tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post5254041621154566899..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: A Faith in Finitude?Dale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-5830128194762973572008-04-04T11:17:00.000-07:002008-04-04T11:17:00.000-07:00Dale, do you conceive of death in a manner analogo...<I>Dale, do you conceive of death in a manner analogous to superlative conceptions of immortality? If not, why?</I><BR/><BR/>I don't think I do, no. And I can't even grasp exactly why you might think I would. So perhaps our larger disagreements turn in some way on the mutual incomprehension indicated by my befuddlement at your question in the first place.<BR/><BR/>Is there something superlative about the dead nonhuman animal at the end of a carnivore's fork? Is there something superlative about an accidentally shattered teacup on the tiles at your feet? Is there something superlative about the descent of a tossed ball back to earth?<BR/><BR/>As I propose in the piece to which you are responding here, I think perhaps you have mistaken my usage of "superlative" to mean simply something like "extreme" or "sublime." <BR/><BR/>But I use the phrase "superlative technology" in a very specific way, to describe a particular mode of technocentric discourse occasioned by the sweep and intensity of ongoing and emerging disruptive technoscientific change, a promissory discourse of transcendence typically soliciting faithful belief and sub(cult)ural identificaion of a kind that hitherto has been primarily (although not exclusively) an expression of organized modes of religiosity. <BR/><BR/>I certainly see the sense of the claim that the contemplation of death can be <I>sublime.</I> I mean this in the philosophical sense of the sublime as it is understood by classical aesthetics, as the confrontation with an overwhelming phenomenon that inspires a sense of awe that is not readily assimilated to our everyday language, and that testifying to the profundity of which typically requires recourse to figurative language. <BR/><BR/>I will also admit that coming to terms with the fact of mortality seems to me fairly indispensable to the project of becoming a reasonable responsible adult person. Meanwhile, the denial or disavowal of that mortality seems to me to produce a kind of death-in-life that is fearful, disengaged, aggressively irrational, and endlessly anxious for reassurances that never finally arrive but the quest for which and the denial of the frustrations of which yield not only death-in-life in the name of "life," but all too often attitudes and behaviors that are death-<I>dealing</I> as well. <BR/><BR/>I quite understand that there is something profoundly unfathomable in the fact that I who now am alive and who, in my aliveness, live in a world that exists for me as a place that is good for me to live in might somehow vanish from this world that seems a world especially <I>for me</I> and the world live on. It is this, I suppose, that accounts for much of the sublimity of our mortality as the inevitable narrative closure of our lived selfhood. <BR/><BR/>But I do want to say that despite all that I don't think mortality is the only constitutive expression of the finitude of the human condition that demands such traumatic reckoning if we are to become reasonable responsible adult persons. I personally think it is quite as traumatic as the recognition of our mortality to recognize as well that those on whom we depend are fallible or capable of betraying us, to recognize the ineradicable play of the unexpected in our plans and affairs, to recognize that we can so easily be the cause of unintended harms for others, to recognize that we are prone to error, to unfairness, to misunderstanding. <BR/><BR/>If you want to say the contemplation of death is a sublime encounter, then one should say the same of all these reckonings as well in my opinion.<BR/><BR/>But come what may, my use of the term Superlative is trying to get at something quite different from this, although in some ways the topics are interestingly connected to one another.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-31211218018265813892008-04-04T09:21:00.000-07:002008-04-04T09:21:00.000-07:00Dale, do you conceive of death in a manner analogo...Dale, do you conceive of death in a manner analogous to superlative conceptions of immortality? If not, why?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-83928698060285561642008-03-30T09:50:00.000-07:002008-03-30T09:50:00.000-07:00I'm still trying to get my First Life in order. E...I'm still trying to get my First Life in order. Embarking on a Second Life seems more trouble than it's worth, especially if it has to take place in what looks like an endless cyberspatial sprawl of strip malls and corporate cliches.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-45355554278302307522008-03-30T09:31:00.000-07:002008-03-30T09:31:00.000-07:00Everyone is invited to Lincoln's talk of course (s...Everyone is invited to Lincoln's talk of course (starts in 30 min).<BR/><BR/>Dale has also been invited to give a talk in SL, or debate. In this case please let me know in advance, I need to give martial arts training to my avatar.Giulio Priscohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13811681020661409028noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-72876845048564520112008-03-30T08:24:00.000-07:002008-03-30T08:24:00.000-07:00Oh hurry hurry hurry Dale and you can see the man ...Oh hurry hurry hurry Dale and you can see the man himself<BR/>today.<BR/>http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2008-March/042356.html<BR/><BR/>In Second Life, that is.<BR/><BR/>You can use that list I posted for one-stop shopping.<BR/>Let's see -- what avatar should you choose? I sort of like<BR/>the cat that shoots "non-lethal hairballs".<BR/><BR/>But if it were me, I'd definitely be going as the giant<BR/>maggot.<BR/><BR/>;->jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com