onlife ondeath offlife

[lobelia321]

Thinking about people's various comments in reply to my metaphysical onlife musings, I have revised my view somewhat.



Lj is not life because it is controllable. When we are dead, that's it. We can think about our death beforehand and ponder the unthinkability of life continuing without us, but there ain't nuthin' much we can do about our impending death.

However, we can jack in and out of LJ at will. In that sense, it is a Life under our control. In the less metaphysical sense of 'life' (as in 'my real life'), it is also a life under our control. It is entirely up to the individual to decide when or where she goes online, posts, comments and what she reads. Neither life (real) nor Life (in the larger sense) is anything like this.

Getting back to the metaphysical level, LJ could be seen as a means of coping with the knowledge of death. Because it is analogous to life with the fundamental difference of being controllable, it is like having power over Life. And if you have power over Life, you have power over Death.

LiveJournal is a means of keeping Death at bay.

Thus endeth the peripatetic philosophy lesson of today.

Hm, it would be interesting to hear from anyone who actually knows about philosophy. My familiarity is highly patchy. (Must be because Plato's Symposion and Kant's Critiques have not yet appeared in editions with Movie Stars on the cover.)

Comments

[msilverstar]

I think you've got something here. I'm on another conferencing system, The Well, and have been sine 1989. There's a lot of community there, a real history of listening, advising, helping, arguing and playing. I've got other communities as well, like my geek mailing list (almost all guys) and various professional groups. They all fit nicely into your philosophy.

BTW, for me, it's not LJ itself, it's LJ+Lotrips. No matter how dear the people are, what compels me are the stories. Not sure how that fits in.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

That's interesting because it doesn't fit in. I guess what it goes to show that we're all here for slightly different reasons (there's no one-size-fits-all theory -- although I will continue searching for it). I used to read the stories obsessively. They're what brought me into fandom, and I was very reluctant about coming into contact with the people, and even more reluctant about giving into fannish impulses.

But now that I've been with this thing for 1 1/2 years I find myself reading less and less (but perhaps this is just a stage...?) but relying more and more on the Friends I've made.