how to live knowing we will die?

I will try to translate the resume from BNF conference that Marc Goldstein wrote some days ago. I found the ideas more than interesting and I learned many things.

Nicolas Grimaldi talked about life and death that night.

He started by formulating directly the question: how do we know we are going to die? We thing in death indirectly, it is not my death, is something that happens to others not to me. Because death is perceived like an event, we think in death like a risk, something ordinary.

The representation of death.

How can we pretend to represent something that has no representation? Because deaths representation is impossible we have an interior frustration or a void of death representation. So we need to make a choice. We can choose to live in a dimension of representation or in a dimension of reality. Representation is a choice similar to a piece of theatre, the image we want to show to others. Representation is opposed to perception that characterizes reality; observation, the use of our senses. Perception is sensation and feeling. When the pleasure of senses decreases is because the death comes to us and corrupts our perceptions with the ideal of eternity.

Life of extremes passes without perception: gambling, orgasm and shopping. Those instant pleasures are anesthesia for perception. The present is enchanted by the future. The sense of life is then dissipated by representation.

One way to cover the void is to get busy or to forget that time passes. The more we get busy the more we forget about life. Another way is linked to representation, we need to get visible to others, by playing a role; to imitate in stead of using our senses. Its easier to see the role of others in life rather than search for ours.

Learning the sense of life is to learn not to fear death.

Is it possible to fight against violence without violence?

This question was discussed long time ago between a group of pacifist trying to find a sense to the modern wars like Israel controlling Middle East countries or US taking revenge from the 09/11 in Afghanistan and Iraq. In these wars the fights against violence by violence is a paradox.

From the discussion Violence can be divided in three segments:

1. Violence can be useful in a defence situation. Its important to preserve the inside violence for auto defence. Running away is also considered like auto defence from a conscientious analysis of the chances to win. Running away is however temporal because of the necessity of justice.

2. On the other hand the use of violence should be balanced with the respect of the others. That is complex but necessary to establish good relations between the parts. Sometimes communication should go through violence to be effective. Why this is not possible?

3. The Jude Christian culture impedes us to accept our predator nature. This nature is both positive and negative: destruction for creation, desire and violation, conquest and domination. This culture explains the paradox of the modern wars. The desire of conquest is seen like negative and then is difficult to explain the destruction for the simple desire of control. The moral prejudices generate chaos.

The violence is not only shown in war, from the previous arguments I would like to advance a hypothesis: Singapore is a violent country in the sense that the economical desire generates violence into society; other ways of violence can then be expected like a form of defence…

Must the complexity be simplified to hide the inevitable ?

The subject is directly linked to the manipulation of the mass media when they hide the reality to the society with the excuse of protection.

This question is interesting because it can be applied to a couple for example when they lye to protect the other from suffering. Another example is the government or medias hiding social realities to the society.

The first problem is the knowledge of the complexity, sometimes there is a lack of knowledge and the simplification is only misunderstanding. Even if the complexity is well known and then well simplified, there is a danger that the simplification is modified for personal reasons or to take advantage of this knowledge.

The last discussion is about the inevitable, even if there is a good will to protect something from a danger its necessary to think about the danger of hiding the true when the inevitable is in fact evitable.

How to recognize a mind in good health?

This question comes to my mind every time I think I’m getting crazy. Literature, thinking and hard work are ways to reach an idealized mind in good shape. Singaporeans are pushed into high-level competition to have a strong mind and get success. By the other hand Buddhist meditation teach how to perceive the world without mind filters and reduce suffering by stop thinking meaning that the good health is in a relaxed mind more than in a strong one.

From a philosophical discussion in Europe I discovered that the definition of mind in good health is complicated. The first group of ideas converges on the following: most of the time people prefers to value moral aspects to recognize the good health of mind: good or evil, happy or unhappy, altruist or avaricious then healthy or unhealthy in mind. I don’t like this perception because the moral aspects or values are concepts that vary from case to case. But considering the quantity of people who have this opinion it’s important to analyse it. In the case that this is true, then working on developing a good health by reading and studding doesn’t guaranty a good health because we can get bad or good depending on our moral issues. So, what is the point of working hard and study hard in this society? The meditation would then be a better way to get a mind in good health, avoiding the development of a strong mind that could increase evil on us.

The second group of ideas concerns the functionality of the mind. A person who can work and live in a society is supposed to have a healthy mind. This concept is the most interesting because is the base idea for mental health where people gets medicated to be functional; that explains part of the Singaporean Void, where people functions in automatic. Walking on the shops, buying with no real interest in the acquisition but completing a functional task. Some philosophers talk about societies like Singapore like mentally ill. That’s why I disagree totally with the principle of functionality to define a mind in good health; for me it’s the opposite, people are reduced to objects. Anyway, the meditation could also be the best way to have a mind in good health because the society won’t have a pre-programmed social functionality. But with meditation another problem rises: the value of freedom. The idea of freedom and desire is stopped in a non-thinking mind. Freedom is also annihilated by functionality in Singaporean society.

The search for a mind in good health is complex and this is only a start to try to understand part of the reasons of the void. Occidental philosophy tells that you can have a good health in mind with the exercise of thinking but this exercise can be dangerous for the well being of the society. The Singaporean void can be considered as a clear evidence of the lack of health in Singaporean minds.
The understanding of the void can help to recover a bit of mind health. Develop a strong mind or to stop thinking; that is the paradox to understand the void.

Why to explore the Singaporean void?

The void is perceived like a sickness, a heavy burden, a feeling of inexistence. For a Singaporean citizen this is a paradox because the socio-dynamics of the world ideally seek towards the Singaporean way of life. Then the philosophic question that rises is: does it worth?

You can feel the void everywhere in Singapore: walking around the commercial centres when you have nothing else to buy, sitting in the restaurants when you have no more hungry, having a virtual relationship by chat with other Singaporeans rather that face to face.
Singaporeans and expats who are in or have been to Singapore shear this feeling of void and would like to face it with no fear. The idea is to get a better understanding of this void and maybe look for the identity that Singapore way of life has taken from us.