6/11/2003: Tombstone art
 

http://cellar.org/2003/tombart.jpg

Hat tip to avi of Worth1000 for passing this along. It's from a site called The Tombstone Traveller's Guide. This particular one's in Switzerland, and the interesting thing about it is that the artist carved it himself in anticipation of his death. There isn't much more info except that the artist's name was "G. Pepe".

Rage, rage against the dying of the light: this is nearly the exact opposite of yesterday's image.

dude i'm gonna do that type of thing for my tomb stone! only it will be sculpture of me tying to claw my way up out of the ground, or drowning in the earth. Some thing like this sculpture in East Potomac Park (Wash DC) its called <a href="http://www.skatedc.org/resources/skatespots/eastpotomac.html">Awakening</a>

http://www.skatedc.org/resources/ska.../awakening.jpg

the anticipation of death should be something that every one should have thought about before hitting that mid-life crisis.

Why? I personally prefer the anticipation of eternal life. Too bad that it will happen without you. :( Why any person living in 21st century would think of his death with anticipation is beyond me...

I'm gonna live forever.
So far so good.:p

I love that poem -- at least these two lines:

"Do not go gentle into that dark night
Rage, rage, against the dying of the light"

Paranoid, Your familiarity with me must be miss placed?

Let me introduce myself I’m a no bull shit Christian, that chooses not to fool myself into thinking that my physical body is a permanent one. Every thing in this life is temporal, AKA you can't take it with you when you Die. In light of that I Choose to put my faith in Christ as God's son, that he died on the cross for my sins, and then rose victorious over death three days later. I have no fear of death because the only part of me that is really living was taken care of by Christ.
You seem to have confused my callous regard for Death, with looking forward of it. I miss typed earlie, but In one sense I do anticipate Death because in that event I will be living forever in heaven praising God. Death is something no one can expect it can come at any moment, I am just glad that I am prepared for it that is all..
When i said Anticipation earlier i was referting to preparedness, not necessarily laying in wait twiddleing my thumbs.
Kind of in the same way that we antisipate and are warned against a terrorist attack.

tombs
 

I'm with Bruce, I'm gonna live forever.:rolleyes:

Yes Bruce, I've seen the future and you will live for ever.:3eye:
You too Leah

And so will our children.:p

Leah and Bruce are going to be living forever? What a cute couple!

I thought that most Christians regarded their bodies as temporal and their spirits as beings that would keep on going?

I agree that everyone ought to consider their death before it is coming up on them and stomping on their bones. There's a lot to learn from one's reflections on the matter.

I'm an atheist and I regard my body as a temple....;)

Absolutely agreed: I've written a webpage meant to help people come to terms with it:
<a href="http://kisrael.com/mortal/">Dealing With Mortality: A Skeptic's Guide</a>

And I hate to say it, but I think people who expect to live forever via technology are extremely over optimistic. Not only do we have a host of things to learn about the aging process of the body, but we'd have to solve EVERY other humanity killing problem out there, from supervolcanoes to new superviruses to the magnetic field flipping; even if we get through all of that, there's still the heatdeath of the universe...suddenly, EVERY longterm problem humanity faces becomes YOUR problem.

These have got to be two of the stupidest comments I have ever heard. I'll take them one at a time.

1) You anticipate eternal life, and then say "too bad it will happen without you". What the hell? So please set me straight on this: You do believe in eternal life, but for who? Only people who believe in it? What about those who don't? Do they get whatever they believe? Or, as you likely believe, you think they'll end up with endless torment because they just happen to not believe what you do. Right?

First off, if that were the case, that still would be considered living. Just because it's isn't flowers and sunshine doesn't mean they wouldn't be "living".

Second, there is no "eternal life". Life as you know it is when your body has a pulse, has brain functionality, and has breath. When that stops, your "life" is no more.

In which case, unless you have some miracle technology, you will die. End of story. There will be no "without you".

Yeah yeah, your soul "lives on". Which brings me back to the "first off" pharagraph.

2) "Why any person living in 21st century would think of his death with anticipation is beyond me..."

What are you kidding me? Everyone has such a wonderful life that they're happy to be living right? Ok, how about the cancer patients who are wracked with pain so bad they can hardly think, let alone "live". So they shouldn't anticipate dying? You're saying that under no condition, you can't envision anyone whose life is so bad they'd be begging to die? Get real.

I can easily picture the scenario where pain is so bad all you can think about is dying.

On a side note, hell to me would be an entirely senseless void with absolutely nothing whatsoever around. No sound, smell, taste, touch, sight. Nothing. Endless nothing with your being concious of it all. All being nothing, with no ending.

All that aside, I'm undecided on what happens when you die, other than the fact that I'm not anticipating it. I don't want a nice little heaven where everything is happy and praising of a deity. Since apparently I must die at some point in time, I want to die and start again, over and over. I like living, and it's a damn shame life is so short.

Quzah.