questions without answers

Let’s put it another way: the majority of time, death doesn’t have anything to do with morality. Death happens. It’s cold and impersonal. Sometimes death happens because of deliberate actions, and in those specific cases, sure, morality might be involved, but I don’t see how it makes sense to look for moral answers when someone dies of old age, or of malaria or leukemia or cancer. What does that have to do with morality and values?

Everything has a moral meaning, a relationship to human value and meaning. Ever heard the expression, draw the moral of the story?

To speak about this question of the relationship of death to human meaning, I will quote my own book:

“Of all man’s gods, Time is the only one that is truly silent. The hand of time idly counts the number of fallen leaves with the same indifference that it counts the numbers of the dead. It is not the hand of time that touches everything with decay, that introduces the singular tragic element of change into people and things. It is the human heart that accomplishes that: present in the note of music that could have risen a little further, the smile that faded a moment too soon, or the embrace that could have been a bit warmer, we find this vanity. In this way even love devours itself for, having merely secured for us a threshold upon which a new order of desires might evolve, it gradually replaces the dissatisfaction and that sorrow which it had rendered virtual with a new sorrow, a sorrow more sublime, more heavenly, more replete. Love ultimately lives only so that it may cease to live. It is fitting that we mortals should only feel love between the beatings of our heart, as one of Castilho’s poems declares. That mortal heart stirs with the contemplation of beauty, and rests in the contemplation of its disappointment. So close are these two moments that they touch upon one another, staining each other to the extent that our desire for any particular thing may be said to be our regret over its dissolution, and that the only true desire which might possess us in this life is the desire for things to have lasted-- for life to have been otherwise. Thus, in every word we utter, in every teaching that warms our spirit, in all of our joys and sorrows, long have we been prepared for that renunciation of things in which all music offends us save for what the dawn’s gentle hand plays upon the harp of still waters; notre cœur eut goûté, dans une paix profonde, to speak with Rotrou, in which all beauty strikes us as quite false save for what the heart can drink in profound silence. Life is only the first note in that unknown song which, long before it has been finished, death will silence.”

Agony? And in between the agonies there is living life to the fullest which may or may not include asking such questions as: ‘Why does anyone die?’

Zorba, in a valiant attempt to answer your question: People die to remind us that we are still living but that one day we too will die.

Life is but one blink of the evolutionary eye. :open_mouth:

“Why are you telling me this?” “Because I think it’s important to be honest” is not said in order to describe the neural pathways and the history of every event that has impacted on your initial genetically-determined neural structure, but as a social justification for action, or a dispositional description. “Why are you telling me this?” “So you don’t make the same mistakes again” is said in an attempt to educate someone, and perhaps to show that you care about them enough that you don’t want them to make mistakes. “Why are you telling me this?” “I have no choice, it’s the physical makeup of my neuropsychology that forces me to act this way under exactly these circumstances” puts you somewhere on the far end of the Asperger’s spectrum.

Cause and effect isn’t purely a one-on-one chain, of course; the events and objects we talk of (especially dealing with human psychology) can be far, far more complex than a Newton’s cradle. Why is it raining? Because the temperature here, the humidity there, the low pressure over the North Sea and that butterfly in China. So instead of talking in this way, there are narratives which pick out salient features of history and tempt us to say that that is the explanation, there are dispositional terms that deal with propensities to act a given way under given circumstances and there are motivations. Which at base may well be deterministic, or purely random, or something else again - but they are not used in that way when we analyse meanings.

If you don’t see how it makes sense to look, and you can’t see an answer that would satisfy Zorba, you could be honest and answer “I don’t know” like Basil. It’s a bit hard on the ego, mind you, especially for those who flatter themselves as more thoughtful or knowledgable than the average.

Or you could think of a different way to frame the question or look at the problem he has that would help him find some way to go on.

this isn’t a story. not everything has a moral meaning. things happen without meaning all the time.

or i could just do as i did, and point out that the question doesn’t make sense. there is no god deciding when it’s our time. people don’t die because they’re finally ready for a higher level of consciousness. there is no “why” like that. people die because the conditions for living are no longer being met. “People die to remind us that we are still living” HAHAHAHA that’s ridiculous.

It makes sense to other people.

and so far none of those people have given a coherent, sensible answer to the “why?” so…it still doesn’t make sense.

I don’t honestly get the impression you’ve even tried to understand. No worries.

i don’t think you’re trying to understand me, so you’re subject to your criticism of me as well. if you say i shouldn’t dismiss his ideas without trying to understand it, then you should treat me the same, unless you’re a hypocrite of course. so try to understand where i’m coming from, and explain to me why i’m wrong.

I have already tried: I think you’re being overly literal and rigid in your interpretation of what the question means and ignoring why it’s asked (although not how it’s asked :slight_smile: ). It’s not a formal logic class.

You even admit that it’s “your paradigm on viewing the world”, which makes your rigidity in the matter (and mockery of those with other paradigms) seem all the more arrogant. You can’t see anyone else providing valid answers, and dismiss the answers that have been offered. Yet if you gave your literalist answer to someone asking the sort of questions in the OP in that context, they’d be dismissed just as you dismiss others. There’s a complete lack of empathy or self-criticism, no consideration of the paradigms others might have, as far as I can see.

I understand that you want to strip everything down, keep it simple, and come up with the definitive answers. But you haven’t, in my opinion, and it seems you don’t want to consider that possibility.

that’s not an explanation of why i’m wrong. that’s an explanation of why i might be wrong. i’m not asking for you to explain to me why i might be wrong, i’m asking for you to explain to me specifically why i am wrong.

it’s like if we did a math test, and you were the teacher and i was the student, and i put a wrong answer and you marked it wrong, and then i asked you to explain to me why it’s wrong, but instead of explaining the correct way to do the question, you told me, “oh you’re wrong probably because you didn’t get enough sleep in the morning.” that’s not the kind of answer i’m looking for. i want to know HOW TO BE RIGHT, and you’re not providing that.

The whole maths analogy shows you’re still thinking rigidly, analytically. I’m not a teacher, you’re not a student, there’s not an answer that I possess and you have to demonstrate that you know or can calculate.

I’m not saying you’re wrong in what you’re saying, only that what you’re saying is not an answer relevant to the question. You can be right in what you say (or not) and not answer the question.

Q: What’s 2 + 2?
A: an addition operation.

if you’re going to tell me i’m wrong, then surely there’s an answer you posses that i don’t, and i’m asking you to teach me that. that’s what’s going on here. i’m asking you to teach me.

Seems to me that this whole “how and why” thing is about looking for purpose… a goal…

Because that’s how we humans operate… or at least, that’s the economic way of thinking about how we humans operate… saves us the truble of having to know the workings of our brains in detail… and if it works, it works…

We know we die because of how our bodies are built, and we know our bodies are built this way largely thanks to random mutation and natural selection… so when you ask “why” you’re helping yourself to the assumption that there’s some kind of goal seeking mind behind evolution and it’s development that indended for us to come into existence and die… and now you want to know what the purpose of that mind is… ???

Are you fucking kidding me???

you’re going to make shit up and then ask questions about the crap YOU, YOURSELF, MADE UP… ???

Go ahead and invent a purpose for the mind you invented… what the hell!!!

“I’m not saying you’re wrong in what you’re saying”

“I’m not a teacher, you’re not a student”

Seriously, are you ignoring what I write, or are you trolling?

Your answer is not the answer the original questioner in context was looking for. I don’t know what the right answer is, but I know wrong answers. This is not some contradiction or hypocrisy or sophistry. There are very, very many questions I don’t know the answer to. But for each one, there are many more answers that I know do not answer the question.

you’re saying i interpreted the question wrong, are you not?

I don’t know how you interpreted it, but I think you answer it in a way that wouldn’t satisfy someone moved to ask it. I’ve said (or tried to say) several times that I don’t have the answer that would do so.

I think this is an interesting point. But I don’t think necessarily you have to assume a directing mind for meaning or purpose - although many people will do so, of course. You could also see it as questioning how to work negatively-perceived events into your own self-made meaning and purpose consistently.