[smish]

Is life really just dying ?
People say "live your life to the full..blah blah blah..all the time but it lacks substance.
Is it better to regard your life as dying ?

For me, I see it as Birth-Dying-Death.
One may take 10 years, 50 years or 100 years to die.

What is the purpous of death but to die ? what is the purpous of dying but to die for a good purpous rather than to live for yourself and your own selfishness?

[MungBean]

I see it as existence. You either exist or you dont and whatever you choose to do or think or the meanings you attach to things while you exist hold no value outside of that existence.

[18AD]

If life is all about dying, then death is equally all about living.

[smish]

Originally Posted by 18AD

If life is all about dying, then death is equally all about living.

But death is not an experience in life so I dont see how it could be equal ?

Its an interesting one though. Boggles the mind

[18AD]

I was just curious as to why you placed such importance on dying.

Is life really just dying ?

If life is dying, then dying is life.

Neither takes precedence. If you put death first you have misunderstood the life part. If you put life first you have misunderstood the dying part.

If you judge everything by what happens at the end I'm afraid you have missed the point. The point is never just what happens at the end.

Perhaps? Who knows!

[An0n]

“Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.”
Friedrich Nietzsche

One of my favourite Nietzsche quotes; and it sums up what I think about the dying state.

Living is a prerequisite for death; the converse is untrue. :3

[b1nman]

We are something that has come to believe we are alive. It is a definition, one which is an ill faithed attempt to define what it opposes. Life/death just define different aspects of the same process yo!

[Priori]

Originally Posted by smish

But death is not an experience in life

How do you know that? Understood as absolute cessation, then yes, perhaps, but I'm not convinced life or consciousness ends at the point of death of these physical bodies we don.

[MisterEpicurus]

Originally Posted by smish

Is life really just dying ?

I don't know why you phrase it as 'just dying'. You should be happy you're dying because that means your alive. Given the vast amounts of sperm and egg combinations (250 million sperm etc.) you're unlikely to be here to die in the first place. So I wouldn't call it 'just dying'.

People say "live your life to the full..blah blah blah..all the time but it lacks substance.
Is it better to regard your life as dying ?

Technically, we start dying when we're born. Nature has equipped us with the ability to pass on these genes and then die to allow a continuation of the gene. But the living vehicle of the body dies, not the passed on gene.

For me, I see it as Birth-Dying-Death.
One may take 10 years, 50 years or 100 years to die.

Hard to argue with that.

What is the purpous of death but to die ? what is the purpous of dying but to die for a good purpous rather than to live for yourself and your own selfishness?

There is no cycle of life without death. There would be no evolution without deaths, each species has to give way to provide expendable resources to the offspring. Moreover, our bodies cannot live forever, there comes an exhaustion point where processes break down. Either way, it would be horrible to live forever;

"Why will I read this book today, sure I can do it in 1,000 years" attitude.

[Wanchor]

I think it's more of a question of at what point does growth become decay.

[EdenHazard]

Living forever would be awesome, sure you could do all you need to do and then just chillax watching tv for ever on end, then break it up when you need to. Prob would suck at times but it beats not existing anyway.

[Mardy Bum]

Plato said philosophy is a meditation on and a preparation for death. By that he didnt mean the event at the end of life, he meant a death in life because there is no rebirth, there is no transformation without death. So we have to learn how to die and this is accomplished through examination of the self and transforming your old self into a better self. Every time you question a tacit assumption or an unarticluated presupposition there is a death of the self.

[sarkozy]

Lads, Heidegger had a few plum phrases. 'Dasein' or 'being-in-the-world' and, uh, something else in German which meant 'being-towards-death'.

A particular mode of being is the awareness of one's finitude, or mortality.

It's a nearly unique mode of existence in the sense that, and this can be challenged, we're one of the few species if only species that can reflect on their own existence and eventual end of that existence. In other words, we have an ability to experience being as being.

Anyway, Heidegger had a lot to say on the subject. Until him, ontology - the philosophy of being - was a very dry and impersonal thing. He integrated phenomenology and existentialism into a very complex and poetic philosophy which concentrated on unpacking the experience of being (since no metaphysician or scientist could describe that).

[Pedant]

Death is subjective.

[CerebralCortex]

Originally Posted by MisterEpicurus

I don't know why you phrase it as 'just dying'. You should be happy you're dying because that means your alive. Given the vast amounts of sperm and egg combinations (250 million sperm etc.) you're unlikely to be here to die in the first place. So I wouldn't call it 'just dying'.

You sound like Richard Dawkins. I'm not happy I'm dying. I'd prefer a body that had better mechanisms for maintaining the state of my cells thank you very much.

Originally Posted by MisterEpicurus

Technically, we start dying when we're born. Nature has equipped us with the ability to pass on these genes and then die to allow a continuation of the gene. But the living vehicle of the body dies, not the passed on gene.

Hard to argue with that.

There is no cycle of life without death. There would be no evolution without deaths, each species has to give way to provide expendable resources to the offspring. Moreover, our bodies cannot live forever, there comes an exhaustion point where processes break down. Either way, it would be horrible to live forever;

"Why will I read this book today, sure I can do it in 1,000 years" attitude.

Not necessarily true, technically we have the same metabolic processes, i.e. the same damage/faulty machinery that causes aging in human organisms exists from conception. The idea that evolution selects for aging or death doesn't make sense to me and I'm open to correction but I don't think it's accepted as the cause of aging in the bio sciences. That is to say I don't need to die to "pass on" a gene. Wtf is a cycle of life?