Counter-Currents
“Death found an author writing his life. . .” from Edward Hull’s Danse Macabre, 1827.
1,180 words
It always sounds silly to me when people tell the dead to “rest in peace.”
Practically speaking, don’t you have to disturb their rest to tell them that? It makes about as much sense as nudging someone who’s snoring to say, “Hey — HEY! Wake up and go to sleep.”
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14 comments
Goad’s Wager: YOLO
If your future tombstone doesn’t say “Do Not Disturb,” I’ll be disappointed. 😎
This article strikes me as a corollary to the “Too Smart to be Happy” idea. It seems that intelligent people have difficulty believing in various religions, in modern times, but this doesn’t mean that they can’t understand the utility of religion.
Religion can be a method of controlling the masses and steering them away from hedonism. I don’t believe that’s a bad thing. There are ways of living that suit intelligent people, which don’t work well for the left side of the Bell Curve. Religiosity serves them well.
Well Doctor, I think you’ve nailed it however unintentionally and insufferably. It must be sad indeed to know everything because you are so very much smarter than the rest of us rubes. You geniuses know how everything was created and what it all means so there is just no joy to be had at that point. I guess us idiots should be grateful for our happy stupidity. Then again, maybe I am smarter than you because if I thought this was all there was and there would be no ultimate justice I would kill a whole bunch of dirtbags then myself. How about instead you consider the vast complexity of every living thing and the system that makes it all possible and know that you know next to nothing so maybe you’re wrong about God, too.
Are you for real? Your reply is a bit hysterical. I’ll pray for the redemption of your soul.
Mr Goad should read Rupert Sheldrake’s “The Science Delusion” — not to make him believe in God, merely to give him the humble pie that he so justly deserves
I retract my comment. I wrote it in haste without reading the last couple paragraphs of the article. Let’s just say the article rubbed me the wrong way until I read the closing lines. Apologies to Mr Goad.
The Buddhist take on rebirth is complex and varies according to tradition. The way I understand it is that consciousness is a component which continues to exist after death in the same way as physical components. Consciousness is what can be said to be reborn, but it is impersonal; it is not what Christians understand as the soul. In practice, Buddhist cultures have tended to embellish impersonal consciousness in a way which makes it more like a personal soul.
“These belief systems have such perennial appeal to humans precisely because they offer comfort to biological organisms who are hardwired by evolution to perceive one’s eventual nonexistence as a fate worse than hell”
This is the opposite of the truth for Buddhism. The First Noble Truth – that life is suffering – means that rebirth is nothing but the continuation of suffering. We seek to escape this by attaining nirvana. It is YOLO retards who comfort themselves by telling themselves everything’s going to be alright after death. Sorry, but you don’t escape your suffering that easily.
“Sorry, but you don’t escape your suffering that easily.”
We’ve found the armchair sadist! Even better, we’ve found a bitter Buddhist! Sounds like an evening at the bar with you would be an eternity of suffering. Pray tell, Bodhisattva, what’s your evidence that there’s life after death besides wishful thinking and stenographers’ notes from the ancients?
The wishful thinking here is that there isn’t life after death. If only Jim, if only. Not bitter, just realistic, as you flatter yourself to be.
The evidence of life after death is all around you, in the eyes of every living person you meet, and in the constant renewal of the world: where did all this life come from? The only way to sustain your worldview that ‘death is an eternal sleep’ (to recycle a popular phrase from the French Revolution, that orgiastic paroxysm of mass killing), is to pretend, as modern materialists do, that all this life is nothing but dead matter, that consciousness is just electro-chemical impulses in the brain – in other words that we’re already dead. But this is obviously a lie.
“Not bitter, just realistic, as you flatter yourself to be.”
Yeah, I stand by my previous assessment of “bitter Buddhist” and toss in a “passive-aggressive” just to underline my sense that you’re about 100,000 rebirths away from nirvana.
“The evidence of life after death is all around you, in the eyes of every living person you meet….”
You’re mistaking “Life goes on” with “YOUR life goes on.”
“But this is obviously a lie.”
I’ve trod the Eightfold Path long enough to be wary of anyone who reframes a sincere disagreement as a lie. Pretty sure that’s called “gaslighting.”
PS I’m a huge fan
I am not a believer but I use RIP all the time. To me it means, “May your mortal remains lie undisturbed.”
@ Goad, I’m delighted to hear you have made a full recovery. I’ll do what I can. I will learn to click the beads. I will light candles and incense to Saints Luke and Roch. I will recite the intercession prayers of Saints Camillus and Peregrine. And of course I will donate.
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