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Quote of the Day: Nothing Lasts
“We are like children building a sand castle. We embellish it with beautiful shells, bits of driftwood, and pieces of colored glass. The castle is ours, off-limits to others. We’re willing to attack if others threaten to hurt it. Yet despite all our attachment, we know that the tide will inevitably come in and sweep the sand castle away. The trick is to enjoy it fully but without clinging, and when the time comes, let it dissolve back into the sea.” — Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
At a rational level, we all know that we will eventually die. But it seems like a far off ending to our lives. The fact is, though, that everything dies. We can’t hold on to anything forever: relationships end, flowers die, cars end up in junkyards, no matter how often we try to save them.
Yet we continue to cling to those things we want to keep: stability in our culture, appreciation of moral values, an intact family—the list is endless. There is nothing wrong with trying to hold on to those things. But suffering comes at some point, not because we lose the people and things in our lives, but because we refuse to let them go, physically and emotionally. As human beings, at some level, we want to keep our friends, families, even our things, and feel betrayed when they disappear into an unknown future.
One of the things we can all do is learn to recognize the paradox of the mysteries of life, the impermanence and the losses, and know that we will suffer through them. But when we also recognize that our unwillingness to let them go—let all of them go—is the actual source of our unhappiness, we move through life with less pain and more joy.
When we learn to accept the pain of loss and also recognize that loss is the natural outcome of life, we suffer much less.
And we are free.
Published in Culture
I hesitate to ascribe to such a facile term bandied only by religious people. If you mean that materialism is the belief that everything must be real, then to be any other belief is psychotic or delusional. Most such are probably just delusional. The question is why are so many people so? I’m thinking it is hubris combined with fear of the unknown. It feels good to think you know the answer to things not yet known, and some and many people are afraid that after they die they simply cease to exist. That doesn’t “feel” right. We have minds, we think and dream and imagine the future and the past. But wanting to have some sort of eternal existence does not make some sort of eternal existence real.
So, in your parlance I might be considered a “materialist,” but I won’t claim the term because it pigeonholes me in some way that is convenient for those who cling to delusions.
No he didn’t. And philosophy is far too important to leave in the hands of people who call themselves “philosophers.” Philosophers are the most hubristic and irrational people in our society. Your example is classic. Kurt Gödel proved no such thing because it is stupidly circular. But I’m sure if you gaze at your navel long enough and do enough drugs it might make sense.
It’s just like Descartes who presented “proofs” of gods’ existence. From a pure logical perspective his “proofs” were flawed and laughably so. This did not stop him from publishing them. Descartes should have stuck to math, which he was good at. His philosophy was sophomoric, but that seems to be what keeps philosophers in the pay of the Tsar and other benefactors. Gotta publish something or the Tsar will toss him out.
You may be correct, or you may not be. But it is neither moral nor immoral for you to believe or disbelieve. It is your choice, preferably based on what evidence you can discover, to make, just as it is so for others. To frame the choice made by others as immoral is insufferably conceited since no one can prove the question either way.
For myself, I choose to believe because I want it to be so but I both understand and can see the possibilty that the Athiest will be proven correct, too late for me to know for sure though.
(spell check has stopped working, bummer!)
That is entirely false. The thesis I presented as “materialism” is that of virtually all atheists. The term and its synonyms, physcalism and naturalism, are commonplace among atheist scholars.
No. I plainly said it is something else.
I myself reject materialism because that is required by the facts and the logic–as well as I can understand them.
Speaking of logic, why not engage mine instead of speculating about the hidden motives of religious folk?
You disprove Gödel by citing another person’s unrelated proof? Can anyone do that, or is it a materialist-only superpower?
Thank you for such a thoughtful comment, @jameslileks, and for the moment of levity.
When I was little, my favorite part of any family gathering was playing with my cousins, but my second favorite part was listening to the older folks talk. You’d hear the funniest stories: some of them were even true.
Do you believe in ideas?
Do you believe in Love?
Do you believe in liberty, or freedom, or evil?
Perhaps he takes a non-materialist view of what can be empirically confirmed.