Time and Mortality

Topic: Time and Mortality

Chairman:
Robert Light

Moderator:
Spencer Sinclaire

Meetup Date:
Wednesday, September 30th, 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., with a 15 minute break at 8:00 p.m.

Meetup Location:
Upstairs at The Bent Mast, 512 Simcoe St. Victoria, BC, V8V 1L8

Members:
If you plan to attend, please take a moment and RSVP. If your plans change and you cannot attend, to the right of your name there are three dots, please click on them and move yourself to “Not Going.” Thank you.

Quotes:
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."- Hector Berlioz

“It is not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it.” - Seneca

Synopsis:
Time derives its urgency, shape, and meaning from mortality, turning finite limits into the framework of human existence.

Key Thinkers and Frameworks

Martin Heidegger (Being and Time): Time as unfolding: Time is not a neutral river; we are temporal beings projecting forward from a thrown past.
Being-towards-death (Sein zum Tode): Anticipating death (certain in fact, indefinite in timing) pulls us out of the anonymous "they"-self (das Man) into authenticity. Finitude defines time: Time gets its structure and real possibility from our end-point.

Epicurus & Lucretius

Symmetry argument: The infinite time after you die equals the infinite time before you were born. The privation view: Death is not an experience. As Epicurus wrote, "Death is nothing to us" because when we exist, death is not; when death is, we are not. Time management: Focus on reducing anxiety in the fleeting present.

Bernard Williams

The tedium of immortality: Unending life leads eventually to categorical boredom, as seen in the essay The Makropulos Case.
Desire structure: Human categorical desires (deep projects, commitments) need a temporal container to matter; infinite time flattens urgency.

Stoics (Marcus Aurelius, Seneca)

Memento mori: Remember you must die (memento mori). Present focus: Without heaven/hell guarantees, the present moment is the sole arena for virtue.
Equalizing perspective: Death levels all status (Emperor and mule driver share the same fate).

Modern/Contemporary (Oliver Burkeman, Transhumanist Critiques)

Four thousand weeks: Average human life span is ~4,000 weeks; accepting limitation cures the delusion of "getting everything done". Constitutive horizon: Philosophy and narrative coherence require an ending; infinite time/transhumanist digital extension threatens to dissolve the friction that gives projects meaning.

Watch: The Philosophy Book That Will Change How You See Reality Heidegger’s Being and Time on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryFcqQNRzdw