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Date:         Mon, 9 Nov 1992 01:50:00 CST
From:         Scotto <MOORE7004@ISCSVAX.UNI.EDU>
Subject:      I'm going to get crucified

>	Please excuse me for belaboring some obvious things. What may not be
>so obvious is how crucial to any theorizing of New Ways of Thinking must be
>New Ways of Thinking about death, not only accomplished in the mind but sup-
>planting the deeply rooted version now deep in the mind substance.

Hmmm...to what lengths are you willing to go to supplant such deeply rooted
notions?

>	Reincarnation, for me personally, cannot enable new ways of thinking
>because it presumes a letting go of self-prizing more absolute than I believe
>we should have to go to be assuaged of our melancholy over the sad story of
>our slow decline, decay, and frightful gasping at the end.

Unsure of what exactly you mean by self-prizing.  Equivalent to ego?
"Reincarnation" has always implied to me a sort of reinterpretation of ego, but
so it goes.  "Reincarnation" is a cheesy word and a cheesy concept, but not
entirely without relevance and not entirely unworthy of consideration.

>	For those who can see this passage as like unto a comet streak, or
>the brief intense burning in the night sky then gone, I would ask how they
>able to achieve a present, daily affirmation of life and other's lives and
>all life when it's just a temporary thing.

It is an unfounded assumption that "life" is a temporary thing, unless you are
defining life strictly as a biological process.  The last thing I want to do is
get all fucking metaphysical and mystical and mushy about fucking "life after
death" or whatever...but.  Certain experiences in my life (yay ambiguity) have
demonstrated that I am at this point relatively unprepared for that point in my
physical "life" wherein the human body ceases to be relevant.  However, there
is a precedent for a sort of "training" -- Tibetan monks cruising through the
Bardo, Amazonian ayahuasceros seeking the "guiding spirits" of their ancestors,
Terence McKenna taking DMT and encountering the "tykes" of "hyperspace", even
my own not so prodigious encounters with wood pulp, and hundreds of others.

>Can one not mourn things passing?

Yes, one can not mourn things passing.  As I am incapable of metaprogramming
from within another organism, I'm afraid I can't comment more meaningfully than
to say that it has been my experience that I do not have to mourn things
passing.

>Is it wrong or impossible to attempt to bypass this mourning and melancholy?

Not a bit wrong, and difficult but not necessarily impossible, at least
temporarily.

>Or is the point precisely to tell a new story? And if so, what story is that?

The story of You Living Your Life.  While some might argue that the book of
one's life is predetermined and that one merely goes through the motions, I
maintain that this hints of Platonic idealism, and anyway, it doesn't help you
get through the night, dig?  What kind of story do you *want*?

>I do expereince my life as narrative to some degree, but I find I am locked
>into conventional ideas of decline which inhabit the present and take from it.

Well, knowing is half the battle, know what I mean?

>What story can we believe in that will cure our afflictions of fear, melancholy
>and senses of futility? Can New Ways of Thinking be valid if they merely
>repress death? I take my anti-oxidants, but their efficacy is not unlimited.

I have encountered New Ways of Thinking that do not "repress" death, but
reinterpret it, bringing about entirely different but altogether valid, albeit
state-specific, conclusions about the "afterdeath".  (Tell me about your anti-
oxidants.)

>I wish to thank all the members of fnord who did not delete this message for
>their patience and understanding. I need answers to these questions and always
>have. Many of you have already worked through this, perhaps, so that my
>questions and pondering may seem old and lumbering. All the more reason to
>aid a fellow traveler.

Correct.  I was, I admit, hesitant to post a public reply -- I was afear'd I
might interrupt the poker game, you see.  And since I don't know much about
you, I was uncertain of your sincerity.  And since the normal modus operandi
seems to preclude discussions of this sort, I was afear'd I might be in the
process of an ominous breach of fnordian etiquette.  But so it goes...

>How shall the grisly morbidity of flesh be transcended?

You've answered your own question, my friend.
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