irreversible

from a brief history of thought by luc ferry

"...we must not think about death, because there are only two alternatives: either i am alive, in which case death is by definition elsewhere; or death is here and, likewise by definition, i am not here to worry about it!  why, under these conditions, would you bother yourself with such a pointless problem?"

"poe is suggesting that death means everything that is unrepeatable.  death is, in the midst of life, that which will not return; that which belongs irreversibly to time past, which we have no hope of ever recovering."

"to live freely, capable of joy, generosity and love, we must first and foremost conquer our fear - or, more accurately, our fears of the irreversible."

"we can neither think nor act freely when we are paralyzed by the anxiety provoked - even unconsciously - by fear of the irreversible."

"for the ancients, not only was nature before all else good, but in no sense was a majority of humans called upon to decide between good and evil, between just and unjust, because the criteria which enabled those distinctions all stemmed from the natural order, which was both external to and superior to men.  broadly speaking, the good was what was in accord with the cosmic order, whether one willed it or not, and what was bad was what ran contrary to this order, whether one liked it or not.  the essential thing was to act, situation-by-situation, moment-by-moment, in accordance with the harmonious order of things, so as to find our proper place, which each of us was assigned within the universal."