A lovely, touching, poignant and thought-provoking post from Das Owlmeister. The only bit I didn't like was: "I have not participated in some of the discussions of subjects that have interested me as much as I might have wanted too as i have come, over the years, to realise just how far below those of others here my levels of intelligence and learning fall," since it's cobblers. We're not at Magdalene College now; nobody should feel themselves excluded from any discussion because they regard themselves as not intelligent or learned enough. In an all-too-short life seemingly spent saying wise, profound and beautiful things (how did he find the time ever to do any actual science?) one of my heroes, Carl Sagan, once said:
"You go talk to kindergartners or first-grade kids, you find a class full of science enthusiasts. They ask deep questions. They ask, "what is a dream, why do we have toes, why is the moon round, what is the birthday of the world, why is grass green?"
These are profound, important questions."
He also said:
There are naive questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question.
Kids - unless held back or even damaged in some way, with their natural curiosity quashed and squashed and repressed - don't think of themselves as too dumb or dim to chip in.
I hope that that takes care of that particular bit of nonsense
Back on topic:
By sheer coincidence I heard this morning of the death of Sir John Hurt aged 77, a great, great actor whose career I've followed for many years. In the BBC article reporting his death I found this:
Sir John was knighted in 2015 for his services to drama.
After his [Shaker: pancreatic: a late-presenting, 'silent' cancer not often survived] cancer diagnosis the same year, he told the Radio Times: "I can't say I worry about mortality, but it's impossible to get to my age and not have a little contemplation of it.
We're all just passing time, and occupy our chair very briefly."
which seems rather apposite in the context of this thread. I don't think you have to get to his age (as it then was) to contemplate mortality; but then I think it's a temperamental thing, a matter of nature and character and personality, because some people never think of it (at least perhaps until it's too late - woe betide them, for they die difficult and painful deaths) and others think of nothing else. Spinoza once famously said that: "A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life," which is all very nice and all that if you're Spinoza. It may be true; but I also think it true that Spinoza is amongst the coldest, hardest, chilliest of thinkers who doesn't seem as though he had much truck with ordinary, normal, everyday life as it is actually lived by ordinary, normal, everyday people in the here and now. (Especially if you've waded through the
Ethics). It seems to me to be right, but too icy and remote and Arctic a counsel of perfection. Spinoza was a great, great man; but temperamentally I'm more attuned to Stephen Fry, who relatively recently said (paraphrasing, but not incorrectly I think) that he thinks of death constantly precisely because the end of life is the end of all things and therefore constitutes a, or the, limit: the midnight hour, the last chance to do those things which you want to do that make up an enjoyable, meaningful and worthwhile life. Death is what makes life precious. As someone (I can't now remember who; I read so much, and forget the details) once said, life is at least potentially able to do; death is never able to do. Eternal life is the negation of life and evacuates existence of meaning, worth and value: infinite time equals no incentive to do any one particular thing over any other particular thing at any point whatever, since there is eternity in which to do something, there's no reason to do anything. In other words, in setting a limit or boundary to existence, death is what makes life valuable, meaningful and worthwhile.
Some on here may know that in October 2015 I had a fairly close shave with Mr D., which thank random chance and especially thank medical science via the Leicester Royal Infirmary passed quickly and from which I have had (so far: still time yet) no residual effects or repercussions. It didn't make me think any more of mortality than I already do since I have that cast of mind anyway. Should you survive such experiences however, it's no bad thing to have that bony tap on the shoulder which is a reminder not merely of death but - simultaneously - of life and all it ought be for.
