Existentialism and Memory Care

This course by Jack Kultgen (Osher 1) has given me a new framework in which to think about death; the topic for the last of the eight meetings, this week. Death is always close in memory care (two living in adjoining apartments passed last week).

It is our concern for others while we are alive that matters. We will no longer be conscious after our own death; unless we build a framework in another dimension.

Existentialism starts with no external framework beyond one’s own existence.  We are only conscious of what we experience. Humans, dogs and cats seem programmed to seek new experiences, as extroverts and introverts (Osher 2).

Last year I ran onto “The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind” by Julian Jaynes” (Book 4). This provides an evolutionary explanation for the development of consciousness, hypnosis and religion; in many ways around the world, at about the same time.

Some 20 years later Marcel Kuijsten, a rabbi, published “Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind, the Theories of Julian Jaynes” (Book 5) which supports the origins of God voices, and also hypnosis, as a natural development of the human mind we have today“.

In old Testament times, it is theorized, the left brain perceived messages from the right brain as voices from God. Commands were carried out without question. This worked until living groups, small cities, became too large; and little was known about how the dynamic continuing creation works as we do today.

Having now dismissed the two above books totaling 803 pages in three short paragraphs, I will try now to do the same for Margaret and me in memory care.

Death was once a natural event. It happened. Life was a time to enjoy, one day at a time. Memory care can extent life several years with a remarkable ability to maintain near normal consciousness to within hours to a few days of passing. However expected, death always seems to be a surprise to everyone.

Some 3,000 years of religious developments have created a variety of after-lives not shared with milkweeds and Monarch butterflies. Most of the great religions seem to have descended from the voices of the Gods often experienced in dreams and visions. This can be replaced by guided meditation, self-hypnosis, today.

Maggie will live and die as a Baptist, with Jesus Christ as Savior of her soul. This belief has served her, and her generation, well during her lifetime, and after she passes.

All of the great religions are interested in saving souls; but in their unique and combative way. This view is changing. Not saving souls from Hell and the Devil but saving mankind by saving the earth for the living, is now in.

The old Christen denominations that sing hymens are being replaced with community mega-churches that sing praises. Be thankful for having been given a life.

When you pass, your body dies like a milkweed or a Monarch butterfly. We are all part of the same miraculous creation. Celebrating the life lived, is in; grieving the death, is out.

Develop and use your God given talents for the betterment of everyone. Our calling now is to continue the creation at a higher level of consciousness, or pay the price of blind evolution: extinction. Save the earth.

This view of life causes our two years in Hawaii to haunt me. To control overpopulation, some years ago, each newborn that could sleep overnight without feeding was taken to a temple ground on a cliff over the ocean. If the baby was still there in the morning, all was well. If the baby was gone it was either in the ocean or selected for the royal family to raise. The mother would never know.

The great religions promote peace, charity, and love. The USA constitution promotes peace, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness (create wealth as well as share wealth). [Earning wealth is more dependable, and acceptable, than finding wealth.]

Humans are the product of a violent turbulent past (geographically, biologically, and socially) that has left, remnants of each level of development, access to the most advanced level, for good and evil. Quit violating other people with your tobacco smoke, for example.

Education or extermination, modified by effective communication (and miscommunication), will drive the future of what we now call mankind: savage, civilized, robot, warm chip implant, cold solid state being.

Dreams of the future, as dreams in the past, help make sense of what we are doing now for individuals, beliefs, and nations. We must dream it to achieve it, or as a non-existentialist, just act or follow and not think about consequences (Osher 2).

Do what can be done, and persist until the times are right for success (Osher 3).

References:

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Missouri, Spring 2018.

Osher 1: John Kultgen, Life Choices from Existential Perspectives: Kierkegaard and Sartre.

Osher 2: Cindy Claycomb, Understanding Behavior and Change Through Trans-State Induction Theory. [grounded in existentialism]

Osher 3: Michael Connelly, Before and After "How a Bill Becomes a Law:" The "How, What, Why and Why Not?" for Regular People.

Book 4: Julian Jaynes, 1976 & 1990. The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind, 491 pages. ISBN: 0-618-05707-2  My posts: 
https://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-cost-in-lives-of-learning-to-use.html introspective minds. [Larry Brown, Faith in the Face of Tyranny. Osher Fall 2017]
https://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com/2017/10/who-we-are.html
https://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com/2017/06/mythos-and-logos.html

Book 5: Marcel Kuijsten, 2016. Gods, Voices and the Bicameral Mind: The Theories of Julian Jaynes, 312 pages. ISBN: 978-0-9790744-3-1  LCCN: 2016904044  My post: https://residentialcarefortwo.blogspot.com/2017/12/words-from-god-and-man.html