X-Message-Number: 19020
From: "Lee Corbin" <>
Subject: RE: More on "that feeling".....
Date: Sat, 4 May 2002 18:38:45 -0700

Steven Lacher writes

> About a month or so after I got my bracelet, I was driving
> to work and was struck by this overwhelming revelation,
> almost an epiphany...
> ...there's this one fact, this one overwhelming thing,
> which mitigates just about anything which is negative
> in your life.  The fact is: LIFE is GOOD.

EXACTLY!

> The sheer pleasure of being a living thing cancels out any petty grievances
> which can bog you down.
> 
> I find this especially true as a cryonicist.  I have no faith in anything,
> but I don't need to seek comfort or explanations for the bad things that
> happen to me or anyone else in this world.  To me, the ability to just BE,
> and to experience sensation is joyous.  Being alive feels good!

Just so!

> I'll admit, sometimes it's an idea and an ideal I forget.  I let my job
> concerns or other little life troubles sometimes weigh me down.  But then
> I'll just suddenly remember how great it is just to EXIST, and all those
> feelings just vanish.

Nothing should detract from your correct perception of these
truths, and they shouldn't be qualified in any way.  However,
those revelations can be acknowledged at the same time that
we also recognize a different crucial truth:  right now, at
the present moment, your brain and my brain are working right,
and only that allows us to understand. (The proper neuro-
transmitters are in place and in adequate quantity.)

Since the perception of these truths depends completely on
whether or not one's brain is functioning correctly, we must
also recognize another terrible truth: tomorrow or next month,
due to some damn biochemical fluctuation entirely beyond our
pitiful science at the present time to control, you or I may
be cast into terrible despair, and be unable to recognize
these truths, these realities.

(While someday we will hopefully be immune to such, it's not
hard to see why evolution equipped us with such morbidity.
When there is nothing to be gathered, nothing to be hunted,
a gleeful optimism that would have us charge outside into
a hopeless quest would be counter-survival.  Besides, in
times of primitive technology, being too happy isn't good
for one in the long run.)

At such times, only certain literal truths held at the 
verbal level are of any consolation:  my favorite is
"Where there is energy and intelligence, there will
be happiness (provided only that the right technology
is in place)", and "Things may be a lot better later,
INCONCEIVABLY better, if only I can just make it there".

These issues are all dealt with in breath-taking depth
at www.hedweb.com.  David Pearce's prose is, however,
extremely challenging.  Most of the sentences have the
form "Whereas X, we therefore have Y", where X turns out to
be some mind-numbingly profound interpretation of something
one has vaguely heard of before, and Y is even more
striking.  (I still haven't tried to tackle chapter 2, and
instead just skipped to 3, 4, and 5, chapter 2 being too
philosophical even for me.)  But by trying to read no more
than a single paragraph or page at a time, I did manage.

Lee Corbin

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19020