and pain and, while the human will can overcome those base drives through the exercise of the will, collectively we remain entirely controlled by the ever-shifting physics of biology, our planet and its star.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
Let's concede that mathematical propositions are not a matter of perspective. If you can convert your argument on the cause of death to a mathematical proposition, and show that no other argument on the cause of death can be converted to a mathematical proposition, then we would have that your argument on the cause of death is the only thing that is not a matter of perspective, as per your claim. So then, let's see.Scott wrote: ↑March 16th, 2021, 11:09 pmI respectfully disagree. I don't think something like the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4 is a matter of perspective. I don't think the value of pi is a matter of perspective.
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Re: The only true cause of death is birth.
LuckyR wrote: ↑March 16th, 2021, 4:17 pm [...] the Real, Live researchers and scientists who studied the deaths associated with Covid 19 and came up with treatment improvements and vaccines in record time? According to the OP [if misused]: who cares? We're all going to die anyway. Those researchers should have stayed home. That's the misuse, BTW.
I agree!
Stopping to smell the figurative roses is a crucial aspect of my overall philosophy. For me at least, it is heavily related to ideas of presence, of inner peace, of spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline), of unconditional love, of the transcendence of time, of realizing there is no evil and thus no problem of evil, and thereby seeing reality as a whole as inexorably perfect, eternally so.
What about artificial insemination?
I have an "amor fati" tattoo too!
Truth doesn't have to be practically useful to be true. Indeed, many would deride philosophy itself as tending to be useless by definition, but still many philosophy-oriented folks seem to love the game of searching for truth or something like that at least.Steve3007 wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 6:44 am Processes of finite duration can only stop if, at some point before they stop, they started. I can't argue with that! But I'm not sure if it gives me any new insights and I'm not sure how useful it is to conclude from this that the cause of them stopping is them starting.
Despite the fact that it was not a point of the OP that the alleged truths asserted would have additional practical uses to those who accept them, nonetheless I think there is value in realizing this inherent mathematical value and balance between birth and death, between creation and destruction. I think the yin-yang represents it well.
When one futilely tries to seek yin without yang (or vice versa), rather than realize they both interdependently make each other possible, such as by seeing death as bad and birth as good and desperately futilely trying to deny or stop death somehow, that prevents inner peace. In other words, while the truth that you and I have each stated seems so obvious, the value in stating it is that many would futilely fight the truth at the cost of their own inner peace. So accepting it leads to some of the kind of thoughts I expressed about grace in this tweet.
I think explicitly acknowledging that yin-yang like truth may tend to help one experience content inner peace, especially in terms of letting go of the concept of evil and the belief that unchangeable reality is somehow wrong (e.g. 'death is bad', 'dying is evil', 'if there is a god he must be evil because there is so much of this bad death going on and the world is so awful'). To look for the pseudo-cause of death or bodily suffering/discomfort, rather than embrace them, can not only be a manifestation of a lack of inner peace but also push one further into that discontentment by distracting from more acceptance-based conclusions such as Nietzsche's famous statement, "To live is to suffer; to survive is to find meaning in the suffering."
More simply, as LuckyR wrote above, the words in the OP if not misused may inspire one to stop and smell the roses instead of sweating the small stuff.
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean. Can you elaborate a bit on your question?
Yes. I think the concept is most beautifully represented by the Yin-Yang.Steve3007 wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 7:18 amWould you apply this principle of causality to all finite duration processes? Would you conclude that the only cause of the end of finite duration processes is their beginning? So, for example, if someone were to propose that the cause of the sun dying was it running out of hydrogen fuel, would you propose that, no, the cause of the sun's demise is its original formation?Scott wrote:...Thus, the only cause of death is birth.
It's also a part of why I believe there is no problem of evil. In other words, if there is a creator god, I conclude the god is all-loving not evil. I don't personally believe in an external god, and I am not personally religious at all, but the point is that I don't believe in evil. I think the world is lovable. That helps illustrate what it means to me to have inner peace and be content.
Indeed. I have heard many wise people say that everyone dies but not everyone really lives.Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 11:24 am
This simple observation/conclusion:
It is true that we shy away from death, and from all associated with it, and this probably isn't great. But this, and your fundamental observation, are about all we get from it, I think. All living people will die. But before that, and after birth, they will live their lives. Perhaps this latter is a more productive area of consideration?
In a similar vain, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live."
I think these kinds of ideas can become a foundation to live with bravery, courage, confidence, grace, inner peace, spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline), unconditional acceptance, and unconditional love.
I agree!Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 11:34 am
My feeling in response to the OP is one of Taoist awareness (of the issue), acknowledgement and acceptance. Wu wei seems appropriate here, to me.
Refusing to accept human death and human mortality to me epitomizes the opposite of wu wei.
I've read the Tao Te Ching a few times, and love it, but in regard to wu wei, I think Master Yoda might have put it best: Do or do not do; there is no try.
I look at wu wei as not trying, and I regularly work to put that wisdom into practice.
I am reminded of this tweet I posted last year about not trying.
Your mother's birth is a necessary condition of your birth, but not a necessary cause. If we could rewind time and put in the lab, we could easily create a scenario in which your mother was born but you were not.Steve3007 wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 12:46 pmBirth is obviously one of the many things that has to have happened in order for death to happen. But to conclude from this that it is the only cause of death makes no sense to me. By the same reasoning, I could just as well conclude that my mother's birth is the cause of my death
Your death cannot exist without your birth. Your birth cannot exist without your death also existing. This yin-yang relationship between them as mutual necessary causes for each other is not mirrored by "many others".
They are not one of "many" in that sense.
Rather, the "many" to which you refer seem to deal with matters besides necessary causes, such as sufficient causes, necessary conditions, etc. Those have meaning too, but they are different, and they do not undermine the special yin-yang like relationship between birth and death.
The corresponding birth is a unique bottleneck for any death in the flow of preceding events. That special relationship between birth and death as mutually causal and mutually necessary is a priori. That is part of what makes it unique and inherently dualistic (represented by the yin-yang). Empiricism and physics is isolated to contingency and possibilities, things that could at least hypothetically have not happened, or could simply be untrue, and thus cannot be asserted as a priori.
In other words, birth is not one of many yang's to death's yin. It is the one and only.
I am glad we agree on that.Count Lucanor wrote: ↑March 17th, 2021, 8:27 pmLet's concede that mathematical propositions are not a matter of perspective.Scott wrote: ↑March 16th, 2021, 11:09 pmI respectfully disagree. I don't think something like the proposition that 2 + 2 = 4 is a matter of perspective. I don't think the value of pi is a matter of perspective.
To be clear, I was not suggesting that only mathematical propositions have perspective-independence. Rather, I was giving it as just an example, since all it takes is one counter example to disapprove an alleged rule. In other words, my point was simply that everything is not merely a matter of perspective.
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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