When I first heard about Freud's death instinct, I thought it was balderdash. Who wants to die? Put someone on a roller coaster, and they seem to want to live, seem to be afraid of dying. Maybe sometimes we get twisted up and the instinct to live gets obscured.
Then I lived a little bit more, and there comes a time when the accumulated mistakes and problems just feels like too much. I've fought the negative undertow for my whole life (like everyone else, I expect) but now it's solidified into a desire not to exist any more.
I'm not suicidal and I'm not going to act on it. I don't have intent or a plan. It's passive suicidal ideation. If a meteor was heading for the earth and we couldn't stop it, I'd have some feelings about the loss of control about ending it, but I would also reflect that I agree with the cylons on Battlestar Galactica--humans never really asked if they deserve to exist.
Escapism, materialism and denial are the standard response to the flood of negative information. I turned on the radio and heard college students talking about being raped. The slow response to Ebola in Africa. The fact that white police officers often kill black citizens.
The flourishing of apocalyptic and dystopic science fiction is just one indication that society wants to put an end to itself.
Forget it that the ozone layer has gotten better, and that medical advances have extended life. Forget it that it's no big deal that women aren't dying in child birth as much any more. There's good and bad, but I can see the death instinct now.
The death instinct is all that negative energy flowing into a full blown intention, not just skittering negativity. It is the active wish to no longer suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I could tell you horror stories, that I can't unhear. Death will unhear them.
Why am I so sensitive, why can't I just walk it off, buck up? It's the weariness of elderly people who have seen enough. Suicide is no joke, but if the universe existed for billions and billions of years, and that it's going to exist for billions and billions more years, we're pretty insignificant blips. And yet as a group we have a hard time thinking beyond our life spans and acting on it.
I'm going to live for my children, and I'll try and take as much joy in it. But now I can imagine a death instinct. I'm interested in seeing what's written about it.
Cupio dissolvi is the desire to be dissolved into Christ. Maybe there is a spiritual aspect to it. I think there's almost something spiritual about fight club, it's the unwillingness to take your own personal welfare so seriously. That may be pathological, but it could also be a devil may care attitude. Trying to conquer fears. If we truly looked at how fears rule our lives, we'd stop calling others cowards. Amoghasiddhi has the mudra of fearlessness.
Not just fearlessness in the face of death but also fearlessness in the face of the death instinct.
Then I lived a little bit more, and there comes a time when the accumulated mistakes and problems just feels like too much. I've fought the negative undertow for my whole life (like everyone else, I expect) but now it's solidified into a desire not to exist any more.
I'm not suicidal and I'm not going to act on it. I don't have intent or a plan. It's passive suicidal ideation. If a meteor was heading for the earth and we couldn't stop it, I'd have some feelings about the loss of control about ending it, but I would also reflect that I agree with the cylons on Battlestar Galactica--humans never really asked if they deserve to exist.
Escapism, materialism and denial are the standard response to the flood of negative information. I turned on the radio and heard college students talking about being raped. The slow response to Ebola in Africa. The fact that white police officers often kill black citizens.
The flourishing of apocalyptic and dystopic science fiction is just one indication that society wants to put an end to itself.
Forget it that the ozone layer has gotten better, and that medical advances have extended life. Forget it that it's no big deal that women aren't dying in child birth as much any more. There's good and bad, but I can see the death instinct now.
The death instinct is all that negative energy flowing into a full blown intention, not just skittering negativity. It is the active wish to no longer suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I could tell you horror stories, that I can't unhear. Death will unhear them.
Why am I so sensitive, why can't I just walk it off, buck up? It's the weariness of elderly people who have seen enough. Suicide is no joke, but if the universe existed for billions and billions of years, and that it's going to exist for billions and billions more years, we're pretty insignificant blips. And yet as a group we have a hard time thinking beyond our life spans and acting on it.
I'm going to live for my children, and I'll try and take as much joy in it. But now I can imagine a death instinct. I'm interested in seeing what's written about it.
Cupio dissolvi is the desire to be dissolved into Christ. Maybe there is a spiritual aspect to it. I think there's almost something spiritual about fight club, it's the unwillingness to take your own personal welfare so seriously. That may be pathological, but it could also be a devil may care attitude. Trying to conquer fears. If we truly looked at how fears rule our lives, we'd stop calling others cowards. Amoghasiddhi has the mudra of fearlessness.
Not just fearlessness in the face of death but also fearlessness in the face of the death instinct.
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