tillingborn wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 12:00 am
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 03, 2021 5:25 pmAt 58, your strongest and healthiest years are behind you. You're almost 60....
Go to an old folks home. Spend a few hours with the patients there. Consider their state, and ask yourself if it's a future you hope for yourself.
Do you think telling a 58 year old that they are almost 60 is informative? Did you have to go to an old folks home, spend a few hours considering their state to decide that's not what you want?
Well, you said you didn't know why death is a problem. Now you do.
You are here now. Whatever eternity is, you are part of it. You are part of the truth. You are also part of the structure of eternity; your body and mind are part of physical reality and the waves and ripples they cause always will be.
As Robert Browning pointed out so long ago, to console ourselves thusly is a a cheat. For it is not actually "you" that persists, given Materialism...just fragments of dust. And as that story goes, the universe itself will one day be homogeneous in energy level, spread out and silent for all of eternity...this is Heat Death, the final death, from which there is no recovery.
Death gets all and everything, unless God intervenes. Fortunately, He already has.
You can doubt or criticize the "popular mandate." It's not God, either.
Of course you can doubt and criticise, but when you refuse, you are no longer democratic.
Are you imagining that protest, or objection, or reasoned debate, or criticism in the media, or even forming a new party, are not "democratic," and that there's something "democratic" about resigning oneself to being controlled by a single, monolithic party?
It would be hard to make that case.
In democracy, public debate, public exposure of issues, and contention between multiple parties and their supporters is part of the process, and is also one of the checks-and-balances against tyranny. That's why there's a vote every four years or so.