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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxi [Re: Kickle]
#14230764 - 04/03/11 11:30 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I am totally open to be shown that I am wrong, but it seems you are totally unwilling to have a discussion. All I have are questions, and most of the time people get tired of them and stop talking to me, but somehow place the blame on me for having questions about things they aren't used to having questions about. I purposely look for the ways to question any belief system I come into contact with. I'm not out here to believe, no, but if I came into contact with a belief system I could not doubt, I would be forced to accept it. That time has not yet come for me.
If it is true that death anxiety is the core motivation behind our actions, does that mean you are defending it due to your own death anxiety?
Edited by xFrockx (04/03/11 11:39 AM)
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxi [Re: Cups]
#14230770 - 04/03/11 11:32 AM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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"But I bet somewhere you're scared just like me. "
Why would I be scared? Honestly, there is not one thing that fear can do to help the situation.
Also, even among scared people fear of death is way overblown. Ask almost anyone over 80 if they fear death and many will calmly tell you they are perfectly ready for it, and they only thing they fear is extreme pain or suffering the process might bring.
Being tortured, now that's something I could scream about. Death? Its going to happen when its going to happen, just another part of history.
Edited by xFrockx (04/03/11 11:54 AM)
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Cups
technically "here"


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxi [Re: xFrockx]
#14231105 - 04/03/11 01:10 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
xFrockx said: Ask almost anyone over 80 if they fear death and many will calmly tell you they are perfectly ready for it, and they only thing they fear is extreme pain or suffering the process might bring.
Maybe. But they'll also tell you they lived a full and complete life...a meaningful life.
That's the point. It's not that death anxiety makes you quake and shake all day at the thought of dying...usually...it's that it forces you to do what you think will make your life complete and meaningful.
On the other hand I have a 94 year old customer who told me point blank last year she wasn't ready to die yet. She's got kids and grandkids and everything you'd expect but it's still not enough for her.
Quote:
Why would I be scared? Honestly, there is not one thing that fear can do to help the situation.
Quote:
Being tortured, now that's something I could scream about.
And...to ask your own question. What would being afraid do to help the situation?
-------------------- What's up everybody?!
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxi [Re: Cups]
#14231145 - 04/03/11 01:23 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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"Maybe. But they'll also tell you they lived a full and complete life...a meaningful life. "
At what age does life become meaningful?
"And...to ask your own question. What would being afraid do to help the situation?"
Well, that is a good question, it would do nothing to help the situation, even of torture. I guess I don't even have to fear torture, although it would probably hurt a lot.
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Grapefruit
Freak in the forest



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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Cups]
#14231243 - 04/03/11 01:49 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
Cups said:
Quote:
Grapefruit said: As has been said quite a few times many people agree with the diagnosis but not his treatment.
What's your take Grapefruit?
I agree with Becker on the manifestations of death anxiety and that it's a real phenomena. However, I'd take UG Krishnamurti's view that there is no death for the body.
The body doesn't even consider death at all IMO, it just sees the natural flow of impermenance as the reality. The body doesn't even consider itself "alive" any more than a tree is alive, it's just another machine, it's only concern being survival and reproduction for no other reason than that is what it's programmed to do. In this way the natural state is not even self aware.
If you are having a panic attack you can almost feel the thought structure is opposed to the body feeling (primal consciousness) if you're not too lost in thought. The mind is panicking because something has shown it has no real basis in reality as anything other than a survival tool rather than all the cultural idea it has about itself but this "body feeling" simply does not care. It's this friction/disalignment that is creating the anxiety. I don't really have any evidence for this, it's just the way it feels to me.
In the natural state, when an animal is confronted with a threat it would simply use adrenaline and fear as a survival mechanism but it would not be a concern so it's much more streamlined. If thought is aligned with the body's natural state and concerns then the cultural concerns and anxieties will not be there and there will be no way you can tell yourself anything about anything at all.
There is only the one thought, "How?" The one question that this organism is interested in is, "How to throw off the whole thraldom, the whole strangling influence of culture?" That question is the only question this organism has—not as a word, not as a thought—the whole human organism is that one question. I don't know whether I make myself clear. That is the one question, you see, which is throbbing, pulsating in every cell, in the very marrow of your bones, trying to free itself from this stranglehold. That is the one question, the one thought. That is the saviour. That question finds that it has no way of finding an answer, that it is impossible for that question to do anything, so it explodes. When it has no way to move, no space, the 'explosion' takes place. That 'explosion' is like a nuclear explosion. That breaks the continuity of thought.
~UG Krishnamurti
-------------------- Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. "Chat your fraff Chat your fraff Just chat your fraff Chat your fraff"
Edited by Grapefruit (04/03/11 02:09 PM)
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Grapefruit]
#14232506 - 04/03/11 06:26 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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If it is true that death anxiety is the core motivation behind our actions, does that mean you are defending it due to your own death anxiety?
Of course.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14232533 - 04/03/11 06:31 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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What about your experience of defending this theory indicates that it is your fear of dying which moves you to its defense, and not, say, an aversion to being wrong?
Edited by xFrockx (04/03/11 06:32 PM)
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: xFrockx]
#14232632 - 04/03/11 06:48 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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On the surface, my experience is one of fatigue. To focus on death anxiety too long is very draining for me. My guess is that my defense is mostly to keep the emotions separated from the thoughts and this requires a lot of mental energy. And if I don't keep the emotions separated, I often find very dark emotions and simultaneously dark thoughts to be a result.
As for why I don't think it's an aversion to being wrong, I'd say that it's possible, but unlikely. When I explore that on the surface, it's welcomed. Mentally, I'd love to be wrong about the whole thing. There are several points over the years where my mind has tried to convince me of a variety of alternatives. They never contain the depth when explored like death anxiety does. They are typically a surface gloss of thought protecting harmful emotions and reveal their identity quickly.
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle] 1
#14232811 - 04/03/11 07:22 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I don't know man.
I think that the force that is involved with death anxiety is along the same lines as the force that makes us adverse to being wrong, but I don't think one or the other is "at core" because I don't believe there is a core. How can we fear death anyway? We don't even know what death is. Like Socrates once said, to fear death is to commit the shameful ignorance thinking one knows what one does not know.
Edited by xFrockx (04/03/11 07:25 PM)
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: xFrockx]
#14232881 - 04/03/11 07:36 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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How can we fear death anyway?
Find out. Put a gun to your head with serious intention of pulling the trigger. If there is no fear there, then go ahead and pull.
IMO it really has nothing to do with what we know. It's just a reaction, like gasping for air when underwater for too long. The body just wants to survive and will do its best in making a fuss to ensure it happens. Fear is a bodily response and thoughts are influenced by it.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14232944 - 04/03/11 07:47 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Other people have threatened me with guns with mixed results. I've been more scared being shot at with BB guns (10 yrs old) than I was being threatened with a shotgun (21). With the shotgun the reaction was like "Ah shit, its gonna end like this" It is what it is as far as I can tell. The reaction is like any other chemical reaction, reactants in, products out.
Edited by xFrockx (04/03/11 07:47 PM)
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quinn
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14232960 - 04/03/11 07:51 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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would u be happy to make the following distinction?
this:
Quote:
IMO it really has nothing to do with what we know. It's just a reaction, like gasping for air when underwater for too long. The body just wants to survive and will do its best in making a fuss to ensure it happens.
is not death anxiety but a natural bodily response just like any other animal (which as you know dont have death anxiety).
this:
Quote:
How else could one feel when realizing their life will end?
is the death anxiety Becker is talkin about. a conceptual death anxiety. it is different to the above and a human who feared for their survival in the bodily sense would not necessarily entertain death anxiety in the conceptual sense...
?
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: quinn]
#14233024 - 04/03/11 08:03 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I don't see them as separate. My body influences my mind and my mind influences my body. So when I think about death, my body has a reaction to it. And when my body has a reaction to it, my mind has a reaction to my body.
Death anxiety is IMO a mental reaction bred from a physical reality. As I become mentally aware that I am dying, my body becomes anxious. As my mind realizes it can do nothing to prevent this, my body becomes even more anxious. And so lots and lots of defenses are created in order to ensure that my mind believes it can prevent it, or continue on beyond physical death, and this allows my body to relax. But all the while this defense has to be maintained and at any point cracks can appear, inspiring anxiety all over again.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14233056 - 04/03/11 08:09 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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"As my mind realizes it can do nothing to prevent this, my body becomes even more anxious."
This is not possible. The mind is what becomes anxious. The body does not think.
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: xFrockx]
#14233067 - 04/03/11 08:12 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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The mind and body are connected far as I can tell. They aren't separate. Without my body, I doubt I'd be thinking at all. And without specific parts of the brain, I can bear witness to the changes in thought that occur.
Take out the amygdalla, and all this conversation about fear goes out the window. But you also have to stop someone from walking in front of a moving car when they want to get from point A to point B.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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quinn
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14233072 - 04/03/11 08:13 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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interesting...
i see where u r coming from.
it seems that you treat the mind as a sort of constant structure (of beliefs?) that all your bodily impulses and so on are run through... this points to a kind of 'subconsciousness' that is always there regardless of how the conscious appears... right?
i sort of agree.
but on the other hand it could be viewed as not a constant underlying thing, but rather in consciousness is all there is and things fall in and out of consciousness. one moment you are looking for something to do to avoid thinking about death, the next you are listening to music and all death is completely forgotten.
its like if you could take a film of all the feelings and thoughts going through your consciousness as you are being chased by a tiger. it could be exactly the same kinds of thoughts that a chimpanzee would feel.
and if this were the case then you could make that kind of distinction about purely instinctual survival experience (without the presence of death anxiety) vs conceptual or regular death anxiety experience...
not saying i know which is right but they both seem like plausible ways of viewing the subject.
-------------------- dripping with fantasy
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14233073 - 04/03/11 08:14 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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As far as I can tell there is no connection between mind and body because there is no separation. There is no "mind and body" only one thing that is both.
Edited by xFrockx (04/03/11 08:15 PM)
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: xFrockx]
#14233106 - 04/03/11 08:22 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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How do you know this?
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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xFrockx


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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: Kickle]
#14233114 - 04/03/11 08:23 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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I don't.
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Kickle
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Re: After reading Becker: An attempt at describing the melancholy of those who believe in death anxiety [Re: quinn]
#14233144 - 04/03/11 08:29 PM (12 years, 9 months ago) |
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Quote:
quinn said:
interesting...
i see where u r coming from.
it seems that you treat the mind as a sort of constant structure (of beliefs?) that all your bodily impulses and so on are run through... this points to a kind of 'subconsciousness' that is always there regardless of how the conscious appears... right?
i sort of agree.
but on the other hand it could be viewed as not a constant underlying thing, but rather in consciousness is all there is and things fall in and out of consciousness. one moment you are looking for something to do to avoid thinking about death, the next you are listening to music and all death is completely forgotten.
There is always reprieve. But on the whole, life seems pretty much dictated by a fear of death. We eat and drink because the alternative is unbearable. Without that sustenance we will die. And so we work in order to afford our food and drink and keep ourselves alive. Always driven forward by that pressure of death.
And to forget that death is what is always prodding us, we often make meaning for ourselves. Through our careers, through our spiritual practices, through our social interactions, etc. There is a tendency to shape all of these things around some greater purpose or goal. One that doesn't seem to involve death as a prod. Happiness is a typical one. I am happy when I do x, or y, or z. But it seems to me that happiness is directly related to the pushes of death.
-------------------- Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain
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