from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Keeping Death in Mind + NEWS

Dear friends,


This Sunday we are discussing: Keeping Death in Mind.

Before anything, everyone is invited to the Centro Segoviano TODAY
Friday, 19 December at 19:30pm for: Fiesta de los Abuelos 2014 organised
by the Centro Segoviano and the President of the Centro, Antonio Horcajo
Matesanz, will be presiding during this Festive season's event.
More details here:
http://philomadrid.blogspot.com/2014/12/fiesta-de-los-abuelos-2014.html

As for our topic, Ruel has sent a link to his essay:
Hello Lawrence,
Below is the link to the essay I wrote on Sunday's PhiloMadrid topic:

http://ruelfpepa.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/on-keeping-death-in-mind/
Thank you. See you on Sunday,
All the best,
Ruel
------
And finally a few thoughts on the topic for Sunday:

It seems that we have evolved over millions of years precisely to keep
death out of our mind. We spend most of our day without thinking about
death and when we do we try to dismiss the topic as soon as possible. On
the other hand, it is a fascinating topic; the success of Hollywood in
depicting death as entertainment is testament of our fascination with
death.

But death is one of those catastrophic events that not brings about a
complete opposite effect to the original body, but it is the start of
disappearance process of the physical existence of a living thing. Death
is the final act into oblivion.

So basically death is not only contrary to our nature as life givers,
but thinking about death has to be a conscious and distasteful effort
for us. There is no doubt that our lives would probably be different if
we did think more about death; maybe we'd be more organised and act with
the future in mind rather than live in the present. Religious people
seem to dwell on death more than one would expect to be normal. But then
again one can understand religions in their historical context when most
of the population lived and died over shorter periods than us today and
maybe through more horrible causes. But then again if we did think too
much about death we might just give up on life and wait for the fateful
day.

And giving up on life is not what we're supposed to do; it is bad enough
that we ask questions like "what is the meaning of life?" that hint at
some underlying scepticism about nature's programme. Today we even go
further and seek the help of science and therapy to deal with morbid
ideas of dying and death.

Moreover, the last thing we want to do is think too much about death
that might lead to questions such as "Is life worth it?" These type of
questions are seriously against the raison d'être for living system.

However, if thinking too much about death might lead us into a grinding
halt in our desire to live, maybe thinking too little, and live in the
present, might itself lead to unintended consequences. And some of those
unintended consequences might be over population, that wouldn't be so
bad if we were ahead of the game of resource distribution. Maybe,
societies that live too much in the present and think very little about
the future might run out of resources too soon that can easily lead to
disputes with neighbours.

It seems to me that what is at issue here is "how much should we keep
death in mind?"rather whether actually to do so.


Best Lawrence

tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com <mailto:philomadrid@gmail.com>
Blog: http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/
<http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/>
PhiloMadrid Meeting
Meet 6:30pm
Centro Segoviano
Alburquerque, 14
28010 Madrid
914457935
Metro: Bilbao
-----------Ignacio------------
Open Tertulia in English every Thursday from 19:30 to 21h at
O'Donnell's
The location has changed for this tertulia but I do not have the details
yet: http://sites.google.com/site/tertuliainenglishmadrid/
<http://sites.google.com/site/tertuliainenglishmadrid/>
----------------------------



from Lawrence, SUNDAY PhiloMadrid meeting at 6:30pm: Keeping Death in
Mind + NEWS