I see that Marilyn Chambers has recently passed on (man, I don't keep up with the news for shit!). The woman who singlehandedly(sic) kept several major tissue manufacturers afloat during the 1970's recession, and who also answered the perennial conundrum of 'How much wood...?' in her own, singular (or should I say, multiple) fashion. RIP, babycakes. You finally achieved that final 56/100% you were shooting for. And if there IS an afterlife, I'm sure everybody's really happy to see you!
7 comments:
who?
I guess you had to have been there.
I also wasn't there, so what's with the 56/100 thing?
I was probably in a blessed state of non-existance at the time.
(sigh)
TGGP: Marilyn Chambers was the cover girl for the Ivory Snow box (see picture), before becoming a porn star. They advertised their product as being '99 44/100 percent pure'. Delicious irony, yes?
Anon: Yeah, you probably missed Linda Lovelace as well.
When I see people work and perform any type of structured task it makes me think of nonexistence. Why is this? Is it a similar feeling that Camus describes when he talks about the absurdity of existence? Does anyone have any notions about ordinary life activities, culture, etc? Can an individual in a tribal culture understand the absurdity of the life they lead just as much as modern western man understand the absurdity of the life that he leads? Does existential reflection only exist in "post-modern" societies? Can anyone at any time in any culture see the absurdity of living?
compoverde, I would have to know something substantial about your psychology to do more than guess at the answer to the first question, but just going by what you say, you have an analysis of life as so futile that nonexistence is to be preferred, and then you see this futility concretely and constantly manifested in what the people around you are doing, and that is why you are reminded of nonexistence by mundane activities. (It is probably a common occurrence, in philosophical thinkers of all sorts, that they have odd habitual associations between some everyday phenomenon, and some very abstract concept.)
With respect to your other questions, all thoughts have preconditions and those preconditions are not equal. If you don't have a concept of existence-as-a-whole (under whatever name) you can't make a value judgement about existence-as-a-whole, and so on. It should be possible for a sufficiently powerful thinker, especially under the spur of the right sort of experiences, to think the thought 'Life in all its forms is a mistake', in any of a wide range of historical and possible cultures. But the richer the culture is in preexisting philosophy and thought about life, the easier it will be to think such and related thoughts.
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