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SwoRLy
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Name: Matt
Gender: Male
Expertise: i guess i'm decent a poetry. decent at violin as well. i'm quite the fast typer. yeah, and i get decent grades at a decent school. and i decently care about those decent grades. so yeah.
Occupation: Student
Message: message me
AIM:  umm..not showing?
Member Since:
4/20/2003
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| Hi SwoRLy! It's been 2062 (wow, that's a big number) days since you joined Xanga... won't you support us by going Premium?
DAYUM
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| 'cause every time we touch, i get this feeling
and every time we kiss, i swear i could fly...
'cause every time we touch, i feel the static
and every time we kiss, i reach for the sky... | | |
| if theres anything i want to stay in school for, it's to keep playing in an orchestra | | |
| the concept of death has been bothering me since i could perceive the actuality of the subject. this was around four or five years ago, in the middle of junior high.
it occurs most often while i lay in bed, left to ponder my final thoughts before my mind ceases to think, only gaining its energy to be ready for the next day. i admit, the trigger of this thought was the words of a family member, who suggested that death was just like a sleep without dreams: nothing that you can ever remember. i thought about this, and it made me sick. it made my chest clinch and i felt terrible and scared. i don't think someone with a faith in religion has to go through this, but when you trust science and believe that when you're dead, there's nothing afterwards, it's a sick feeling to think of death. the world has been around for more than a billion years. we're nothing compared to that. a mere 80-90 years, maybe even less if your luck doesn't last you until those years. and, we're already about a sixth through our life span. how does that make you feel?
when you die, it doesn't matter what anyone thinks or feels. why would it? you're dead. you can't perceive their loss or sorrow. your mind has trailed off into nothingness, gone with your brain. your body is there just to decompose, but that doesn't matter either. your mind isn't present during that decomposition. you're just part of the cycle that will run until our planet is no longer capable of sustaining life. things will go on. it's just that you won't be alive to perceive this continuation of life. the truth is, your death is inevitable and there's nothing you can do about it. many times, i have asked myself: "what is the point of life, if you're just going to spend 80 years living and then die just like that?" there really isn't a point. life is cruel; you're born just so you can wait for death. i guess there are a lot of things to experience, but i suppose everyone has considered the possibility of living forever, however impossible that is.
though, this thought of death stimulates the thought of something else. what is the mind? where does the mind reside in your body? does it even reside in your body? if you think about the human being in a scientific standpoint, we're just made up of atoms, right? well, how do we process thoughts? unless every single thought you process is a result of stimulation from your environment in combination with your past experiences, there is something i will refer to, as "free will." this free will i define as the ability to make your own mental decisions and think what you want to think. and, if this free will exists, it is a major component of your "mind", if that even exists. free will constitutes how we decide to raise an arm, type on your keyboard, decide to play a game, or think of a friend, or put on sandals, or go to the beach. the human body is a fascinating thing. it's hard for me to believe that the brain can control all of those options, and if it can, then there is no possibility of the "mind" that may constitute "free will".
so i'm sort of here urging those neuroscientists or whatever you call them: those guys that do research on the brain and stuff. i hope they can find out whether or not free will really exists or not, and if it does, does it reside in the body?
you're probably asking why i mentioned this free will stuff in the first place.
well, if free will does not reside in the body, then what exactly is it? it's not a tangible function. it's immaterial. unworldly. thus, if your body dies, maybe this free will passes on. maybe your mind passes on to something else. what else? well, we can't know, but we can guess. if we take a look to religion, maybe your mind goes to heaven. maybe your mind is reincarnated to another body, to make its free will in that body. maybe your mind goes to a totally different dimension, out of this large, large universe. or, maybe, it doesn't continue. maybe it dies with your body.
my hope is anything other than the latter, that our mind will go on to something else. anything else. something where we're able to perceive. i love life, and for it to end for me, makes me clinch in the chest to the point i clutch and whine.
in any case, this post has been triggered by watching a documentary on the second world war. the many, many people that have died in that war may have felt just like i do right now. that many lives have been ended. i don't think most people actually perceive how drastic the end of life is. to think that that many people died, and that many people die every day, really makes me sad. and it also saddens me that even more people will die in the future, myself included.
so what can we do about this? other than become a brain scientist, one of the common answers is to just enjoy life while you have it. most people will settle for that. and i probably will too. i have considered things that may have u live forever. with technology these days, why can't you just replace all your organs? can't you just transplant your brain and get a new one? your skin too? if you do that, you'll be all young and new again and you can live a new life. actually, that's a great way to see if the mind resides in the body. transplant your brain, and see if you live in your new body or see if you live in your old one. i'd think you'd live in your new body, but i haven't heard of any brain transplants before.
back on my point: i've actually considered suicide (oh no!) to see what the afterlife is. no, not because i'm unsatisfied with my life. in fact, i'm enjoying life right now. so no, i'm not about to and i don't plan to go and kill myself. i'm not brave enough or drastic enough to do that. but it really makes me wonder.
what comes after death?
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| it is noticeable and apparent that xanga has gone under a large movement of underuse. i check my subscriptions and no one other than doug (darkriver249) has updated for like a month, but i would reflect about what this means to me personally.
the loss of xanga is actually a bad thing. xanga, to me, is not of a social site, but more of a blogging site where you can write down your memories and keep them in a log to refer back to. heck, when i go way back to the very first entries and things, i remember lots of fond memories, and forgotten friends that were mentioned before are remembered. perhaps you could even resume contact with those old forgotten friends.
the loss of xanga would (if it happened) be a considerable loss. many memories and the like would be gone. i would not remember any orchestra trips or specific days anywhere close to when i reread xanga blogs. i can also track to see how i have grown and matured over the years, sometimes doing stupid things in the past and now not doing such stupid things. nowadays, i don't see xangas used as journals anymore to where you can write a memory in. they are more of a tool used to express yourself to those that read it.
in any case, i feel that xanga is a great place and that it is a pity to be left alone. i see that it still has a relatively healthy community, so i don't see it shutting down in the near future, but in all honesty, xanga is great, and i appreciate it.
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