I rarely have hopeless times in my life. I have had times when I get depressed, and the sign of my depression is that I pile up clutter, as long as I am depressed, I won’t declutter. I guess that those are the days that I am without hope of answers and I don’t let myself in on the secret reason that I am depressed. I step through the clutter, pretending it is fine. It is a direct reflection of what is going on inside me. I look for the good and cheerful and ignore that something is not right in my life.
I have been doing that clutter thing for the last year and a half. I did not have a corner to call my own. I was without hope. The office area is like a no-man’s-land and STILL belongs to Immortal Pirate’s dead wife. It even has her name emblazoned above the desk that I cannot sit at. She died 7 years ago, but somehow there are shrines to her memory, shrines that I dare not touch —— then, I found a desk!!!! I had Immortal Pirate bring it home for me. I now have my own space and I am de-cluttering my piles of paperwork and putting things away in my desk. —– My own little corner of the world. I have hope again!!!
I think hope is an important part of living life. It is the mechanism through which we are driven for more.
For some the more is all about money and I think eventually, many learn that that kind of more never allows for contentment. If you just hunger for more of that; you just want more of more in perpetuity.
The kind of more I want is not defined exactly. The hope is represented by aiming for total contentment. To feel content by the important things that matter and those are really defined through relationship, which is a big fat experiential “thing” that is not a thing.
Today is a sad day for me. A good friend died quite suddenly in a way that is hard to process. About 60 y/o. He went to bed and just didn’t wake up.
This morning as I was thinking and talking with my wife over coffee; we were talking about this issue of “coming back” and basically discussed; do people really want to come back?, or: is there a “hope” to move on to something that we really have no capacity to understand, as we exist right now?
That is the hope I think about. A full stop may be what we experience in death and if there was no hope; why bother with anything except yourself, in this moment, over this lifetime? That is such an ugly existence to me and as long as hope exists; it lays a very solid foundation to partially experience “the more” now.
To my sea faring friend; may the wind always be at your back and somehow you know the importance of the time when we shared our existence. HOPEFULLY we will experience something more in the infinity beyond.
@spitfire3dc while i enjoy such sentiments, because of how tenuous my grip on reality has been in the past, i can’t, won’t, and must not entertain thoughts of an existence beyond this one, as such can’t be scientifically proven. If i do, i risk going off the deep end. If there is a god, it has to understand… or it is not as loving, and way more judgmental than it claims.
@Jear77
I think we suffer greatly from the religious notion that any existence to come is totally separated and divorced from this one: essentially that no “proof” from that realm can breach this one.
Or that if it does, it must be according to overly narrow and stringent parameters that cater to our arrogance.
@griz i must eliminate anything that has even one in an a trillion chance of altering my senses in ANY way. Faith tends to do that actively, and moment by moment.
@Jear77
Faith does. Even a faith in science, or a faith in money. So which alteration of perceptions does one prefer?
(I personally prefer the one with infinite possibilities!)
And the pretense of no faith in anything is perhaps one of the greatest alterers of perceptions. It starts with blinding itself, to itself.
@griz you say faith in science? Scientific research can do tge same experiment and will always get the samwme result. Never any alterations. Not so with faith in a deity. You’re getting closer by the day to a straitjacket and a padded room and doctors forcing you to take medicine to prevent you from a threat to society. And when it happens i’ll be laughing my ass off, because I knew what it took to keep me sane and functional in society vs. taking your advice and being in the situation myself.
@Jear77
But science patently cannot answer questions of subjective experience; which map on the brain as “real” as any material object.
The faith of Scientism is not in the scientific process of reproducibility; but in its ability to answer all questions of importance. It can only tell you what things are made of, and not how to respond to them as a self-aware conscious entity.
Sanity is not beholding to an all All-Seeing Almighty who cannot see vast tracts of subjective experience.
Sanity is not thinking that life can be reduced to a predictable, reproducible equation.
In a way that’s what got you into this pickle in the first place . . . Thinking that if you performed A and B, you could control God into rendering C unto you.
It’s always been about power and control for you, hasn’t it?
@griz subjectivity comes and goes. What happens when you can’t or dare not trust your own perceptions? You’ve never been in such a place. But those in the area if faith of any kind seem to be fine with such things, tripping balls whether it’s Christianity, Islam, or one of the Eastern religions. Far better have a testable, reliable method of verification and making sense of the universe!
@Jear77
Please don’t presume I’ve never been in such a dark place! My strength and positive assertions come from having been in some really dark places, and successfully returning from them. (Including some dark places that few ever return from!)
The very purpose of all Faith structures is to find a point of reckoning beyond oneself. I’ve used the naval navigation analogy several times before. If you line up your course (your perceptions) just according to things on-deck (ie the self), sound navigation in the greater expanse is impossible. That’s why early Sailors navigated off of “The Greatest Unmovable” present: the Pole-star.
The only question then is just how immutable and ever-present one’s “Great Immovable” is.
Scientific process is a powerful tool for knowing what objective things are made of and how they react. But it’s totally obscured — unavailable — in most aspects of subjective experience.
It was actually, specifically designed that way.
Just try navigating by a pole-star that doesn’t present itself in the sky you are currently looking at.
@griz it seems that faith in any theistic being only invites more problems with one’s senses. Is this a vision, sound, smell, touch, taste from god? Why not do what it says or revel in the experience… vs: why the hell am I hallucinating, and how do i get it to stop, so i know what’s what.
@Jear77
What distinguishes between faith in a Deity and faith in a religious ideology based on that Deity? Or faith in the book asserted to be that Deity’s written word?
The answer is that both are “on-deck” objects (physical objects). There is no point of reckoning off ship. On-deck structures can line up to reveal the impression of a safe course to open water. But the ship could actually be moving sideways towards a collision. Only in off-ship point of reckoning would reveal this.
The problem with “Sensations (or revelations) from God”, is determining whether they are on-deck objects (just ego or organism), or a point of reckoning off-ship (transcendent).
This is why most Vision quests involve very robust processes of humility and ego control (like fasting, asceticism).
Know what is God, and what is just you pretending hoping dreaming of being God.
No religion or book can teach you this. Only the Spirit of Life. Which in the Christian Deistic faith is what the hero Christ brought back from the underworld, and made available to all who crave it more than ego.
@griz Lots of places (after the invention of smaller portable cameras that is). In fact anywhere there’s a traffic camera, a security camera, or cell phone capturing my image or a reflection of me. Maybe not as much as in England tho!
@Jear77
And could we point to videos that appear to be showing something, that really are not?
So what “proof” or “safety” is there in this?
The point is that there are many things of subjective experience that are just as “real” as things objective empiricism can get “a grip” on.
And that broad dismissals of things as “dangerous” just because they’re not “recorded” . . . would dismiss VAST tracts of the Human experience.
Consider too that even when things are “recorded” in a fashion (as with the myths of the race), there is still a tendency to dismiss them as meaningless because they don’t conform to extremely new modern standards.
The point is that a “guiding philosophy” shouldn’t be running into itself coming and going.
@griz but, hey… that’s the point of hypocrisy that i embrace! If everyone embraced it life’d be simpler. Oh, you didn’t do what you say? Your words and actions don’t match? Doesn’t matter.
@Jear77
But that’s a path to incompetence and the incompetent tend not to go anywhere, get any assistance, have people care about their plight or go out of their way for them. . .
The cost of hypocrisy can be quite steep, and fraught with suffering.
@griz hey… even without this philosophy people still think i’m a fuck up. The other option would be to be constantly striving to do better, be better, learn the next thing… and it’s not something i can do, so i’be washed my hands of it.
@Jear77 Ya know Jear…I know that inherently your are a decent person but you gotta get your shit together dude.
One year you are all about Christ and then you swing over to the other side with nothing short of a nuclear launch. You do not have to be one or the other. You don’t need to go off on this irrational rationality thing.
Find your centre and receive what the Universe(God) wants to reciprocate with. Some call it love. Some call it luck. Some call it bogus. But if you send out the bogus vibe you will receive what you send out.
Do I give a shit if you give a shit? To be honest; not a whole lot, but enough to try to encourage you to get some. It will only come if you truly believe it will. If you ask for it? Forget it. If you deeply expect it; be prepared.
or stay Joe Science. If that makes your ego sing; enjoy.
@spitfire3dc it’s the fact that I AM so instable that I have no option except to be the way i am. If i never had the problems with being in reality, being grounded, it might not be a problem.
what IS reality? It is your perception of it. Think about that and then ask yourself if you are perceiving what you want to perceive.
I see a client for the first time with an observation that I have in my sites someone poteially ready to say yes. If I went in with the thought that they would potentially say no,; that’s what I’d probably receive.
@spitfire3dc
My condolences for your loss. May you grieve well.
I don’t think the existing religious narratives cover this aspect of life very well at all.
My current thought is that it may be more of a “carrying on” than a “coming back”. What “stops” is obviously the physical organism; but also the ego or something akin to it. It may be something like anyone who sublimates the ego enough to be in true fellowship with the Spirit of Life, in that moment become something more than just organism and ego. (Analogous to the born-again concept).
The story of my continuance isn’t exactly a hope. It’s more of a knowledge mixed with anticipation. Because such knowledge would have to be transcendent, it is not the same kind of knowledge that 2 + 2 equals 4.
But we can still absolutely know something without there being an equation for it written.
This combination of knowledge + anticipation (assurance?) may be something like the concept of “transition energy” found in some New Age philosophies.
@griz Acquiring the knowledge you speak of is the end result of your personal, intentional, vision quest.
I think your photographic eye and your ability to capture in stills more than just pixels, is a talent for more than just expressing art. Way more. Your pics tell your vision quest story as well as anything can. I see a lot of landscapes, but I wonder if you can capture the human landscape with the same depth, the same poetry? How can you translate your capacity to communicate with people on to your art board?
@spitfire3dc
That’s an interesting insight. I’ve been pondering elements of it but you brought them together in a way I hadn’t thought of before. Thanks, teacher!
The lecture I studied today was about how we think in images that we then translate into language. (We only think that we are thinking in words because the process is so integrated and automatic).
Maybe it’s like I’m capturing images of the human landscape?
How is such a thing communicated? Linguistic communication is such a clunky medium for such expansive imagrs, though poets seem to articulate complex landscapes in words.
Maybe some concepts of the landscape are so large that the only way we can communicate them is over the span of our lifetime?
This could be the bearing a witness to what we know and believe?
@spitfire3dc I am sorry for the loss of your friend. May you work through the grief and find peace with it in the end. It is so hard to lose a friend. There is a void that only that friend could fill. May he rest in peace and love and a bit of him live on through your memory of the good times.
@spitfire3dc The after-life is real. Heaven is real. Your departed friend is there now. A life in ever after is the hope you seek. Condolences my friend…
The Primitive aspects of us seem to do just fine without hope.
What role does hope play in even higher cortical creatures like cats and dogs, and even primates?
This is likely why people who have lost all hope retreat into a lower level of primitive subsistence living. And why various wild children who have never been taught by other humans how to hope seem to get along fine without it.
The question you articulated may not be the question you were intending to ask.
@Jear77
Was there more to it than just the statement? A supposition or hypothesis? Perhaps a study if they gave a specific time frame?
(Though I’m wondering how anyone could have humanely conducted such a study!)
A lot of factoids these days contain just elements of Truth spun-off into wild statements intending to serve agendas. Postmodernism is notorious for it.
Consider for example, that by some methods and definitions one can subsist with a vibrant hope in hopelessness and meaninglessness.
Yes, I know that presents a conundrum and logic disconnect. But the people trying to live by such philosophies are the embodiment of these things.
@Jear77
Most statements like this with stated figures but improper (or no!) scientific backing, and wanting to be taken as fact, are of little more than agenda. Desperate agenda. Numerous examples of this can be found in the gun lobby, feminism, BLM, the gender and parasexuality ideology.
There is a proper method for advancing something from simple opinion to justified belief. FYI, it’s called epistemology.
But assertive, authoritative opinions that just break on the scene with no backing like the one you’ve shared here, should carry no more weight than uninformed opinion.
Even if we might particularly like what they are saying. Especially if we particularly like what they’re saying! (Subjective bias confirmation).
The wise person checks them out, rather than saying, “You see! That affirms me!”
@Jear77
A statement trying to apply the credulity of a specific time frame without any backing for it, is something far more insidious than just opinion.
The intent is insidious; but being aware of that frees one from potential entrapment.
To assert that one will drop dead in 3 seconds without it, seems like the petty hucksterism of a hope-merchant.
Hope is important in some ways that are akin to a stepping stone. But consider someone saying you will die in 3 seconds without this particular stepping stone which I just may happen to have a line on . . .
@griz no. Hope in general. No products being sold. No (in a salesman’s voice) “call this number or go to this website.” But it shoehorns nicely with air (3 min), shelter (3 hours), water (3 days), food (3 weeks)
@Jear77
So is such an obviously striving for a point to be memorable . . . just a “claim for fame”, or indicative of something else?
There would seem to be a LOT more at work here than just a literary device. The point was not one of fiction . . . but intending to bolster a particular agenda or point of view.
Consider too our propensity to share forward such assertions. If just for banter and discussion, we’ve achieved that. So is this exercise complete?
Or is there something more at work than just distraction and leisure?
Drawing a line of course, between paranoia and simple awareness of the processes at work not just in others but in ourself as well.
@griz I think cats have hope. There is a cat on Immortal Pirate’s bed right now. He is crawling up the sheets to reach out and touch his master. A touch and a touch, and maybe a touch with claws this time. He hopes Immortal Pirate will get out of bed. He has eaten and has no need of food. He has a cat door to freely roam inside and outside. No needs are there, only the hope that the hand free from the pillow will pet him and let him know that he is loved. Immortal reaches out for his kitty and gathers him in a locking embrace that there is no escape from. —– Now kitty hopes to be unlocked from the embrace. Once freed, he runs away — free, at last!!!
@ladybarbara
Animals can anticipate the fulfillment of primal urges including companionship and play. They can remember patterns of behavior that fulfilled these primal needs, hence the phenomenon of the pets training the people!
But hope would seem to have an awareness of the future that they don’t seem capable of, plus the ability to visualuze outcomes that have not yet been seen.
It’s linked to the human ability to plan.
50 responses to “How long can you live without hope?”
I mean, I’m still here. I guess we’ll see.
@yin is your partner’s name yang?
@Yoshikawa If I had a partner, maybe.
@yin *sends you a lustful wink*
@yin Now you have to make it your life’s mission to find that special “Yang” that fits you just right.
I rarely have hopeless times in my life. I have had times when I get depressed, and the sign of my depression is that I pile up clutter, as long as I am depressed, I won’t declutter. I guess that those are the days that I am without hope of answers and I don’t let myself in on the secret reason that I am depressed. I step through the clutter, pretending it is fine. It is a direct reflection of what is going on inside me. I look for the good and cheerful and ignore that something is not right in my life.
I have been doing that clutter thing for the last year and a half. I did not have a corner to call my own. I was without hope. The office area is like a no-man’s-land and STILL belongs to Immortal Pirate’s dead wife. It even has her name emblazoned above the desk that I cannot sit at. She died 7 years ago, but somehow there are shrines to her memory, shrines that I dare not touch —— then, I found a desk!!!! I had Immortal Pirate bring it home for me. I now have my own space and I am de-cluttering my piles of paperwork and putting things away in my desk. —– My own little corner of the world. I have hope again!!!
I think hope is an important part of living life. It is the mechanism through which we are driven for more.
For some the more is all about money and I think eventually, many learn that that kind of more never allows for contentment. If you just hunger for more of that; you just want more of more in perpetuity.
The kind of more I want is not defined exactly. The hope is represented by aiming for total contentment. To feel content by the important things that matter and those are really defined through relationship, which is a big fat experiential “thing” that is not a thing.
Today is a sad day for me. A good friend died quite suddenly in a way that is hard to process. About 60 y/o. He went to bed and just didn’t wake up.
This morning as I was thinking and talking with my wife over coffee; we were talking about this issue of “coming back” and basically discussed; do people really want to come back?, or: is there a “hope” to move on to something that we really have no capacity to understand, as we exist right now?
That is the hope I think about. A full stop may be what we experience in death and if there was no hope; why bother with anything except yourself, in this moment, over this lifetime? That is such an ugly existence to me and as long as hope exists; it lays a very solid foundation to partially experience “the more” now.
To my sea faring friend; may the wind always be at your back and somehow you know the importance of the time when we shared our existence. HOPEFULLY we will experience something more in the infinity beyond.
@spitfire3dc while i enjoy such sentiments, because of how tenuous my grip on reality has been in the past, i can’t, won’t, and must not entertain thoughts of an existence beyond this one, as such can’t be scientifically proven. If i do, i risk going off the deep end. If there is a god, it has to understand… or it is not as loving, and way more judgmental than it claims.
@Jear77
I think we suffer greatly from the religious notion that any existence to come is totally separated and divorced from this one: essentially that no “proof” from that realm can breach this one.
Or that if it does, it must be according to overly narrow and stringent parameters that cater to our arrogance.
@griz i must eliminate anything that has even one in an a trillion chance of altering my senses in ANY way. Faith tends to do that actively, and moment by moment.
@Jear77
Faith does. Even a faith in science, or a faith in money. So which alteration of perceptions does one prefer?
(I personally prefer the one with infinite possibilities!)
And the pretense of no faith in anything is perhaps one of the greatest alterers of perceptions. It starts with blinding itself, to itself.
@griz you say faith in science? Scientific research can do tge same experiment and will always get the samwme result. Never any alterations. Not so with faith in a deity. You’re getting closer by the day to a straitjacket and a padded room and doctors forcing you to take medicine to prevent you from a threat to society. And when it happens i’ll be laughing my ass off, because I knew what it took to keep me sane and functional in society vs. taking your advice and being in the situation myself.
@Jear77
But science patently cannot answer questions of subjective experience; which map on the brain as “real” as any material object.
The faith of Scientism is not in the scientific process of reproducibility; but in its ability to answer all questions of importance. It can only tell you what things are made of, and not how to respond to them as a self-aware conscious entity.
Sanity is not beholding to an all All-Seeing Almighty who cannot see vast tracts of subjective experience.
Sanity is not thinking that life can be reduced to a predictable, reproducible equation.
In a way that’s what got you into this pickle in the first place . . . Thinking that if you performed A and B, you could control God into rendering C unto you.
It’s always been about power and control for you, hasn’t it?
@griz subjectivity comes and goes. What happens when you can’t or dare not trust your own perceptions? You’ve never been in such a place. But those in the area if faith of any kind seem to be fine with such things, tripping balls whether it’s Christianity, Islam, or one of the Eastern religions. Far better have a testable, reliable method of verification and making sense of the universe!
@Jear77
Please don’t presume I’ve never been in such a dark place! My strength and positive assertions come from having been in some really dark places, and successfully returning from them. (Including some dark places that few ever return from!)
The very purpose of all Faith structures is to find a point of reckoning beyond oneself. I’ve used the naval navigation analogy several times before. If you line up your course (your perceptions) just according to things on-deck (ie the self), sound navigation in the greater expanse is impossible. That’s why early Sailors navigated off of “The Greatest Unmovable” present: the Pole-star.
The only question then is just how immutable and ever-present one’s “Great Immovable” is.
Scientific process is a powerful tool for knowing what objective things are made of and how they react. But it’s totally obscured — unavailable — in most aspects of subjective experience.
It was actually, specifically designed that way.
Just try navigating by a pole-star that doesn’t present itself in the sky you are currently looking at.
@griz it seems that faith in any theistic being only invites more problems with one’s senses. Is this a vision, sound, smell, touch, taste from god? Why not do what it says or revel in the experience… vs: why the hell am I hallucinating, and how do i get it to stop, so i know what’s what.
@Jear77
What distinguishes between faith in a Deity and faith in a religious ideology based on that Deity? Or faith in the book asserted to be that Deity’s written word?
The answer is that both are “on-deck” objects (physical objects). There is no point of reckoning off ship. On-deck structures can line up to reveal the impression of a safe course to open water. But the ship could actually be moving sideways towards a collision. Only in off-ship point of reckoning would reveal this.
The problem with “Sensations (or revelations) from God”, is determining whether they are on-deck objects (just ego or organism), or a point of reckoning off-ship (transcendent).
This is why most Vision quests involve very robust processes of humility and ego control (like fasting, asceticism).
Know what is God, and what is just you pretending hoping dreaming of being God.
No religion or book can teach you this. Only the Spirit of Life. Which in the Christian Deistic faith is what the hero Christ brought back from the underworld, and made available to all who crave it more than ego.
@griz doesn’t matter. Any experience not backed by something recordable is dangerous.
@Jear77
Where is your past subjective experience recorded for peer review?
@griz Lots of places (after the invention of smaller portable cameras that is). In fact anywhere there’s a traffic camera, a security camera, or cell phone capturing my image or a reflection of me. Maybe not as much as in England tho!
@Jear77
And could we point to videos that appear to be showing something, that really are not?
So what “proof” or “safety” is there in this?
The point is that there are many things of subjective experience that are just as “real” as things objective empiricism can get “a grip” on.
And that broad dismissals of things as “dangerous” just because they’re not “recorded” . . . would dismiss VAST tracts of the Human experience.
Consider too that even when things are “recorded” in a fashion (as with the myths of the race), there is still a tendency to dismiss them as meaningless because they don’t conform to extremely new modern standards.
The point is that a “guiding philosophy” shouldn’t be running into itself coming and going.
@griz but, hey… that’s the point of hypocrisy that i embrace! If everyone embraced it life’d be simpler. Oh, you didn’t do what you say? Your words and actions don’t match? Doesn’t matter.
@Jear77
But that’s a path to incompetence and the incompetent tend not to go anywhere, get any assistance, have people care about their plight or go out of their way for them. . .
The cost of hypocrisy can be quite steep, and fraught with suffering.
@griz hey… even without this philosophy people still think i’m a fuck up. The other option would be to be constantly striving to do better, be better, learn the next thing… and it’s not something i can do, so i’be washed my hands of it.
@Jear77 Ya know Jear…I know that inherently your are a decent person but you gotta get your shit together dude.
One year you are all about Christ and then you swing over to the other side with nothing short of a nuclear launch. You do not have to be one or the other. You don’t need to go off on this irrational rationality thing.
Find your centre and receive what the Universe(God) wants to reciprocate with. Some call it love. Some call it luck. Some call it bogus. But if you send out the bogus vibe you will receive what you send out.
Do I give a shit if you give a shit? To be honest; not a whole lot, but enough to try to encourage you to get some. It will only come if you truly believe it will. If you ask for it? Forget it. If you deeply expect it; be prepared.
or stay Joe Science. If that makes your ego sing; enjoy.
@spitfire3dc it’s the fact that I AM so instable that I have no option except to be the way i am. If i never had the problems with being in reality, being grounded, it might not be a problem.
@Jear77 Finding your centre will stabilize you.
what IS reality? It is your perception of it. Think about that and then ask yourself if you are perceiving what you want to perceive.
I see a client for the first time with an observation that I have in my sites someone poteially ready to say yes. If I went in with the thought that they would potentially say no,; that’s what I’d probably receive.
@spitfire3dc reality is testable. Perceptions don’t matter.
@spitfire3dc
My condolences for your loss. May you grieve well.
I don’t think the existing religious narratives cover this aspect of life very well at all.
My current thought is that it may be more of a “carrying on” than a “coming back”. What “stops” is obviously the physical organism; but also the ego or something akin to it. It may be something like anyone who sublimates the ego enough to be in true fellowship with the Spirit of Life, in that moment become something more than just organism and ego. (Analogous to the born-again concept).
The story of my continuance isn’t exactly a hope. It’s more of a knowledge mixed with anticipation. Because such knowledge would have to be transcendent, it is not the same kind of knowledge that 2 + 2 equals 4.
But we can still absolutely know something without there being an equation for it written.
This combination of knowledge + anticipation (assurance?) may be something like the concept of “transition energy” found in some New Age philosophies.
@griz Acquiring the knowledge you speak of is the end result of your personal, intentional, vision quest.
I think your photographic eye and your ability to capture in stills more than just pixels, is a talent for more than just expressing art. Way more. Your pics tell your vision quest story as well as anything can. I see a lot of landscapes, but I wonder if you can capture the human landscape with the same depth, the same poetry? How can you translate your capacity to communicate with people on to your art board?
@spitfire3dc
That’s an interesting insight. I’ve been pondering elements of it but you brought them together in a way I hadn’t thought of before. Thanks, teacher!
The lecture I studied today was about how we think in images that we then translate into language. (We only think that we are thinking in words because the process is so integrated and automatic).
Maybe it’s like I’m capturing images of the human landscape?
How is such a thing communicated? Linguistic communication is such a clunky medium for such expansive imagrs, though poets seem to articulate complex landscapes in words.
Maybe some concepts of the landscape are so large that the only way we can communicate them is over the span of our lifetime?
This could be the bearing a witness to what we know and believe?
@spitfire3dc I am sorry for the loss of your friend. May you work through the grief and find peace with it in the end. It is so hard to lose a friend. There is a void that only that friend could fill. May he rest in peace and love and a bit of him live on through your memory of the good times.
@spitfire3dc The after-life is real. Heaven is real. Your departed friend is there now. A life in ever after is the hope you seek. Condolences my friend…
The Primitive aspects of us seem to do just fine without hope.
What role does hope play in even higher cortical creatures like cats and dogs, and even primates?
This is likely why people who have lost all hope retreat into a lower level of primitive subsistence living. And why various wild children who have never been taught by other humans how to hope seem to get along fine without it.
The question you articulated may not be the question you were intending to ask.
@griz i read a statement which read “you can only survive 3 seconds without hope” which caused me to ask
@Jear77
Was there more to it than just the statement? A supposition or hypothesis? Perhaps a study if they gave a specific time frame?
(Though I’m wondering how anyone could have humanely conducted such a study!)
A lot of factoids these days contain just elements of Truth spun-off into wild statements intending to serve agendas. Postmodernism is notorious for it.
Consider for example, that by some methods and definitions one can subsist with a vibrant hope in hopelessness and meaninglessness.
Yes, I know that presents a conundrum and logic disconnect. But the people trying to live by such philosophies are the embodiment of these things.
@griz a statement of opinion, nothing more, nothing less. No agenda. No complex idelogy
@Jear77
Most statements like this with stated figures but improper (or no!) scientific backing, and wanting to be taken as fact, are of little more than agenda. Desperate agenda. Numerous examples of this can be found in the gun lobby, feminism, BLM, the gender and parasexuality ideology.
There is a proper method for advancing something from simple opinion to justified belief. FYI, it’s called epistemology.
But assertive, authoritative opinions that just break on the scene with no backing like the one you’ve shared here, should carry no more weight than uninformed opinion.
Even if we might particularly like what they are saying. Especially if we particularly like what they’re saying! (Subjective bias confirmation).
The wise person checks them out, rather than saying, “You see! That affirms me!”
@griz once again… it was an opinion, nothing more, nothing less.
@Jear77
A statement trying to apply the credulity of a specific time frame without any backing for it, is something far more insidious than just opinion.
@griz insidious? Not necessarily. Why couldn’t it be encouraging instead: a thing of “keep your chin up” ?
@Jear77
The intent is insidious; but being aware of that frees one from potential entrapment.
To assert that one will drop dead in 3 seconds without it, seems like the petty hucksterism of a hope-merchant.
Hope is important in some ways that are akin to a stepping stone. But consider someone saying you will die in 3 seconds without this particular stepping stone which I just may happen to have a line on . . .
@griz no. Hope in general. No products being sold. No (in a salesman’s voice) “call this number or go to this website.” But it shoehorns nicely with air (3 min), shelter (3 hours), water (3 days), food (3 weeks)
@Jear77
Then what do you think would drive the sayer to say it; and to attach such a specific and dire time condition to it?
Work with me here Jear. This is an exercise in understanding and sifting through the cacophony of input we daily face.
@griz The idea is one called “the rule of 3s” it’s a mnemonic device. It’s not meant to be an exact measure.
@Jear77
So is such an obviously striving for a point to be memorable . . . just a “claim for fame”, or indicative of something else?
There would seem to be a LOT more at work here than just a literary device. The point was not one of fiction . . . but intending to bolster a particular agenda or point of view.
Consider too our propensity to share forward such assertions. If just for banter and discussion, we’ve achieved that. So is this exercise complete?
Or is there something more at work than just distraction and leisure?
Drawing a line of course, between paranoia and simple awareness of the processes at work not just in others but in ourself as well.
@griz destraction and leisure is enough for me.
@griz I think cats have hope. There is a cat on Immortal Pirate’s bed right now. He is crawling up the sheets to reach out and touch his master. A touch and a touch, and maybe a touch with claws this time. He hopes Immortal Pirate will get out of bed. He has eaten and has no need of food. He has a cat door to freely roam inside and outside. No needs are there, only the hope that the hand free from the pillow will pet him and let him know that he is loved. Immortal reaches out for his kitty and gathers him in a locking embrace that there is no escape from. —– Now kitty hopes to be unlocked from the embrace. Once freed, he runs away — free, at last!!!
@ladybarbara
Animals can anticipate the fulfillment of primal urges including companionship and play. They can remember patterns of behavior that fulfilled these primal needs, hence the phenomenon of the pets training the people!
But hope would seem to have an awareness of the future that they don’t seem capable of, plus the ability to visualuze outcomes that have not yet been seen.
It’s linked to the human ability to plan.
I haven’t watched ‘Days..’ for years!
I have selected a choice of two answers:
Is it even possible for humans to be completely hopeless?
What’s the difference between yearning and hope? ….faith? ….opportunity? ….delusion?
or
57 days, 13 hours, 29 minutes & 57.580834095894848003 seconds
…but hey that’s just me. Individual results my vary.