Death is coming

The closer death creeps up upon me the less I am able to understand the reasons for life or living.

Yes I have experienced a close family member dying and unlike television it takes decades to handle such a thing. To think I am going to put my family through such a thing when I finally leave is more horrific to me than the thought of death itself.

My life was and is still a learning experience but when all said and done what am I to do with all this accumulated learning over my lifetime if I just die. There is no logic or reason to this.

Long ago I became aware that the God story that is sold to the majority is just a nice story to give mankind with a message of a basic layout of how nice life could be if everyone followed these ideas. Not many in life do and if one thinks about it the good and evil structures actually depend on each other. The good that can be experienced in life is only understood as good when there is it's opposite to compare it to. This is not rocket science only common sense in reality. I am not saying we need to experience bad but understanding in it is needed to appreciate the great things many of us can have in our lives. From birth to death there are many ways mankind helps his fellow man. How many ways can you help?


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Thinking About Clocks in an Abstract Way

By Jim Slate

Slate and Artstone - As you listen to the tick tock of the clock as it sounds its rhythmic beat, you can almost feel time moving, in its steady pace, floating past you stoically as it leads us into the future.

What does a clock do to the psychology of a person? For one thing, it makes you intimately aware of time. Without a clock you can float in the void, content in your isolation from the time and space of everyday life. But as soon as the steady tick starts to sound, you are suddenly grounded, brought back into the slipstream flow of action and events.

Time itself is actually an illusion. It is not a substance which can be felt or experienced, instead it is an idea, an idea that we can measure how much action occurs, by comparing it to other actions. The clock, with its steady rhythmic movement, gives us a constant action, against which we can measure our own lives. How many ticks did the clock move since I started this paperwork? How far did the clock move while I was taking my lunch break?

The clock is really an agreement, by all humans, to abide by this particular measure of time. Without steady timekeeping every person would be free to choose their own understanding of time, with some looking at the sun, others the moon, and still others watching sand flow through a glass.

This agreement allows us to work together, to plan, and to collaborate, even from across the world. That is why accurate timekeeping is so important. Everything that occurs in the modern world has to be coordinated, or the machinery of life would run into itself, and break.

But what is the philosophy of the clock itself? What effect does it have on us as humans? The simple answer is that it is a reminder that you live in a world with other people, and animals, and things, all moving at every moment. During each tick of the clock there are an infinite number of things happening. And you, whatever you are doing at that particular moment, exist in relation to and in comparison to all of those other actions from all of those other people and things.

It can be quite maddening. And yet, at the same time, it gives us a competitive edge, making us stronger, fiercer, and more ready to have meaningful and worthwhile actions, every moment of the day.

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