[MD] Dreaming and death

[david buchanan]

Mark said:
...many Americans avoid talk about death. I know that sounds like a sweeping 
generalisation, but there may be something in it? The American attitude 
seems to be, 'Buck up, pull yourself out of it and get on with things'. That 
could be a Dynamic aspect of the US psyche: Life goes on and forge ahead 
into the final frontier. ...Death happens, don't remind us, it's hard enough 
to avoid falling out of the economic system without dwelling on loss. The 
way Americans deal with death is to turn it into a celebrity event sq social 
pattern. It's different for us Europeans: there are large social support 
networks which make contemplating death easier. If you fall apart with grief 
you get help.

dmb says:
Hmmm. I don't know if we can generalize about American attitudes without 
mentioning religion. Since the vast majority are Christian, most people 
think they're going to heaven when they die. I suppose that belief tends to 
take the existential edge off of things and acts as an elaborate form of 
denial. And it seems that the emphasis on youth and beauty is as much about 
denying death as it is about sex.

dmb had said:
I've heard that sometimes enlightenment follows a letting go of sorts.

Mark replied:
This is not biological death but death of ego sq patterns while biologically 
alive?

dmb says:
That's right. There are many kinds of death at the various levels. Birth is 
like that too.

dmb had said:
The classic heros almost always die in some sense, and then are  resurrected 
as a new being so that death becomes a transformation rather than the 
conclusion.

Mark replied:
This is interesting. But i think an element is missing: The death is a 
matter of fate; You can't avoid it cos your sq patterning will bring it upon 
you. Orpheus ..was in deep doo doo from the outset because DQ was either 
going to get him from the inside or from the outside. Inside - driving 
himself insane trying to maintain a relationship with DQ, Outside - spite, 
hate, (Gods or mortals) envied by those less Dynamic, maybe even feared and 
misunderstood. If they could not get him they can get his wife,...

dmb says:
Thanks for bringing Orpheus into the discussion, you flatterer you. As I 
understand it, fate originally refered to that which was spoken by the gods. 
I think the idea is that one's end is happy or tragic depending on whether 
or not you took heed of what they said. Defying the gods would lead to a 
very unhappy place. And I think this the culture's immune system. These gods 
are the mirrors that Pirsig describes in the section with the giant cartoon 
octopus dream and all that. This is why heretics have been burned at the 
stake, why contrarians are so often hated and demonized, and its also why 
criminals are locked behind bars. Some people defy the gods in a heroic 
effort to refresh the world and some people defy the gods because they're 
sociopathic assholes. You know, and sometimes we have a hard time telling 
the difference. So yea, I think you're reading it right. Orpheus was defying 
the gods, trying to transform and refresh the static patterns, and was torn 
apart for it. And like Bill Hicks, his career really took off after he was 
dead. He was re-memberd after he was dismembered.

dmb had to Gav:
...you're right to wonder if vanity plays a role in our attitudes about 
death.

Mark replied:
If this is a valuable analysis, then it would seem, if my observation about 
American's avoiding talk of death has some merit, that the US is a 
particularly vain culture. Self-obsessed, that is say, to be obsessed with 
the self. It kinda adds up dontcha think? ...

dmb says:
Particularly vain culture? I don't know. It seems to me that American 
culture is particularly shallow and superficial. You know, the vendors of 
style, the unrealness of people who aren't on TV and the whole Hollywood 
thing. There is an obsession with fame and youthful beauty, but it seems to 
be based in the wish to conform and in a kind of desperate insecurity rather 
than excessive pride.

Glad you made it back from Germany.

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