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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Why do you fear Death?
Do I?
death HURTS. What if your drug to death by a raging bull er sumpn.. Or chomped on slowly by a grizz .. F- that..
No it doesn't. Death is painless. Death is magical. Death is beautiful.
It only hurts if you survive the event that should have been fatal.
That's my fear - Surviving.
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MisterE
Gym climber
Bishop, CA
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Death fears me.
Bam!
Okay, that isn't exactly right, but it sounds good and righteous and properly courageous...
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WBraun
climber
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No it doesn't. Death is painless. Death is magical. Death is beautiful.
Just wait till you come back in your next life as a housefly and MisterE swats you with his flyswatter .......
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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An apple a day.
Like Steve Jobs, I think death should be avoided at all costs.
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KabalaArch
Trad climber
Starlite, California
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If I'm honest, that's plenty. Hell, could be living under ISIS in some sweltering sand hole.
What I want to know and won't live to see: What will life be like when the oil is finally gone?
Random speculation indicated here, and offered free of charge:
It certainly appears as though the global concern over the last drop of oil was delivered on our doorstep by extremist OPEC representatives on 9/11 (or, euphonically: call 911). A larger concern might already involve 1st World diplomats, and that's how does the Euro and the US divi up that last drop amongst what remains of the developed nations.
During my little Greenland expedition the group was witness to Islamic population immigrant populations in Scandinavia - Oslo in particular. I was struct by all manner of small convenience store LED signage in Farsi. And, w/o a doubt, the native resent this influx (although I had to be reminded that the Danes who were so enthusiastic about the US role in Iraq were, in fact, military at Station Nord).
Turkey is now very important to NATO. It's our easternmost bastion, and has long been recognized as the frontier which separates Europe from ISIS.
To drift back On Topic is an earlier posted excerpt from what is a fundamentalist Islam vision of a general deterrence from sin: a hellscape which actually reads like a Catholic Sunday sermon text to me. It's been lifted from an Argentine literary figure and writer: Jorge Luis Borges, who brings us One Thousand Nights and One Night from the Persian classic; breaths life into the mythologies of both the North American West, and the gauchos of the pampas; secrets of the Orient and Roman legendary figures.
Hence my reference to a certain nihilism we all seem to share. Honestly, here we are, discussing the existence of God, and all we want to know is When do we eat?
A B O M I N A B L E M I R R O R S
“In the beginning of his cosmology there was a spectral god, a deity as majestically devoid of origins as of name and face. This deity was an immutable god, but its image threw 9 shadows, these, condescending to action, endowed and ruled over a first heaven. From that first demiurgic crown came a second, with its own angels, powers, and thrones, and these in turn founded another, lower heaven, which was the the symmetrical duplicate of the first. The second conclave was reproduced in a third, and the third in another, lower conclave, and so on, to the number of 999. The lord of the nethermost heaven – the shadow of shadows of yet other shadows – is He who reigns over us, and His fraction of divinity tends to zero.”
“Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm (a parody of a world which is an error). Revulsion...is the fundamental virtue, and the two rules of conduct (between which the prophets gave us to choose) : abstinence and utter licentiousness.”
“To those who deny the Word, runs an imprecation from the Rosa Secreta, “I vow a wondrous hell, for each person who denies it shall reign over 999 empires of fire, and in each empire shall be 999 mountains of fire, and upon each mountain shall be 999 towers of fire, and each tower shall have 999 stories of fire, and each story shall have 999 beds of fire, and in each bed that person shall be, each with its own face and voice, shall torture that person throughout eternity.”
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Captain...or Skully
climber
in the oil patch...Fricken Bakken, that's where
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 5, 2014 - 05:05pm PT
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Ah Mouse......Death makes perfect sense. Ya wanna last forever? That would make no sense.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Sport climber
moving thru
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Mouse, you just clicked a memory button.
Years ago I watched the movie, "Death Becomes Her". The movie, featuring Bruce Willis, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn, came out in 1992. You need to watch it til the closing moments. Gives you something to think about.
Cheers, Lynne
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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Years ago I watched the movie, "Death Becomes Her".
That's good comedy.
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clinker
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, California
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FUR DEATH!
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Kabala...You have the 999 upside down..rj
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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While we mull this over, here's yet another perspective...
"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. [Climbers greater than Honnold.] We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here." -Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Just wait till you come back in your next life as a housefly and MisterE swats you with his flyswatter .......
That is just hilarious! Thanks for the laugh.
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Marlow
Sport climber
OSLO
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Ophelia's Shadow Theatre by Michael Ende. A childrens book for young and old.
http://www.amazon.com/Ophelias-Shadow-Theatre-Michael-Ende/dp/0879513713
"There was once a little old lady called Ophelia who lived in a little old town." With a voice too soft to be an actress, Ophelia devotes her life to art as a prompter in her town's theater, committing to memory the great dramas. When the theater is forced to close, the bereft old lady encounters Shady, one of the world's unwanted shadows, in the shuttered theater and gives him a home. Miss Ophelia takes in many abandoned shadows, and teaches them her beloved plays, but an increase in rent forces the kind soul from her lodgings. The shadows come to the rescue of their benefactress by performing the works she has taught them; the fame of Ophelia's Shadow Theatre grows. One day, her car breaks down, and another shadow arrives for her, homeless. "Who are you? Do you need a home?" "I am Death... Will you still take me in?" Ophelia thinks for a moment, and then she nods.
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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What a beautiful thread.
I have feared death more times than I can remember. When I was a little kid, I would go to my father and tell him I was afraid of death, and he would take me into his lap, and I would fall asleep. Every time I've found myself *thinking* about and fearing death was when it was some kind of conceptual event. But every time I've come to face it, I've found it compelling, warm, and almost comfortable. Combat, cancer, tough auto crashes, those times were not so bad, actually. It's weird, but everything would get very calm and matter-of-fact.
Death is fascinating. You can't seem to think enough about it.
And it generates endorphins to get yourself scared regularly. It's good for you!
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TWP
Trad climber
Mancos, CO
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What is death?
Since we conceive of ourselves as a unique, separate and distinct entity existing only within a time frame with a certain beginning (birth) and inevitable end (death), we fear what cannot ever be: a continuation without change of the fact that we exist today (and have for some time before (and will for some short time hereafter).
In do doing we rail against the inevitable and seek the impossible: a continuation without change of some fact: in this case, the fact that we exist.
Yet no fact or state of affairs within the universe has remained static and unchanging for even one nanosecond since time's beginning (whenever that might have been). To state this obvious truth shows the paltry futility of our attachment to the absurd noting that there is "life after death" in the sense that something so discrete, unique and distinctive as ME shall have existence for one nanosecond beyond the time when the collection of cells manifesting as my body continue to have life function. As soon as the fire of breath goes out of our body, we are toast: there is no life after death for our discrete being.
I've lapsed into opinion, I know. Yet I will boldly state: I assert to believe otherwise is to fear (and refuse to accept) the truth of the utter insignificance on any grand scale of our fleeting existence as the discrete being and life form though which we now experience consciousness and life.
P.S. My eyesight is giving me fits; detached retina recovery not going so well. If someone sees typos or grammatical errors in this post, please send me a personal email so I can proof and edit this post.
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Gnome Ofthe Diabase
climber
Out Of Bed
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Because I cannot control it.... as Jstan said on 1/20/11 post #6 & #23
in the very start of DR F's thread on all the gobble dye gok VS science.
Also from that dreaded thread
That stuff that GO-B, enlightened me to last night
while clinging to all the good stuff
as a proud goat,
and on the left
accepting Christ or not
I am going to Heck
not Borneo
see the mouse from merced's flames thread
for the Borneo flick
Are there Flames in Heck?
I read less than .3% of the posts on this thread
before I posted so....
I have the capacity to go deeper and along the lines of reincarnation
but that would be butting heads with
Werner Braun
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