A "simple" question...about death?
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...is death ("it"self) contagious?
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IIRC the "black death" was...
I think you're watching too many movies. -
Dear Tom,
What prompted the question?
Regards,
Bob -
:`) Julian,
but I was thinking along the lines of proximity, or fecundity, like: evil begets evil, violence begets violence...so, does not death beget death? Living in a world where the martar's death is both salvation and cure, does not death procreate? What if I move into a community of the mostly dying, do my own miseries then become deadly as well? Does death mutate, transfigure, as the children grow up in its midst?
Is it not contagious then?
(Bob, no event...just a thought that slapped my brain this morning.~)
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hmmm, what’s the mortality rate of the average undertaker?
If indeed death is contagious would they not be the most exposed? -
If you see death this way then it is undoubtedly the most contagious of all conditions. We all catch it the moment we are born and it lies dormant until awakened by a particularly nasty environmental influence such as disease, injury, or time.
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Tom,
I believe the human condition can be contagious. To use your example, if you are depressed and are placed in an environment filled with sadness and death then, yes, it will compund your own miseries. But it all depends on your state of mind. Undertakers, for instance, are faced with sadness and death all the time, but they see themselves as performing essential services, so rather than being depressed they take comfort in the fact they are helping the living.
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Interesting....
So, is death (the aura of it) a human condition? Can this condition become societal? One can certainly live for death, live with death...can we live death? If circumstances are such that one can be convinced death is a preferable option to life...can death societies develop? What circumstances would that take?
Wouldn't this then be an epidemic?
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Yeah, Bruce, I too would wonder if it wasn't something more...not like many morticians live about the mortuary anymore to have their families constantly exposed to the toxins? And if so, why wouldn't such work on a broader scale...?
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One could argue that a soldier in a hostile environment like Iraq where death is a daily occurrence is in the ideal predicament of ‘contracting’ a similar fate.
Sure logic says that his level of exposure is proportionate to his chances of being mortally injured, but for the sake of this discussion one can conclude that death is contagious in this example. -
@tomsdesk said:
Interesting....
So, is death (the aura of it) a human condition? Can this condition become societal? One can certainly live for death, live with death...can we live death? If circumstances are such that one can be convinced death is a preferable option to life...can death societies develop? What circumstances would that take?
Wouldn't this then be an epidemic?
I think most of us think of death in terms of it's causes. The aura of death as a human condition is too abstract for me without the cause(s) of death. Widespread disease, suicide, and homicide are 3 very different scenarios but the end is the same: death. All are dependant on behaviors (contracting the disease, killing onesself or another) so is it the behavior the epidemic? Is the aura of death the motivation for the behavior so the causes of death don't really matter? It seems we've already tried to control/avoid death-causing behavior with laws and religion (suicide IS illegal, right?).
Engaging topic Tom.
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Tom, is death all that bad?
As I see it life and death are mutualy arising....totally connected like the two Yin/Yang fishes.
Both are needed to define and give meaning to the other. So death is always with us.....not something we can catch
And as for the morticians...I think they would be surrounded by a lot of negative, morbid energy......rather than viruses or physical toxins.
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If you look at the total odds of dying, than indeed one could conclude that each living being is infected by default at birth:
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Hmm ... ask Thomas Lynch.
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Pretty slim, as long you don't walk into a Texan bar shouting "Dubya's plays with Barbie dolls!"Not the hardest thing to avoid.
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Actually Stinkie with the approval rating and confidence polls out right now, walking into a bar saying the above may get you a few free beers.
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Try it and post the video on Youtube. Come on ... you know you want to!
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That's a great graphic kwisten, thanks. I dind't see Terrorism on there anywhere. I wonder just how far off the bottom it would fall below 'fireworks discharge'?
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Eric, im always up for a bit of a challenge, so very roughly, your chance of being killed by a terrorist act in any single year is 1 in 2,400,000.
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