As we get into the later years of our lives, after we’ve lost a parent (or both) and more than a few school chums, we start to consider, perhaps for the first time, our own mortality.
Dylan Thomas is best remembered for his poem that begins: Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
As shown at left, however, the Stoics had a far different, and, I would suggest, healthier approach to that event that ultimately confronts all of us.
Their Latin saying, Memento mori, “remember that you [have to] die’, may sound equally macabre, but it carries the same life affirming concept as does “Carpe diem.” Make every moment count, toward whatever you wish to achieve for yourself, and/or for those around you.
At left is something that theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said shortly before he was executed by the Third Reich for his protest against the fascist regime.
Most of us have had the thought he expressed here. We may be talking with an old friend who went to a prestigious college and showed when we were young considerable intelligence, who now, when it comes to world politics is now limited to the talking points of Newsmax and Fox News.
How did this happen?
Nobody knows, but, over the last couple of decades, this subject has caught the attention of neuroscientists who believe that liberals’ and conservatives’ brains are internally connected differently from each other.
As an example, tests show that the brain activity of self-identified liberals and conservatives are vastly different when experimental subjects are shown photographs of potentially threatening animals, like spiders and snakes. Those who think of themselves as conservatives have brain activity that show fear and hatred, while self-described liberals’ brains suggest that they perceive such animals as simply members of the planet on which we live.
Maybe no one is to blame; perhaps we just live in different worlds of consciousness.
Those hankering for a great read on this subject, albeit fiction, should check out Ian McEwan’s masterpiece “Saturday.”
At left is an interesting thought exercise. Here’s everything I can think of, and it’s not much. When I was in elementary school in the early 1960s, it was believed that:
The main types of rocks: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous, had been in place and remained the same since the formation of the earth. Now we have the “rock cycle,” where rock compounds are known to be continually changing form over very long periods of geologic time.
Every atom in our bodies and elsewhere on our planet is the result of the explosion of stars somewhere in the universe. As Neil DeGrasse Tyson puts it, “You are in the universe, and the universe is in you.”
Science Is Not a Set of Facts; It’s a Process of Learning More About Our Universe
The support for Alberta’s seceding from Canada is about 5%, according to a physician I know up there.
I know it’s hard to believe, but Fox News is a thoroughly dishonest organization.
-
Climate Change8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases8 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change Videos2 years ago
The toxic gas flares fuelling Nigeria’s climate change – BBC News
-
Renewable Energy5 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits