Death, and the Daemon

Something I wrote during a larger conversation with Parodites:


Time is indeed entirely relative. An instant can also be a lifetime. You are right that there is no higher perspective or frame from which another greater value might assert itself against us, as our own measure of ourselves within the other -- no, we are that measure, we are that other. Man measures himself, and the time of his life, quite limited as it is, assumes whatever magnitude and depth of potency and vitality as a man is able to make of it. Mozart was said to be able to compose whole works in his mind in the span of seconds, to see a musical piece from start to finish in totality in the mind alone, in a heartbeat. Of course genius does this, it expands time by contracting itself relative to the temporal field of its exertion, it introduces vast and derivative combinatory forms into the moments of its relations, into a single brief instant of time so that time itself flourishes under this gaze, becomes a thing grander, fuller, and more 'eternal'. Perhaps the genius indeed lives out an eternity in his thoughts, in his "subjectivity".

I do not fear dying. I used to, until I really gave name and form to these feelings, exposed them as signs of an instinctive confusion combined with powerful emotions of regret, guilt and sorrow. These emotions still remain but have been delineated, identified and thus no longer does their existence constitute that vague dread in the idea of death, this idea which is really only an object in which all these individual passions could find a common point of reference and expression. Fear of death is like belief in god, both of these ideas arise due to a lack of a more complete enumeration and differentiation of consciousness' contents, and it is the confusion of these contents with each other that gives rise to these strange "common points of reference", these abstractions such as the notion of god or death that serve as arbitrary objects for the mind where these clouded feelings may each feel each other and come together to form a single "pathos". This pathos is then (mis)associated with the object in which it expresses, as is the nature of our consciousness, metonymic, as you say. But a more active consciousness instead separates and comprehends the individuality of these conscious states, forges more teleological and intention relations among them rather than relying on the merely ex post facto metonymy of a disordered and arbitrary mind.

That being said, of course I know that I will die. "I" meaning the body-brain from which my conscious experience and "subject" arise as the emergent behaviors of these. I see all conscious experience and 'qualia', including also basic sensation interpreted from the conscious perspective of meaning, as emergent behaviors, and I see even the physical non-conscious relations of the body or brain as emergent behaviors of what is lesser than they, chemicals, elemental bonds, etc., all subject to "natural law", to the causal logic of the fields and domains in which they occur. In this way everything is a summative, emergent formality of whatever for it serves as a constitutive ground. Consciousness and non-consciousness are "flattened" here, brought to the same ontological level, but of course they still remain distinct sorts of entities even so. My point is just that I am aware of the fact that my conscious experience, however deep, grand, and expansive, however lengthy I perceive this experience or however elongated it happens to be 'in fact', it will ultimately at some future time vanish from existence. Plato's Forms are representations of the nature of consciousness grapsing for itself, of what thought is as the "materialized psyche" of the ideas, those qualities of consciousness such as cognition, affectation, projection, and recollection, all of which are entirely as "physical" as is anything else, but of course which occupy a far different plane of dimensions and causality -- far different and also far more contingent and derivative, I would say. But experience is still eternal to itself in so far as it can never encounter or live its ends, either in birth or death; consciousness can never recall its origin nor can it experience it final end since at one moment it is here and the next is has vanished completely, there is no "experiencing death", for the limit of death is also the limit of possible experience. Consciousness can at least repose in the knowledge that from its own perspective its existence can never encounter any absolute boundary or terminus, and this is the whole point, really: consciousness is never satisfied, never at 'rest', the daemonic frenzy itself is conditioned by the fact of consciousness' total incommunicability and lack of total limitation to itself. It comes into existence as the delineated being within the margins of birth and death, the ultimate horizon lines, and then becomes more and more distinct the greater amount of new inward limits are introduced into it, the more it identifies and the more it names, and then it becomes an more active and truly living thing the more all this limited being "daemonzies" itself.

Perhaps perpetual novelty is the only 'ideal' or principle by which the highly differenced and active daemon can hold itself indefinitely in existence and avoid the sort of "burnout" end which you forsee for it. This sort of powerful thought does engender its own novelty within itself, needs less from the world perhaps, but ultimately it must run its course and begin to "consume" its own nature more totally, more voraciously, and with greater and greater "vengeance" and self-destruction. In that regard this daemon would need a strong community of other daemonic natures of like philosophical character and power in order to be afforded a continuous re-energizing of itself, a re-vitalizing intake of new novelty appropriate to its superme need as well as new pathways for the discharge of its own excessive quality, which too must only grow as the daemon itself grows.

I have often thought that if any amount of time can be a lifetime or simply a moment, as time is relative, then can we not say that relatively speaking my life time is infinite? I have even wondered if maybe time slows down as you die and maybe you end up experiencing eternity in your mind in some dream land...


sorry if i'm side stepping your thread...

Perhaps structure is a means to death, to end, which is non-inherent in usual experience and startling when it happens.

PEZER!
You are back.

Man, wreak havoc or create delicate oil at the new forum.
I have invited all our friends here - not many, but their force is unmistakably life-altering -
and what is life if not life altering?
and now all we have there is a stagnant pool!

Fixed

Abstract wrote:

I have often thought that if any amount of time can be a lifetime or simply a moment, as time is relative, then can we not say that relatively speaking my life time is infinite? I have even wondered if maybe time slows down as you die and maybe you end up experiencing eternity in your mind in some dream land...


sorry if i'm side stepping your thread...

Yes, There is a novel written around this very idea, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. It's a very cool idea, really, to create an eternity by endlessly dividing a finite quantity. In terms of the mind, this may require a sort of short-circuit, like setting two mirrors facing each other.

Druggies are very consciously familiar with this effect of time relativity. It requires an antenna, a neurochemical affecting the level(s) of perception(s), which beat determine(s) the speed of time.

Perhaps that's why they equate drug use with death wish. Hunter S. Thompson wrote about it, how one either pulls out in a cowardly bid for the future or dies in pure, true adventure. We surf death until we die... That's a fair deal to live; our time is limited, with heavens only on earth.