[ExI] "death gives meaning to life"

[Stefano Vaj]

On Mon, Jun 9, 2008 at 12:30 AM, John K Clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> If true then death must be the ONLY thing that gives life meaning,
> the one and only thing we should concern ourselves with is death,
> everything else is trivial. And that's about as depressing a
> philosophy as I can imagine!

Whatever. While one may well like arguing that death does *not* give
meaning to life in one sense or another, all the related arguments are
obviously overkill.

In fact, why would death stop allegedly giving meaning to life if life
is 40 years long rather than 20? Or 400? Or 40,000?

Whatever weight the idea might carry with it, it would only have a
relevance if one were faced with a literally *eternal* prospective,
"eternal" as in "continued subjectivity beyond the entropic death of
the universe, whatever may happen in the meantime and afterwards".

While the subject may have some philosophical appeal to some of us, it
has, strictly speaking, very little to do with any practical choice
about longevist measures. And by far the best approach, IMHO, is to
ridicule those who should like to make such a great fuss upon the
relatively trivial, and time-honoured, policy of attempting to extend
one's life expectancy all other things being equal.

Stefano Vaj