Powerful message with a driving image to hit it home.

Death is just as essential of a life process as birth is.

I don't understand the frenzy to multiply, either, though I think a lot of it is improper information about birth control, especially in poorer countries...
Some countries are still pretty...medieval on their view of reproduction.

But there's still the whole 'must continue the family bloodline!!!!' mindset everywhere.

Too many goddamn people around and so many that don't give a shit about their impact. Interesting how talk about the environment is 'hippie bullshit' buuuut we do live on this place, after all..
Oh well, when our species dies off the planet just regenerates itself and we get some new sort of life forms!



I'm excited to die. I enjoy life and all that but I don't want to drag around this body forever. I don't really look forward to the process but I'm anticipating the liberation.

My thoughts likewise. :)

>"Oh well, when our species dies off the planet just regenerates itself"
That instantly reminded me of this infographic.

I don't think you're a Nazi.

Colour?!

I'm not saying humans need to be concerned about becoming extinct, but I feel sorry for anyone who doesn't think a human life is precious.

Value is a bit... relative.


Found this just now:
A quote:

"Moyers: What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if this population growth continues its present rates?

Asimov: It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor; if two people live in an apartment, and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom.

You can go to the bathroom anytime you want to and stay as long as you want to for whatever you need. And everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the constitution.

But if you have twenty people in the same apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang the door; "Aren't you though yet?" And so on.

In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation.

Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation.

Convenience and decency cannot survive overpopulation.

As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies, the more people there are, the less one individual matters."


The quote may not sound very profound and all, but it's taken from this lecture i found very useful and enlightening (quote starts at 6:00, to be precise) on many issues plagueing our world based on obsession with growth despite the obvious fact of limited resources. (You should prolly start with part 1 if you're ready to watch the entire 1:40 (hours) of it, i think it's worth it though.)

Yeah, I'm always up for free knowledge. Thanks for the link.

Kick the species down to 1 million worldwide. Do it now, fucker!!

Have you read Oryx & Crake?
I always feel guilty when I think I'd do the same...

Never read it. I have read The White Plague, which covers a fucked up way of completely wiping out humanity.

Ah, I see. Judging by the description, O&K has a few similarities, but different motives... and they're hauntingly rational... and the way it happens seems very viable. It's a good book, really, worth a read. Quite short and well written, too.

White Plague is one of the only Herbert's I've ever enjoyed.

So far, for me, I've gone with VHEMT. I see no reason to bring a new human into many of the current countries on this planet. Some of the fairly neutral footprint ones are too hard to get into, and they really don't need more people, and others will be underwater in the next decade.

>>you probably think I'm some nazi wacko for even daring to bring this up

Of course not. :)

Yet I have to wonder: how much of the fear of death is based on a fear that we might be wasting our lives? Would we fear an endless night as much if our days were richer and filled with greater satisfactions, if we could face our deaths with a full sense of completion?

I have no fear of my own death; but I must admit, I ache whenever someone close to me dies, and I would gladly postpone the deaths of my family and friends for as long as humanly possible.




Mark

Yes, I think partly it's because of perceived pointlessness. A sense of life's completeness would certainly help.

But wouldn't satisfaction in life make death seem to be an even greater evil?.. As an extreme example, when a person is very very depressed, death seems not be an evil at all, quite the opposite - an end to pointlessness and suffering, an ironic Nirvana. When one is enjoying life to its fullest, doesn't death seem the more tragic?

>"I have no fear of my own death; but I must admit, I ache whenever someone close to me dies, and I would gladly postpone the deaths of my family and friends for as long as humanly possible."
That's actually one of the reasons i've lost hope in humanity. Not the caring speciffically, as it is a good thing, but the fact that our emotional inclinations override rationality. We even shape our rational thoughts according to our underlying emotions... There's no way out of the many inborn biases that plague us, and those biases will continue to close our eyes again and again. In certain things, a human is far less smart and rational than we are led to believe. If it wasn't so, we wouldn't have this many wars and injustice.

I think this is from some book review and it sort of sums up my thoughts:
"<...> In The Dominant Animal, Paul and Anne Ehrlich trace this evolutionary trajectory and consider the problems that today beleaguer us, “a small-group animal striving to live in a gigantic global civilization.”"

"When one is enjoying life to its fullest, doesn't death seem the more tragic?"

Personally I would say no. Many people who live independent and interesting lives, even shorter ones, are much more willing to face their death, feeling that they haven't wasted their time. The number one thing I hear from those diagnosed with terminal illness or having just lost a loved one is "but they haven't even ____' yet". When people are living for something or someone else, they try to rationalize it by some invisible checklist that they must complete, and are often horrified that they can't make it to the end of the page before their heart stops.
It's a biological drive, an animal one, that makes us "irrationally" value our emotions and the lives of our closest relations, more so than strangers'. What used to be a concern for propagating our dna and our survival skills now also includes propagating our consumer lifestyle, politics and ideas. It's probably ridiculous, yes, but "protecting the family group" is one of the few parts of us actually being a part of nature that we cannot deny.
I also have to argue, even though I personally don't, that believing in an afterlife means a denial of death. Even if someone does believe in something coming later, that still does not give them an opportunity to return to their present life, as it is now, and continue. It is still an end and a death. Still a huge "game over". I just think it has more to do with our culture and the "invisible checklist" than anything.

I really like this. The style is absolutely amazing.

I'm going to take a leaf from Kurt Vonnegut's book and say, "So it goes".

I think people really don't take the right view of death. Maybe we should let it come, maybe we shouldn't, who knows. Death is all about the unknown, which is what makes it so scary.

It's all about balance. With an average lifespan of 72 years, 230,000 die every day. It's always fascinated me that, with six billion people on the planet, in one hundred years the species could still be extinct. It's also intriguing that the most technological and advanced countries see a declining birthrate, sometimes negative. All the population growth is happening where none of the extreme medical interventions are an option, where they are living in conditions that the first world would have cringed at even a hundred years ago.

I'm personally all for extending lifetimes - the real problem is the birth rate, not the death rate. Even if we all lived 230 years including, say, 180 healthy years, if the worldwide average was for everyone to have 2.1 children through all that time, population would still remain stable. Seeing how the birth rate seems to be dropping continuously, I think we're actually very likely to start seeing worldwide depopulation before the end of our lifetime, lest our consumerist system changes (as, so far, it seems new superfluous needs are met by... not having children, whom are apparently too expensive).

I actually think that's good news. Slow degrowth to about, let's say, 3 billion people would truly solve a lot of problems - and assuming consumerism survives up to a degrowth, that would also finally put an end to the stupid "economy MUST constantly expand!" attitude, since that relies on an ever-increasing pool of consumers.

Likewise, I do believe in Global Warming and other impending disasters, but what's the worse they could do? Kill people and lower the population. You say we're cheating nature - I say we just THINK we're cheating, and the rules are going to get back to us one way or another. And if the only way to regulate population growth is through ecodisasters, famines and epidemics, then so be it - we'll have deserved it.

Humanity went through the Black Plague, an ice age and a mini ice age, Europe went through complete fall of civilization that lasted decades to a few hundred years, China survived the Three Kingdoms era, where population dropped to a fracton of what it used to be... in short, bleak things might happen in our future, but humanity won't be destroyed by it. Maybe those ridiculously major events are the only way to control human population, all with our resilience and lack of control, but they're nature's way nonetheless. Eventually we'll be wise enough to understand all this, and we'll have the power to make things smoother (as everyone dislikes unstability, that would seem like an obvious goal for humans), but now is seemingly not the time - we are still too stupid. So let the waves of death slam right on us every few centuries until we accept we also could impose ourselves limits and make our history that much smoother.

this piece is gorgeous, in a very thought provoking way.

"But why fear death itself? Did you really feel bad when you were dead for billions and billions of years before being born?"

I often find myself bringing up a similar statement when I meet people who can't fathom the idea of there being no afterlife because it's too scary for them to think about.

This is pretty creepy in a cool way. Another hit here :D

The God or Master Force in this universe, has a good sense of irony: if you fear death, it will follow you everywhere until you get killed or die prematurely. But when you embrace death, you will welcome it when it comes - it avoids you for as long as possible and leaves your end to the last possible minute.

Now back to the real topic. 6.7 billion? +200'000 a day.. And wherever you got this exerpt and whoever wrote it was a nutcase. World is overpopulated as it is. Birth control, that's what everyone need. Mass sterilisation to prevent unneccesary/unwanted/accidental births and keep the average number in human population.

China, going back about 5 years, passed a law that a single family is allowed 1 child (or two, depending on a criteria which I can't recall) . So, naturally, the population slowly decreases with each generation. 4 (2 families) produce 2 (offspring) then those 2 offspring produce 1. Imagine that on a scope of 1 million families. 500'000 - 250'000, 175'000 ect, ect..
Obviously, there are people who oppose such decisions and will breed regardless of the amount of resources we have left on this earth.

I could carry on, and on, and on.. XD I'll stop here for now.

<imho>

'Humans', or 'humanity' as such is not a biological entity, I think.

The interface is biological

Rest is the 'software'

A lot of time has passed since we 'happened' in the real world, like, idk, dogs, cats, chimpanzees?... now we happen in our own heads. The semantic layer that won't let you see the world without interpretation... The ability to perceive fiction... imaginations never being the same in the real world... subjectiveness of perception (killing someone for sexual pleasure, for instance... the pleasure takes place only in the murderer's head, not anywhere else, so it's a kind of an elaborate virtual reality... The murderer stimulates himself into a perfect illusion, the reality is just a tool for the experience. For someone that doesn't have susceptibility to this kind of stimulation, murder is unthinkable)

Related stuff on Wikipedia thay may give you brainfood:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus (related to personal identity vs. brain construction)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_point (the part that the universe can contain infinite amount of information)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information-theoretic_death

the article on personal identity is cool as well...



Nevertheless, I think we overvalue existence and said personal identity... and are quite stupid and unaware of our own existences as a specie, generally...

It's all about having fun and interacting with the world... no metaphysical bullshit. The longer you live, the more time you get to interact with the environments, and the bigger the scale you can do that on...

argh no time fuck am i even making sense

</imho>

:)

cool arts btw

Thanks for the comment. It does make sense, and i agree mostly.

Imho, "software" is also biological... in a way it's also material - it can't exist without hardware. And unlike computers, it requires a speciffic kind of hardware to exist in the same kind of state, you can't transfer this "software" from one brain to another, brains are different (unlike computers, who have to be compatible with each other) and the "software" is linked to the neurological pathways and general workings too much.

Thanks for the links too, they're great reads.

+fav'd for the included rant/reasoning behind this as much as for the art. Really cool stuff.