Very much a thought provoking article, thank you. Memento mori is a meditation that will take us as far as we want to go. Arendt's expositions on finding meaning are needed, true and valid. But the concept that the memory of a creator could be immortal is ultimately flawed. On a long enough timeline, existence ends for everyone and everything.
Realization of Impermanence as an existential "final boss" is something one can chose to engage with or not. But once begun, one must push past the ego's reaction lest we get stuck in nihilism or hedonism or consider suicide. As Camus stated, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." But suicide has no benefit to the ego because you can't know you are out when you're dead. At that point the only way out is through. Can we love what is, as flawed and temporal as it is, for what it is? Can we realize each moment as an invitation to love each other, perform a beautiful act, to carry out a right action regardless of its perceived result or lasting effect?
Thank you for your thought-provoking reply! You're right, of course, that immortalisation can only last as long as there are humans to sustain the memory... So it's not true immortalisation, but, since we still know the names of people who lived thousands of years ago (the earliest Egyptian pharaohs, for example), in some cases it's not too bad either ;)
Very much a thought provoking article, thank you. Memento mori is a meditation that will take us as far as we want to go. Arendt's expositions on finding meaning are needed, true and valid. But the concept that the memory of a creator could be immortal is ultimately flawed. On a long enough timeline, existence ends for everyone and everything.
Realization of Impermanence as an existential "final boss" is something one can chose to engage with or not. But once begun, one must push past the ego's reaction lest we get stuck in nihilism or hedonism or consider suicide. As Camus stated, "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy." But suicide has no benefit to the ego because you can't know you are out when you're dead. At that point the only way out is through. Can we love what is, as flawed and temporal as it is, for what it is? Can we realize each moment as an invitation to love each other, perform a beautiful act, to carry out a right action regardless of its perceived result or lasting effect?
Thank you for your thought-provoking reply! You're right, of course, that immortalisation can only last as long as there are humans to sustain the memory... So it's not true immortalisation, but, since we still know the names of people who lived thousands of years ago (the earliest Egyptian pharaohs, for example), in some cases it's not too bad either ;)