Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: porkfrog on January 03, 2007, 04:02:08 PM
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I'm almost finished with Jack Londons' Biography, "Sailor On Horseback".
Here is a passage I just read wthin one of the enclosed short stories.
"Life is a strange thing. Much have I thought on it, and pondered long, yet daily the strangeness of it grows not less, but more. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard, and to suffer sore, till Old Age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of Death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And Death is kind. It is only Life, and the things of Life that hurt. Yet we love life, and we hate Death. It is very strange."
Sitka Charley in "Grit of Women", a story by Jack London
Anyone care to wax philosophical on this?
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"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WOO HOO what a ride!""
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I think it's a question that can only be answered by oneself.
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Something about, "I will not go quietly into the dark night..." That about sums it up for me.
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Whats the quote from BSDADDICT?
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"Anyone care to wax philosophical on this?"
People are terrified of death because it is absolute, irreversable, and final. It is the end of all sensation and there is no coming back. It is not possible to put a positive spin on death. Life is a gradual fade-in of awareness followed by parties and laughter and then decay and a sudden drop at the end. You can see it coming from a mile off, and it is always there.
Epicurus, who is himself dead, once said that no-one should worry about death because the dead do not know they are dead, and the living are not dead. He said that you should imagine death as you think of the period before you were born. He did not account for people who are aware of their impending death. I have come to the conclusion that it is better to lose your marbles and die senile and oblivious, than to die whilst compos mentis. I envy the people who lived in the past and believed in heaven; they were wrong, but they died happy.
Death comes to everyone and there is no escape or return. People are unwilling to accept that they will die and be forgotten. If you have great-great-grandchildren it is a fair bet that they will not be able to name you or picture you in their minds. If your own descendents aren't going to remember you, it's a sure bet that no-one else will. Anything you write down or achieve in life will be erased, as will your family and all you hold dear. You will be unable to prevent that happening. Even if you could live for hundreds of years, you would still die eventually. If you could live forever, the days of wine and roses would whizz by, and you would spend the vast majority of your life floating in the vacuum of space, long after the stars and planets and black holes have burned away.
"we love life, and we hate Death"
Some people adore death when it happens to other people, and hate it when their own worst enemy lives to a ripe old age. I like to confront death by imagining the death of other people. Perhaps that is what drives serial killers. A desire to confront death, and master it.
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Dylan Thomas, CpMorgan.
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Originally posted by porkfrog
Whats the quote from BSDADDICT?
oops, forgot to add that... it's a Hunter S. Thompson quote...
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Life boils down to One word: Orgasm
Thats what keeps me getting up (pun intended) every day :D
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its only an issue because like pandora, we despratly wish to see whats in the box, but its a one way trip, and like betting on david.
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i thought it was BSDADDICT but wasn't sure if it was from FALILV.
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People are terrified of death because it is absolute, irreversable, and final. It is the end of all sensation and there is no coming back. It is not possible to put a positive spin on death. Life is a gradual fade-in of awareness followed by parties and laughter and then decay and a sudden drop at the end. You can see it coming from a mile off, and it is always there.
Disagree. People are scared of what's on the other side of death. Or, that is, the lack of knowledge on what's on the other side. It could be nothingness, it could be heaven or hell, it could be reincarnation. It could be Barney the Dinosaur singing Hanukkah carols for all eternity. A live person will never know.
Anyone care to wax philosophical on this?
If you go into life with a defeatist attitude, you're going to cry about it all the way to your death bed.
Yeah life is hard, get over it. Enjoy as much as you can, even your work.
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Many believe in the conservation of energy principal. What are thoughts exactly? An electrochemical process? When one dies the brain rots but what about all those thoughts that arguably are you? Do they simply disappear or perhaps radiate into space ever expanding into hopeless incoherence? What about that curvature of space thing? A little Dalmore gets those cognitive processes radiating. ;)
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Epitaph found on an ancient Roman tomb:
I was not...
I was....
I am not...
I care not.
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quote: Anyone care to wax philosophical on this?
If you go into life with a defeatist attitude, you're going to cry about it all the way to your death bed.
Yeah life is hard, get over it. Enjoy as much as you can, even your work.
Maybe I'm misreading you here, but my understanding of this is that you think I am crying about life being hard? That I have a defeatist attitude? Maybe I am wrong, so correct me if I am. However, if I am not wrong in my interpretation, allow me to say that you are the one who has misread. Nothing I said at all declares me a defeatist, or even implies that. Nor do I see anywhere where I was crying about life being hard. I simply offered up a passage I had read for philosophical analysis, discussion, whathaveyou. Please elucidate on what you meant so as to prevent any misunderstandings.
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Originally posted by Dux
Dylan Thomas, CpMorgan.
Yea, Dux. I know. I was just referring to it to the general audience as a anchor point in the discussion. W.E. Yeats had some interesting things to say also about the "other side" IMHO.;)
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live hard. ride fast... leave a good looking corpse..
That is the phrase I believe hunter thompson paraphrased.
Life is about learning. It is discovery. Death will be the same. I will find out what death is all about when it comes. Got too much to do now tho.
lazs
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Porkfrog, I wasn't saying that you take on a defeatist attitude. Just that anyone who believes what you quoted does. You haven't really said whether you believe it or not.
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I think he was stating that there is not difference between life and death so why cling to one and fear the other ...
in short "we" do not die, just cast of this shell as a butterfly exits its cocoon
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I will find out what death is all about when it comes.
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You wont find anything out. You will be dead :aok
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you are correct. i did not state where i stood on the matter. when i posted it, i had intended to simply create a discussion on the literary value of Jack Londons' writting's and get a feel for what ppl thought of the passage.
myself, i am agnostic. i don't think we really have any idea of what, if anything, goes on after we die. i won't even presume to guess what the possibilities are. i love life. yes, it is very difficult and trying, but i love every minute of it. do i fear death? i'm not sure. i don't look forward to dying. i also hope that my death is without much pain or lengthy suffering and that it is a long way off. i do know that death is the one certainty of life. you can evade taxes. you cannot elude death.
i just really enjoyed the way the passage was written. many of Jack Londons' characters were not fictional, but real ppl he met during his travels. it is PROBABLE that the passage is a real qoute from Sitka Charley, an Indian who had abandoned his ppl and ways to pursue "the way of the white man". mr. London was known to sit and take notes during the conversations that were had in the cabin he resided in, in Alaska. i thought it was a rather profound statement and only wished to share it for reflection.
<>
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I had a similar train of thought this morning on the way to the hospital with my wife, for her weekly check up on the state of her pregnancy, 32 weeks and counting.
I suddenly thought: 'What is the point of it all?' After all, no matter what we do or don't do we all end up dead eventually. Even if you believe in God or paradise after death. The whole life on Earth thing ends for us all. All our endeavours are lost in the ebb of time. We're gone and the world goes on regardless.
I suppose the baby thing brought it to mind. After all we are bringing another person into the world who will grow up, go to school, get a job and bring another child or two into the world. Rinse and repeat.
It's particularly pointless when your life is less then satisfactory and your achievements less than golden. You slog through your days, savouring the good ones and enduring the bad, hoping for better. Then you die, sometimes in an equally pointless way.
My wife just ignored me. Women are often more practical. She is just getting on with her instinctive imperative: Produce offspring. Maybe that's the point.
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I suddenly thought: 'What is the point of it all?'
To have fun.