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coberst 02-28-2007 03:15 PM

Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance

“What will come of my whole life…Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?”—Tolstoy

Meaning is number ONE. What wo/man fears most is extinction, which includes insignificance.

Wo/man wants assurance that their life has somehow counted; if not for her or his self then at least within the overall scheme of things. If there is some kind of “judgment day” then I want to be in ‘that number’ that matter. While alive I want to know that “I am somebody”.

Religion is our primary means for responding to that basic need to be somebody. Otto Rand says that all religions spring up “not so much from…fear of natural death as of final destruction.”

“It is culture itself that embodies the transcendence of death in some form or other, whether it appears as purely religious or not…culture itself is sacred, since it is the “religion” that assures in some way the perpetuation of its members.”

Our dichotomy of sacred and secular aspects of social life is an egregious error. There is no such thing as a distinction between sacred and secular in the symbolic affairs of sapiens. Sacred is that which transcends the natural world while secular is that which is of the natural world. In the world of symbolic affairs such distinctions do not hold.

“As soon as you have symbols you have artificial self-transcendence via culture. Everything cultural is fabricated and given meaning by the mind, a meaning that is not given by physical nature. Culture is in this sense “supernatural” and all systemizations of culture have in the end the same goal: to raise men above nature, to assure him that in some ways their lives count in the universe more than merely physical things count.”

Self-transcendence, i.e. transcending nature via culture, does not provide a simple means to deny the primacy of death; the terror of death still lurks beneath the veneer. We have shifted the fear of death onto a new level of anxiety; we must “now hold for dear life onto the self-transcending meanings of the society in which we live…a new kind of instability and anxiety are created.”

In our attempt to deny evil, i.e. death, we bring a new and grotesque form of evil. “It is man’s ingenuity, rather than his animal nature, that has given his fellow creatures such a bitter fate.” Wo/man has, through ingenuity, heaped great evil on the world; far greater than could ever be created by our animal nature.

Quotes from “Escape from Evil”—Becker

FoJaR 02-28-2007 03:46 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
what's your point?

Kiro51 02-28-2007 04:05 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
He keep posting his thread on every forum he knows... and that 95% of people don't understand...


I understood ~~50% of your post. Use an easier vocabulary/sentence syntax if you want everyone to understand you.

FoJaR 02-28-2007 04:12 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
no i understand it... it's existential bull****.

RandomPscho 02-28-2007 04:16 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Coberst could you please explain why death is evil?
I tend to see it as necessary, and for the most part, good.

Also meaning is not number one, it is for some people, not all.

Kilroy_x 02-28-2007 04:17 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by FoJaR (Post 1275425)
no i understand it... it's existential bull****.

Not especially.


Coberst...

Why not make one thread for all discussion about becker? You seem to be posting each new idea of his in a linear fashion as if you take breaks from reading his books just to do so.

FoJaR 02-28-2007 04:22 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Kilroy_x (Post 1275438)
Not especially.

sure it is.

tsugomaru 02-28-2007 06:27 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
He's trying to argue that we are afraid of dying without accomplishing anything. I know I am.

~Tsugomaru

RandomPscho 02-28-2007 08:02 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
No, he is assuming everyone is afraid to die and the fear/evil that comes from it.

Theres a long thread about the scared of death topic already.

Reach 02-28-2007 08:37 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
I would say...

He's arguing more specifically than what some of you have said, that the seperation of religion and non religion is a bad idea. Religion as manifested into something that tries to make humans above nature brings an evil out of humans that is dangerous to our existance. Humans like to feel their existance in some supernatural sort of sense, has a universal meaning that will not be destroyed when you die. However, trying to transcend the natural power of death to become something that is ethereal brings unnatural evil to the world through segregation and misunderstanding of the natural world right around you.

As meaning is a human derivative, meaning is not inherent, but is created by the observer. Thus, the idea that a human can transcend to a level of universal meaning, to me, seems to think too highly of our race.

The parallels with organized religion here are pretty obvious xD


Coberst's posts are difficult to read primarily because he never finishes his post. He basically sticks ideas together with quotes and doesn't make any definite conclusions. He sometimes hints at them, so usually you can interpret it, but in every which way to sunday.

Aside from my interpretation here, there are at least 2 other ways to read this from what I can see. And undoubtfully more from other points of view.


coberst,

Put more of your posts into one thread, please. Most of your posts deal with similar topics that could all be posted in one thread.

slipstrike0159 02-28-2007 11:33 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
The only reason i think coberst posts this kind of thing in here is because it is an interesting read and it is more likely that we are going to appreciate it more than anyone else in other various places on these forums. Regardless, these forums are more geared towards active debate and it is hard to do that if there is no opinionated response to said writings and as such it is difficult to respond in any fashion other than "interesting read."

Coberst's threads would be much more interactive if he would simply respond to it or ask some kind of question related to the literature presented.

FoJaR 02-28-2007 11:49 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Reach (Post 1276676)
He basically sticks ideas together with quotes and doesn't make any definite conclusions. He sometimes hints at them, so usually you can interpret it, but in every which way to sunday.

Aside from my interpretation here, there are at least 2 other ways to read this from what I can see. And undoubtfully more from other points of view.

which is why i asked him what his point was.

coberst 03-1-2007 03:49 AM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by RandomPscho (Post 1275437)
Coberst could you please explain why death is evil?
I tend to see it as necessary, and for the most part, good.

Also meaning is not number one, it is for some people, not all.

Death is the ultimate evil because nothing more fearsome can happen to anyone than to have their life ended. An example might be how hard the prisoners in concentration camps tried to stay alive.

coberst 03-1-2007 03:57 AM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
I write about important ideas that I think most readers are unfamaliar with. I hope that the reader will become curious about the idea and go to the books and gather the knowledge that will permit them to make a judgment about the matter in question.

The discussion forum is a great place to become conscious of ideas but is a lousy place to acquire knowledge. To become knowledgable one needs to go to the books. I suggest that every adult acquire a "Friends of the Library" card from a local college library so that they will have access to the kind of books needed if one is to become an enlightened citizen.

FoJaR 03-1-2007 12:50 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
lol death is scary.

Kilroy_x 03-1-2007 01:31 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by coberst (Post 1278402)
The discussion forum is a great place to become conscious of ideas but is a lousy place to acquire knowledge. To become knowledgable one needs to go to the books.

I'm not sure I agree with this. Source texts are unbeatable when it comes to information acquisition, but at the same time without some form of discourse the meaning of the information is often lost on the reader.

If you were to actually use this forum to discuss the ideas in these books you would be doing an infinitely greater service than you are now, which is just to repeat the content of the books.

coberst 03-1-2007 02:10 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
Kilroy

Writing essays is a great way to learn, I have found. Of course one must write an essay in order to communicate on the web.

Kilroy_x 03-1-2007 03:16 PM

Re: Sapiens Fear Extinction with Insignificance
 
You're missing the critical distinction. Essays are simply a way of communicating your thoughts. When you turn them in for review, they get 1 response. They're a one shot deal.

With dialogue, you can contest each individual point, and do so for as long as neccessary until a conclusion has been reached. Something that might be dismissed upon initial review might be later clarified and accepted.

I've found that conversations with college professors can often be more enlightening than classes with them.


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