Were you dead before you were born (or conceived)?

[MatticusMania]

One minute your driving down the highway, feeling grand. The next youre caught right between the headlights of a big unstoppable semi-truck without a second to swerve. Light out. You open your eyes, and in some far off place, you awake from slumber, leaving the nightmare behind. We die a thousand deaths every night, and wake to a million different worlds each morning.

 

[Skitch it!]

Think about this though - if the question is "were you dead before you were born", then it all comes down to how to define "you".
The matter that we're created from comes (in part) from matter of things that were in fact, once alive. So something that once might have had consciousness is now part of us. Therefore - were you alive before being born - yes in a way. We were also dead.

Or does this make no sense?? I'll have to just walk away from this post now and ponder it a bit.

I do believe that conciousness is passed genetically from our ancestors' before us, such as this example?

Because humans are mostly adapted to Pleistocene environments, psychological mechanisms sometimes exhibit "mismatches" to the modern environment, similar to the attachment patterns of ducks. One example is the fact that although about 10,000 people are killed with guns in the US annually,[26] whereas spiders and snakes kill only a handful, people nonetheless learn to fear spiders and snakes about as easily as they do a pointed gun, and more easily than an unpointed gun, rabbits or flowers.[27] A potential explanation is that spiders and snakes were a threat to human ancestors throughout the Pleistocene, whereas guns (and rabbits and flowers) were not. There is thus a mismatch between our evolved fear-learning psychology and the modern environment.[28][29]

Conciousness passed down? If you saw many of your fellows, mortally wounded/poisoned by snakes and spiders over a period, would that conciousness transfer generations? For me, I believe it does....imo, it's a natural caution, ingrained by the learnings of ancestors, whom suffered the fate/s and embedded the dangers in their consciousness. In that way, we lived and died before we were born so to speak.

 

[Relic]

I do believe that conciousness is passed genetically from our ancestors' before us, such as this example?

Because humans are mostly adapted to Pleistocene environments, psychological mechanisms sometimes exhibit "mismatches" to the modern environment, similar to the attachment patterns of ducks. One example is the fact that although about 10,000 people are killed with guns in the US annually,[26] whereas spiders and snakes kill only a handful, people nonetheless learn to fear spiders and snakes about as easily as they do a pointed gun, and more easily than an unpointed gun, rabbits or flowers.[27] A potential explanation is that spiders and snakes were a threat to human ancestors throughout the Pleistocene, whereas guns (and rabbits and flowers) were not. There is thus a mismatch between our evolved fear-learning psychology and the modern environment.[28][29]

Conciousness passed down? If you saw many of your clan/tribe/whatever, mortally wounded/poisoned by snakes and spiders over a period, would that conciousness transfer generations? For me, I believe it does....imo, it's a natural caution, ingrained by the learnings of ancestors, whom suffered the fate/s and embedded the dangers in their consciousness. In that way, we lived and died before we were born so to speak.

Hmmm...interesting stuff, it sounds like Jung's theory on "Racial memory".

 

[Skitch it!]

Hmmm...interesting stuff, it sounds like Jung's theory on "Racial memory".

I only searched this earlier, but I always wondered why kids too young to have any knowing of these species, have a natural fear of them. Bear in mind I am a complete layman, I've never read into it too much, you mention Jung, and I'm lost

But I shall endeavour to persevere in educating myself ; )

 

[Relic]

I only searched this earlier, but I always wondered why kids too young to have any knowing of these species, have a natural fear of them. Bear in mind I am a complete layman, I've never read into it too much, you mention Jung, and I'm lost

Oh you should delve into that a bit if you have some free time - Jung, Freud - really fantastically, interesting stuff.

But in regards to the "racial/specie (sp?) memory - could it not also be cultural though? Like in some places like Asia for example, things like scorpions and centipedes are regularly eaten whereas we in the "west" find that sort of thing appalling.. why is it that they don't and we do? Food for thought..(bad pun intended)

 

[mid_life_crisis]

I decided in my last life not to let this bother me this time around, so I don't have an answer for you.

 

[Skitch it!]

Oh you should delve into that a bit if you have some free time - Jung, Freud - really fantastically, interesting stuff.

But in regards to the "racial/specie (sp?) memory - could it not also be cultural though? Like in some places like Asia for example, things like scorpions and centipedes are regularly eaten whereas we in the "west" find that sort of thing appalling.. why is it that they don't and we do? Food for thought..(bad pun intended)

I absolutely agree it would be cultural, the coping mechanisms and strategies I would consider are very geographic, you would have been living in very different environments and adapting to those through experience and knowledge.

 

[Munjibunga]

... an interesting mixture of mirth and superstition here.

It really bugs my daughter (and my wife) when I'm telling a story about something I did in the past, and my daughter asks, "Was I there?" and I say "No, sweetie, you were dead then."

Then it's like those cartoons where the two cats start fighting and turn into an amorphous whirling ball of fur. A great time is had by all.

By the way, in the OP I should have just stuck with "before conception." I didn't really want to get into the whole "when is a human considered a human" issue. Let's just leave that alone so the thread can live on.

 

[DwaynieAD]

Brain Tacos?

 

[Skitch it!]

Brain Tacos?

Yep, those little critters need feeding

 

[Relic]

I absolutely agree it would be cultural, the coping mechanisms and strategies I would consider are very geographic, you would have been living in very different environments and adapting to those through experience and knowledge.

I do require further reading in regard to the greats, this I shall pursue ; )

Once you get into the mind of Freud or Jung, you cant stop reading!

 

[Skitch it!]

Once you get into the mind of Freud or Jung, you cant stop reading!

A good and informed recommendation, I shall definitely explore

 

[fdeck]

I think it's uncontroversial that the atoms of my body all passed through somebody's stomach or respiratory system, and would have qualified as "dead" at point of entry or shortly thereafter.

 

[Deluge Of Sound]

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day.

 

[Ziltoid]

Death is the termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. I accept that definition so it means that death implies that you've been alive before so no you were not "dead" before you were alive, from that point of view.

Others might say that dead is simply "not alive", so form that point of view you were dead before. W.e. floats your boat, I don't mind much, kind of a futile argument.

And I like tacos and bacon man, bacon is like totally..man...awesome you know right?

Oh and:

 

[Angus]

I'm looking for Major's views on this.

Before I was conceived, part of my genetic material was a living, moving organism. (Which also makes the idea that "life is conceived at the time of conception" ridiculous, because life is transferred, not created; one living organism meets with more genetic material and become another one.)

But that doesn't mean that I was a person at that point, which is why pro-life makes no sense to me, fwiw.

 

[T-MOST]

"You" were not dead before you were conceived, "you" did not exist. In order to be dead you would first have to be alive. Water is made from Hydrogen and oxygen. But until the two are chemically combined "water' does not exist.

 

[Angus]

Is that a response to someone in particular or to the OP?

It's oxYgen, btw.

 

[SJLee]

IMO, you can't be dead if you haven't been alive.

 

[StyleOverShow]

In "Being and Nothingness", Satre with a nod to Heidegger, might explain this is as you were 'null' in existence before you were born in a being-in-itself sort of way...of course, in the being-for-itself, you may have existed somewhere else but not where your parents, doctors, nurses, etc. expected to find you.

I think i got it right? Its been 30+ years.....