• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Death

S

skinny46

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Mar 8, 2005
Messages
81
11:59pm SA time. This period of night promotes contemplation.

I've been listening to some death metal by a Korean metal band called Battle's Eve. They sing "Death is here". It seems unlikely. Is death an existential experience? What is death? Does it exist as a graspable sentient thing, or is it just a word for that ending of life that we don't understand? The death metalists seem to celebrate it, even yearn for it, as if it were an event worth pursuing with energy, yet they didn't enter into their own pursuit.

Death is inevitable. Is it the only inevitability? Or do taxes take an equal share in that?

Death is often portrayed as spooky and undesirable, but what is it in its essence that causes so many to avoid even discussion of it? It seems these death metalists make some ceremony of the fact that people fear it, and hope to sell records to the peurile ignoramuses that pay for pop. I'm not convinced that it is so easy to court.

I've been in the vicinity any number of times and death has always seemed to deny me its bliss. Is it a fatalistic event, or does it simply happen with no meaning or explanation? Your death is ahead, so think on it for now and post your mortal misgivings on this concept.
 
Surely when they sing 'death is here' (or rather DEATH is here, in the Discworldian sense) they are referring to the cloaked guy with the big scythe. Alternatively, there is the Asphyx which can be outsmarted, caught in a jar and kept at bay, thus creating immortal guinea pigs (and humans).
 
or, are they referring to themselves as death, but not the dude with a scythe, but as the bringers of death, like a murderer?
 
"To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: aye, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action."


Or as Bram Stoker would have it;

“To die, to be truly dead. That must be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”
 
Dr_Baltar said:
“To die, to be truly dead. That must be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”
Click to expand...
Nothing is more poignant than Shakespeare but that. 'Bram' is a funny name.
 
skinny46 said:
Dr_Baltar said:
“To die, to be truly dead. That must be glorious. There are far worse things awaiting man than death.”
Click to expand...
Nothing is more poignant than Shakespeare but that. 'Bram' is a funny name.
Click to expand...

To tell you the truth, it may well be as Universal Studios had it. It's been a while since I read the novel so I'm a little over-zealous in crediting it to Stoker without checking.

Short for Abraham.
 
Now Abraham would have had a few words to say on subject. I heard he was fixing to end his own young child's life had the Almighty not stepped in with a timely "Nah, was only joking". Good thing the big G was there to straighten him out at the last minute. Phew.

I don't believe in god, gods, devils, demons or sprites. H R Giger makes a case for evil, but I'm not so sure it isn't all manmade.

Death is a lense through which many find their 'purpose' in life.
 
Death sucks. :p

But without it, we couldn't have babies and there'd be no time pressure to get anything done.

Focus on living, and the dying will take care of itself.
 
Do you think death is over-reverentialised? I sometimes think that, but at other times I think death is worthy of the circumspection it receives.
 
That cheeky, old Prankster Lord, always up for a laugh. He kills me (perhaps literally).

Humankind abhors a vacuum.
 
skinny46 said:
Do you think death is over-reverentialised? I sometimes think that, but at other times I think death is worthy of the circumspection it receives.
Click to expand...

It certainly helps to give life context.
 
skinny46 said:
Do you think death is over-reverentialised? I sometimes think that, but at other times I think death is worthy of the circumspection it receives.
Click to expand...

Not over-reverentialised (is that a word? I guess it is now...) as unnecessarily tabooed, sanitised, tucked away and silenced. Very few people die at home in our culture these days, which means that a lot of us never see a dead body.

I was with my father when he died and found it both mundane (he had not been conscious for 12-14 hours previously, so the goodbye had happened the night before) and awe-inspiring.
 
So many things in life appear that way: both mundane and awe-inspiring. A bit of a funny paradox really.
 
lordmongrove said:
British scientists photograph death itself and it's pale blue. ...
Click to expand...

This resurgent story (distilled via considerable spin-doctoring) derives from research performed at UCL and published in PLoS Biology in July 2013.

Here's the UCL online notice about the research (with a video):
Wave of blue fluorescence reveals pathway of death in worms
24 July 2013

The final biological events in the life of a worm have been described by scientists at UCL, revealing how death spreads like a wave from cell to cell until the whole organism is dead. ...
Click to expand...
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2013/jul/wave-blue-fluorescence-reveals-pathway-death-worms

Here are the details on the actual research report. The full report is accessible at the link below.

Coburn C, Allman E, Mahanti P, Benedetto A, Cabreiro F, Pincus Z, et al. (2013)
Anthranilate Fluorescence Marks a Calcium-Propagated Necrotic Wave That Promotes Organismal Death in C. elegans.
PLoS Biol 11(7): e1001613.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001613


Abstract
For cells the passage from life to death can involve a regulated, programmed transition. In contrast to cell death, the mechanisms of systemic collapse underlying organismal death remain poorly understood. Here we present evidence of a cascade of cell death involving the calpain-cathepsin necrosis pathway that can drive organismal death in Caenorhabditis elegans. We report that organismal death is accompanied by a burst of intense blue fluorescence, generated within intestinal cells by the necrotic cell death pathway. Such death fluorescence marks an anterior to posterior wave of intestinal cell death that is accompanied by cytosolic acidosis. This wave is propagated via the innexin INX-16, likely by calcium influx. Notably, inhibition of systemic necrosis can delay stress-induced death. We also identify the source of the blue fluorescence, initially present in intestinal lysosome-related organelles (gut granules), as anthranilic acid glucosyl esters—not, as previously surmised, the damage product lipofuscin. Anthranilic acid is derived from tryptophan by action of the kynurenine pathway. These findings reveal a central mechanism of organismal death in C. elegans that is related to necrotic propagation in mammals—e.g., in excitotoxicity and ischemia-induced neurodegeneration. Endogenous anthranilate fluorescence renders visible the spatio-temporal dynamics of C. elegans organismal death.

SOURCE & FULL RESEARCH REPORT: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001613
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top