I really like this music video's portrayal of death. Beautiful. What do you think of it? Do you know any other music videos/songs that portray death beautifully? What do you think happens when we die? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v27TRan1SBI"]Cage The Elephant - Shake Me Down - YouTube
I like that band. That's the first time I've seen the video and although I don't think it touched me like it seems it has you, I like it a lot. They're from a small town not far from where I live. Before they were signed they would come here to play all the time, it's how they got their name out there. Since they've hit big there's been several bands from that town showing up here. A couple of which are seeing similar success.
I think when we die we ascend into some sort of higher realm of complexity... infinite complexity. Some kind of state of information tangentiality. I think ever since it began the universe has been in a state of asymptotic acceleration... Ever since the big bang the universe has been in a process of advancing into complexity. Science holds forth the law of Thermodynamic Entropy as one of the central tenants of the universe, and this states that all systems eventually wind down into a state of entropy or disorder. This would be all well and good in a universe without biology, and much less a universe without complex conscious humans (and all our tools and technology). However this is not the case. I think the law of thermodynamic entropy completely ignores the importance of human beings and the way our own destiny will probably one day be as important in shaping the eventual fate of the universe as physics and chemistry are today. I think some sort of transcendental process is underway on this planet, and that somehow or another human beings are central to it. The universe is not winding down towards a state of entropy at some point billions of years in the future, where all systems will fall apart and that'll be all she wrote... I think quite the opposite is happening here. I think the universe is churning out complexity. It pushes complexity in all of its domains; physics, chemistry, biology, technology, culture etc. Whenever and wherever the prerequisite conditions for a higher level of complexity can be met, the universe will always bring forth that new level of complexity, every time it's given an option it seems to choose novelty over habit. And I think that somehow or another, human beings are the cutting edge of this process. Originally, complexity advanced very slowly. The big bang happens, and for a while afterword there were no stars, no atoms, no molecules, it was an ocean of plasmic-energy. As time passes, the universe cools and as it cools it advances complexity; when it cools to a certain point, physical laws come into existence. When it cools more, atomic structures can form, then matter, then stars, then pre-biotic life, and so on and so forth until you get all the way up to this very day, as we all sit here right now, in this very moment chatting to each other on HipForums. And I would be confident in saying that this is probably the most complex moment to have occurred in the universe to date. The suits who run the world possess sets of statistically generated curves that when propagated into the future they all lead to the unimaginable and its in less than 100 years... I think most people have this intuition; things cannot go on as they have been going on for much longer. How many of us can envision what the world might look like 1,000 years from now? It's hard to imagine because look at how much the world has changed in just the last 15 years. The world is about to become unrecognizable and I think this is a genuine intuition in most people; our religions traditions sense this upcoming transformational event, but I believe that they have interpreted it wrong. Indeed a trascendental event looms large but it is not the apocalypse in the sense of the end of biological life and the destruction of the planet... it is a transformational event where we ascend into a higher domain of existence, a realm of higher (possibly infinite) complexity. This is all McKenna 101 by the way, but I would submit to you that on some level it is definitely true that the universe (ever since its very inception) has been advancing into higher and higher states of complexity. This complexity accrued very gradually for a LONG time after the big bang. It took a long time for "emergent properties" (physical laws, subatomic systems, matter, etc) to come about. But once certain properties and systems emerge, it uses them to churn out even more systems and more components, and it does this at an ever accelerating rate. Each dip into complexity occurs faster than the advance into complexity which preceded it. By the time you get to this moment in 2013, the complexity is moving at astonishing rates... in fact human life in the modern age is pretty much a constant race to keep up with an ever complexifying and evolving world. So I think this is a signal that the universe is not winding down toward entropic heat death, but instead it's moving toward its own completion and somehow or another we are going to be central to that process. The universe is an engine for the production and conservation of complexity. So I think what humans represent is the cutting edge of a universal design which discourages habit and stability and predictability, and encourages and rewards complexity, progress, diversity, etc. With our tools and our technology, we are slowly conquering space and time itself... I think biology is some sort of chemical strategy for the conquest of dimensional space/time. I think we're involved in some kind of ascent into the divine, or the unimaginable. McKenna would say we are on a collision course with the transcendental object at the end of time, and when we meet it, everything will be different. And the world as we know it today will cease to be. So what do I think happens when we die? Well first of all, let me explain my thoughts on this. I think that the primary function of the brain might be reductive. I agree with Huxley here in that the brain might be some kind of reducing valve for what he called "Mind at Large." Because we are biological creatures embedded in some sort of informational matrix known as three dimensional space and time, the sheer amounts of data that come at us in conscious experience would simply overwhelm our survival instincts and we'd end up merely a fossil trace in the shale. In other words, we need to filter out relevant/useful sensory information from the irrelevant/unimportant sensory input so that we can survive in a world of natural selection. And most sensory input that comes to us from the external world is NOT immediately relevant toward our survival. So I believe the brain is a sort of filter; its constantly scanning the external world and making subconscious decisions about what information is useful/pertinent for the organism and what information can be safely discarded or ignored. I'm not entirely convinced that the brain is generating consciousness, I think that the brain is a receiver of consciousness. If science is right then you should be able to wire up a brain in a petri dish, connect all the neurons, get all the cells in place, have a source of metabolic energy, and once you get it all hooked up properly the brain should be fully conscious. Obviously we cannot do this, but if we could theoretically, even if we could I don't think it would produce consciousness. So I would say the brain is a receiver, an antenna... Therefore when the brain dies, the signal is still being broadcast. What will death look like? I have absolutely not a clue. But I am betting on the fact that it will be either nothing happens, or else it will be so extremely and infinitely complex that we cant even grasp it as a concept.
I do imagine and hope it's beautiful. I think our life and memories do flash before our eyes. I believe in reincarnation so I think we review lessons learned and those that still need to be learned. I think it will be very peaceful.
I've always felt this was one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. I makes death sound to beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWvqjLxd14M"]Slayer - Spill The Blood - YouTube
It's a lot of work explaining something like this-but I'm going to try to in a short quick way- You know the idea how crazy people, people in the middle of a war, or people going thru great strife will 'invent' realities to deal with what is happening around them or to try to help explain these things. Current cosmological thinking is that we, that how we see reality around us, that how we deal with it, how we understand it is based on a few "crazy" people in our ancient history, maybe they were bipolar, saw things in a different way, but they allowed a few of our ancient ancestors to deal/understand the world and flourish. The way the we deal/understand time is one of these concepts. Some "thinkers" don't think that we understand the idea of time. That time is not a constant in the universe. Time is being re-understood as a three dimensional tube-something the we can understand as forward and backwards (two dimensional) is more like a straw that you can go forward and backwards and also left and right. (picture an ant walking around a straw) We lack senses that some other animals have. We only see a small percentage of the light spectrum, we can't 'see' heat like some animals, we can't see at night, we don't sense magnetic waves like some birds can 'see', bats 'see' with sound. There are probably animals with senses that haven't even figured out to look for yet. Our thoughts/questions are based on our senses. And are limited to our senses. Our senses 'suit' us and allow us to live in the reality that we have 'built' around us. These 'senses' have defined our understanding of our world and our universe. Think about what an ant could 'understand' about his universe based on his observations and how he sees the world. Whales, elephants, dolphins are many animals that we think are very smart and have some sort of understanding about their world. There is a cool drawing of a man on a pier who has tied a large rock around his waste with a rope and is about to throw the rock into the ocean (trying to kill himself) when he sees a fish who has tied a balloon around his waste which has 'floated' him out of the ocean (both are trying to kill themselves-both in the same way-but...their worlds are opposite) We are looking for life on other planets not based on our biology anymore. We are carbon based. Life in other worlds may be based on other compounds that we have-but have no idea how life would be-like silica life forms. Life forms that survive on arsenic, mercury, and other things that would kill us. Anti-matter, 21 dimensions, a universe that may be right next to us, inhabiting the same space as we are, might be right there. Maybe an unlimited number of universes where every choice that I made, another of me made the opposite choice. Study thoughts, thinking, theories about the world. But realize that we are just a little more 'advanced' as those guys who argued that the world is flat or round 500 years ago. Imagine what we'll be thinking about when you're 50.
Absolutely! Excellent post my friend. See my post you quoted, I edited it right after I originally posted it. I did not see your post before I edited mine, but I touched on some of those issues in my edit. One question, and excuse me because I know its a stupid question... If time is being remodeled as a sort of tube, what does that do to relativity theory? Are the equations of relativity theory based off any assumption (or calculation) about the nature of time or am I just completely missing the point? Again I apologize, I lack even a basic understanding of physics. But if there is new science and new mathematics emerging that is describing time differently, it just made me wonder whether or not relativity would hold up or would have to be re-worked in some way... My guess is that it holds up, as it seems to have not failed us yet. What do you think the universe is, Kevin? What do you think happens when we die? I'm interested to hear your cosmology and what you think "the scoop" is here, so to speak... What do you think of the idea that the universe is an engine for the generation and conservation of ever-increasing complexity? I think this has been overlooked (or maybe simply discarded) by science, and I think its a very important clue in figuring out what may be happening with the universe. I tried to explain this theory a little better in my edited post, but I still don't do it justice. McKenna was the only one who could speak on these topics with such elegance. But anyways, you're an interesting and highly intelligent guy; I wanna hear what you thinks going on here. What do you think this is? Lay it on me :afro:
When I die let my ashes float down the Green River Let my soul roll on up to the Rochester dam I'll be halfway to Heaven with Paradise waitin' Just five miles away from wherever I am...
this isn't a music video, but this movie, and especially this scene, kills me.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAvoR20o9s4"]Big Fish (8/8) Movie CLIP - The Story of My Life (2003) HD - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLiDt44uQfQ"]Entrance - Prayer Of Death - YouTube Love this song. Don't care much about music videos.
In Solitude - To Her Darkness - YouTube The video makes it a bit more obvious but never has there been such a beautiful and poetic song about sacrificial suicide. or at least, that's how I interpreted it. Such a powerful song.
That's John Prine right?! or did you have Johnny Cash in mind when posting? I think John Prine may have covered the song.. Anyway, My dad loves John Prine... he had me listening to his songs since I was young. I actually enjoy most of his songs.. he's a wonderful musician.. always very heartfelt and fun.
