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ernest becker has made a lot of is offered the same kind of argument which he calls terror management theory um shanti deva rather in the beginning of how to awaken uh how to lead an awakened 00:36:00 life talks about how terrified we are of death how terrified we are of being nothing how terrified we are what's going to happen after death becker doc talks about the same thing and shantideva 00:36:13 argues that in order to save ourselves from that terror what we do is we try to pause it make permanent and self safeguard this self becker does the same thing says we tend to reify ourselves as 00:36:24 a ball work um against terror to somehow manage our terror and but in any case self does seem the self illusion i think i think that idea is quite right by the way that the fear of death which is 00:36:36 deeply wired into us causes us to posit that self causes us to say hey maybe it can live forever maybe it can be reborn life after life after life maybe it can go to heaven things like that 00:36:48 but i also think the idea that affect is deeply related to our sense of self is really there shanti deva makes this point as well as does david hume um shanti deva uh points out that here's when you really decide you've got a self 00:37:02 it's when somebody insults you or hurts you right so somebody says garfield you idiot an and i immediately said wait a minute i'm a whole lot better than that how dare you talk to me like that i don't feel like my body's been 00:37:13 insulted i don't feel like my mind has been insulted i don't feel like my perceptions or sensations have been insulted i feel like i the thing that's got those things has been insulted and i want revenge at that point so that kind 00:37:27 of effect there or if you do something really cool like win the olympic gold medal in 100 meter sprint like i would love to do um with usain bolt's body um then you think when you're really proud of what you've done the pride 00:37:39 attaches not to my body not to my mind but to me so this idea that affect really brings up that sense of self i think is really important uh hume uh makes the same point in his treatise of human nature for those of 00:37:52 you who want to see this done in western philosophy he thinks that it's pride and shame that really bring up the idea of the self you know i mean when i'm ashamed of something that i'm done that i've done i'm not ashamed of my hand 00:38:04 that wrote badly i'm ashamed of me for having bad penmanship if i didn't give to a beggar i'm not ashamed that my mind did something wrong i'm ashamed that i did i was tight-fisted um and so the 00:38:16 idea that these and these aspects bring up the idea of self i think is very powerful and of course anger as i said earlier is another big one all of these involve egocentric attachment so it's when we're attached to things in a way that really fronts 00:38:29 our ego as the possessor then we find that we're positing that self and so this finishes the first of the three things i wanted to do this evening first was to convince you that you really do think yourself to explain what 00:38:42 that self is and to give some idea of why i think that you have why i think that you think that you have a self um no matter how much you might reject that idea on reflection

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It’s fairly clear now that the current catalog process is too heavyweight. I hope we can move to a lighter workflow in the future that feels more like editing a wiki.

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Technology like this, which lets you “talk” to people who’ve died, has been a mainstay of science fiction for decades. It’s an idea that’s been peddled by charlatans and spiritualists for centuries. But now it’s becoming a reality—and an increasingly accessible one, thanks to advances in AI and voice technology. 

Ik zeg niet dat ik gelijk heb, want wie ben ik, maar ik geef de voorkeur aan mijn benadering.

Les murs du cabinet de travail, le plancher, le plafond même portaient des liasses débordantes, des cartons démesurément gonflés, des boîtes où se pressait une multitude innombrable de fiches, et je contemplai avec une admiration mêlée de terreur les cataractes de l'érudition prêtes à se rompre. —Maître, fis-je d'une voix émue, j'ai recours à votre bonté et à votre savoir, tous deux inépuisables. Ne consentiriez-vous pas à me guider dans mes recherches ardues sur les origines de l'art pingouin? —Monsieur, me répondit le maître, je possède tout l'art, vous m'entendez, tout l'art sur fiches classées alphabétiquement et par ordre de matières. Je me fais un devoir de mettre à votre disposition ce qui s'y rapporte aux Pingouins. Montez à cette échelle et tirez cette boîte que vous voyez là-haut. Vous y trouverez tout ce dont vous avez besoin. J'obéis en tremblant. Mais à peine avais-je ouvert la fatale boîte que des fiches bleues s'en échappèrent et, glissant entre mes doigts, commencèrent à pleuvoir. Presque aussitôt, par sympathie, les boîtes voisines s'ouvrirent et il en coula des ruisseaux de fiches roses, vertes et blanches, et de proche en proche, de toutes les boîtes les fiches diversement colorées se répandirent en murmurant comme, en avril, les cascades sur le flanc des montagnes. En une minute elles couvrirent le plancher d'une couche épaisse de papier. Jaillissant de leurs inépuisables réservoirs avec un mugissement sans cesse grossi, elles précipitaient de seconde en seconde leur chute torrentielle. Baigné jusqu'aux genoux, Fulgence Tapir, d'un nez attentif, observait le cataclysme; il en reconnut la cause et pâlit d'épouvante. —Que d'art! s'écria-t-il. Je l'appelai, je me penchai pour l'aider à gravir l'échelle qui pliait sous l'averse. Il était trop tard. Maintenant, accablé, désespéré, lamentable, ayant perdu sa calotte de velours et ses lunettes d'or, il opposait en vain ses bras courts au flot qui lui montait jusqu'aux aisselles. Soudain une trombe effroyable de fiches s'éleva, l'enveloppant d'un tourbillon gigantesque. Je vis durant l'espace d'une seconde dans le gouffre le crâne poli du savant et ses petites mains grasses, puis l'abîme se referma, et le déluge se répandit sur le silence et l'immobilité. Menacé moi-même d'être englouti avec mon échelle, je m'enfuis à travers le plus haut carreau de la croisée.

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“I’ll love you all my life, and all my death.”

On this road we encounter the psychological obstacles to adoptingnew thinking as recognizable staging posts along the road: denial, anger,bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.

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Developmental cell death eliminates half of the neurons initially generated in the mammalian brain, and occurs perinatally in many species. It is possible that the timing of neuronal cell death is developmentally programmed, and only coincidentally associated with birth. Alternatively, birth may play a role in shaping cell death. To test these competing hypotheses, we experimentally advanced or delayed birth by 1 d in mice (within the normal range of gestation for the species) and examined effects on the temporal pattern and magnitude (amount) of neuronal cell death, using immunohistochemical detection of activated caspase-3 as a cell death marker. In order to detect effects of subtle changes in birth timing, we focused on brain areas that exhibit sharp postnatal peaks in cell death. We find that advancing birth advances peak cell death, supporting the hypothesis that birth triggers cell death. However, a delay of birth does not delay cell death. Thus, birth can advance cell death, but if postponed, a developmental program governs. Advancing or delaying birth also caused region-specific changes in the overall magnitude of cell death. Our findings shed light on the long-standing question of what controls the timing and magnitude of developmental neuronal cell death, and position birth as an orchestrator of brain development. Because humans across the world now routinely alter birth timing, these findings may have implications for current obstetric practices.

This means that neurons in small children are prepared to commit suicide through apoptosis if they are not used. In the case of a crisis, such as lack of oxygen, the apoptosis program starts up and the cells die and disappear. Instead of being treated with adult drugs, newborn infants must be given treatment specifically designed for them, but research on newborn infants involves many special difficulties and unique infant medicines with low-frequency use are not interesting for pharmaceutical companies.

Neuronal cell death occurs extensively during development and pathology, where it is especially important because of the limited capacity of adult neurons to proliferate or be replaced. The concept of cell death used to be simple as there were just two or three types, so we just had to work out which type was involved in our particular pathology and then block it. However, we now know that there are at least a dozen ways for neurons to die, that blocking a particular mechanism of cell death may not prevent the cell from dying, and that non-neuronal cells also contribute to neuronal death. We review here the mechanisms of neuronal death by intrinsic and extrinsic apoptosis, oncosis, necroptosis, parthanatos, ferroptosis, sarmoptosis, autophagic cell death, autosis, autolysis, paraptosis, pyroptosis, phagoptosis, and mitochondrial permeability transition. We next explore the mechanisms of neuronal death during development, and those induced by axotomy, aberrant cell-cycle reentry, glutamate (excitoxicity and oxytosis), loss of connected neurons, aggregated proteins and the unfolded protein response, oxidants, inflammation, and microglia. We then reassess which forms of cell death occur in stroke and Alzheimer’s disease, two of the most important pathologies involving neuronal cell death. We also discuss why it has been so difficult to pinpoint the type of neuronal death involved, if and why the mechanism of neuronal death matters, the molecular overlap and interplay between death subroutines, and the therapeutic implications of these multiple overlapping forms of neuronal death.

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Socialsystems can organize humans into relationships that are sensible and relatively safe holding in checkmany destructive traits of individual humans. The question remains how to achieve a healthy andflexible balance of control that puts the human first. This balance, as will be argued is far from beingcurrently the case.

16:15 - Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations

Both types of inauthentic existence involve running away from the awareness of death, not allowing the fact of death to penetrate into consciousness, not facing up to the human situation, and not undergoing the crucial moral catharsis. So Kierkegaard, Becker, and Socrates all agree: the denial of death is indeed at the center of human inauthenticity. Kierkegaard and Socrates would further insist that authentic human living–the open embrace of life structured by death–can only be rejected or embraced to begin with, because perishing meaning and non-perishing meaning co-constitute conscious existence.

Kierkegaard has essentially this same view of human existence, a view that Becker praises in The Denial of Death. Because we are this tension of opposites, says Kierkegaard, in order to be authentically human we need to accept the mystery and responsibility of participation in both of these dimensions of reality that constitute life structured by death. Most people fall short of this authenticity, he declares. They flee its difficulties. And there are two basic ways of doing this. People either (1) immerse themselves in the dimension of things that perish, the things and pleasures of the world, which allows them to evade the awareness of death: the attitude summed up in the advice to “eat, drink, and be merry.” Or they (2) cling to some false certainty about immortality, imagining that some kind of immortality is their assured possession, and this too allows them to evade the awareness of death.

As Eric Voegelin puts it, “The life of Socrates was the great model of the liberation of the soul through the invasion of death into earthly existence” (Plato, 43). And we come across one of the most memorable formulations of this liberating catharsis in the dialogue Phaedo, where Socrates describes it as “practicing death.” Socrates says that this is what the true philosopher does: practices death. Of course all kinds of people call themselves philosophers. But a real philosopher is easily defined: it is someone who truly loves wisdom. And since wisdom is the ever-deepening understanding of how to live a truly good life, no one can be a lover of wisdom except by continually dying to the perishable and focusing on what is truly lasting, letting the fact and possibilities of death penetrate the soul. True philosophers, Socrates says, “make dying their profession,” and so to them of all people death is least upsetting. And if someone is distressed at the prospect of dying, Socrates concludes, it is “proof enough that he is a lover not of wisdom but of the body (Phaedo, 67d-68c).”

What are the main distractions that keep us from making ourselves morally better? Socrates lists the obvious: material prosperity (i.e., money and possessions and clothes); status and reputation (looking good in the eyes of others); bodily pleasures; and all the emotions that keep us bound to these things. Naturally, Socrates observes, we love these things when we are children. But to cling to them as the highest priorities once we become morally conscious adults is sad–in fact, this is what is a truly shameful way of life. So Socrates chastises the Athenians at his trial: “Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much money as possible, and similarly with reputation and honour, and give no attention or thought to truth and understanding and the perfection of your soul?” (Apology, 29d-e). In order to morally improve one’s soul, according to Socrates, it is necessary to purify it from such distractions. In the dialogue Phaedo, he tells his friends: “The body fills us with loves and desires and fears and all sorts of fancies and a great deal of nonsense, with the result that we literally never get an opportunity to think at all about anything (Phaedo, 66c).” It is simply impossible to steadily deepen one’s understanding of how to become a better person without a sustained effort to break free from these distractions. And this effort, says Socrates, is the true struggle, the true agon, of human existence. People think the real problem in life is to escape harm and death. “But I suggest,” Socrates says at his trial, “that the difficulty is not so much to escape death; the real difficulty is to escape from doing wrong (Apology, 39a).”

it will be worthwhile to develop his idea of a courageous breaking away from culturally-supported immortality systems by looking back in history to a character who many people have thought of as an epitome of a self-realized person, someone who neither accepts his culture’s standardized hero-systems, nor fears death: the philosopher Socrates. When Socrates was brought to trial in 399 BC before a jury of 501 Athenian citizens on charges that included impiety and corrupting the youth, he disappointed most of the jurors (and irritated many of them) by not petitioning for leniency, or appearing intimidated by the penalties he might face if found guilty. And when the jury condemned him to death, he remained composed, and spoke carefully about the consequences of the judgment first for himself, and then for Athens. Through Plato we understand that Socrates’s typical tranquility and self-control never left him throughout his month in prison and up through the final minutes of drinking the hemlock. The eyewitness report has it that he drank the cup of hemlock “calmly and easily,” and had to chastise his friends for their weeping. Combined with other testimony about Socrates’s bravery as a soldier–and the record of his dangerous refusal to obey what he considered to be immoral orders from the leaders of a temporary govemment-all this adds up to the portrait of someone very much at ease with his mortality. What accounts for it? Did Socrates’ courage come from a psychological denial of mortality through embrace of some “immortality system?” Let us look at what he had to say about death to the jurors at his trial immediately after his condemnation. “Death,” he said to them, “is one of two things. Either it is annihilation, and the dead have no consciousness of anything; or … it is really a change: a migration of the soul from this place to another (Plato, Apology, 40c-d).” Those are in fact the only alternatives: maybe its nothingness; maybe it isn’t. Socrates shows himself prepared for either eventuality. Note well: there is no dogmatic assertion of an immortal afterlife here. An assertion like that would, after all, contradict Socrates’ first principle of conduct, which is to never assume that one knows what one doesn’t know. Earlier in his defense speech Socrates had stated the matter about death carefully: “To be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows what one does not know …. [Not] possessing any real knowledge of what comes after death, I am also conscious that I do not possess it (29a-b).”

Human beings are mortal, and we know it. Our sense of vulnerability and mortality gives rise to a basic anxiety, even a terror, about our situation. So we devise all sorts of strategies to escape awareness of our mortality and vulnerability, as well as our anxious awareness of it. This psychological denial of death, Becker claims, is one of the most basic drives in individual behavior, and is reflected throughout human culture. Indeed, one of the main functions of culture, according to Becker, is to help us successfully avoid awareness of our mortality. That suppression of awareness plays a crucial role in keeping people functioning–if we were constantly aware of our fragility, of the nothingness we are a split second away from at all times, we’d go nuts. And how does culture perform this crucial function? By making us feel certain that we, or realities we are part of, are permanent, invulnerable, eternal. And in Becker’s view, some of the personal and social consequences of this are disastrous.

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when we die we go through eight stages according to the buddhist understanding and each of those stages the first four the elements the sort of solidity if you will i we know they're 01:16:07 not solid but from a conventional perspective the solidity elements the liquidity elements the thermodynamic elements the movement the kinetic elements those all dissolve as we die in 01:16:19 the first four and when that fourth one happens there's no more circulation of blood or of air so we don't breathe we have no circulatory you know blood pressure so we're declared clinically dead but 01:16:30 there's four more stages we go through and those are when the mind becomes successively subtler and those are when we get into the non-dual minds that are the most subtle minds and the last 01:16:43 eighth stage it's called worser in tibetan and we translate that as luminosity or clear light it's not light it's not you know but it's the most utter clear clear mind 01:16:57 and that mind if it goes on if we don't die if we meditate on that luminosity and sustain it through our meditation infinitely we can become a buddha and that's why the buddha is 01:17:09 sometimes called a buddhism an enlightened buddha is a deathless state because you don't actually die so those would be the non-conceptual and non-dual minds and just for completeness 01:17:23 those last four minds are called these are technical terms so it won't make much it won't have much give you much understanding white appearance red increase black near attainment and then this worst air this 01:17:35 luminosity so that's kind of the the the road map if you will for for mine and it's not the brain now on the gross level of thinking in our sensory minds there's a very close 01:17:48 connection with you know meant with the brain okay but when you die the brain is supposed to be dead and you're still alive okay and so these more subtle minds 01:18:01 are not related actually to the brain so we could really say that mind is experience it's awareness it's knowing not knowing something but 01:18:12 the act of knowing so the qualities of mind the most important qualities are awareness and clarity so that gives you just some rough idea of the buddhist understanding of mind or consciousness