just nate – code is poetry, life is code

I’m listening to Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion.” I transcribed the following from my listening.

There is nothing special about the moment when an old man dies. The child that he once was died long ago, not by suddenly ceasing to exist, but by growing up. Each of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man dies by slowly morphing into the next. From this point of view, the moment when the old man finally expires is no different from the slow deaths throughout his life.

Mark Twain’s dismissal of the fear of death: I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Robust intellects may be ready for the strong meat of Bertram Russel’s declaration in his 1925 essay, “What I believe”: I believe that when I die, I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life, but I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they’re not everlasting. Many a man has born himself proudly on the scaffolding. Surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy, indoor warmth of traditional, humanizing myths, in the end, the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.

There is more than just grandeur in this view of life, bleak and cold though it can seem from under the security blanket of ignorance. There is deep refreshment to be had from standing up and facing straight into the strong keen wind of understanding.

I’ll probably have to write more about this book some other day, but this short section really just hit the nail on the head.