I recently read a David Foster Wallace narration for the first time in my life in German. He uses so many technical terms that I don't get many passages when I listen to it on English.
He describes in this story "Good Old Neon" how he commits suicide. Or the main protagonist whose name is David Wallace. He also describes what happens when we are dying or shortly afterwards.
Here is an interesting passage.
"The internal head-speed or whatever of these ideas, memories,
realizations, emotions and so on is even faster, by the way — exponen-
tially faster, unimaginably faster — when you're dying, meaning dur-
ing that vanishingly tiny nanosecond between when you technically
die and when the next thing happens, so that in reality the cliché about
people's whole life flashing before their eyes as they're dying isn't all
that far off — although the whole life here isn't really a sequential thing
where first you're born and then you're in the crib and then you're up
at the plate in Legion ball, etc., which it turns out that that's what
people usually mean when they say 'my whole life,' meaning a discrete,
chronological series of moments that they add up and call their life-
time. It's not really like that. The best way I can think of to try to say
it is that it all happens at once, but that at once doesn't really mean a fi-
nite moment of sequential time the way we think of time while we're
alive, plus that what turns out to be the meaning of the term my life
isn't even close to what we think we're talking about when we say 'my
life.' Words and chronological time create all these total misunder-
standings of what's really going on at the most basic level. And yet at
the same time English is all we have to try to understand it and try to
form anything larger or more meaningful and true with anybody else,
which is yet another paradox." Page 11
I could give more quotes but I am scared about copyright violations. It is really an interesting description. I have not thought about all of that in detail beforehand. I am not sure on which basis this was written. He explained t with a lot of confidence. Though I am not sure whether this description fits empirical scientific knowledge. I rather think it is how DFW imagind it himself.
I have read many people shit themselves when they die. But I don't know about what happens inside your mind. I am not sure whether this flashing of one's life is accurate. But it seems logical that it is not necessarily in this chronological order. For me it is not that important. As long as I cease to exist afterwards I am not this nervous. But I am scared what will happen before my death/suicide. I expect that a lot of horrible things will happen which finally will drive me to commit suicide. But this is another story.
What do you think happens inside your brain/mind? Maybe it is even differently for many individuals I could imagine that.
He describes in this story "Good Old Neon" how he commits suicide. Or the main protagonist whose name is David Wallace. He also describes what happens when we are dying or shortly afterwards.
Here is an interesting passage.
"The internal head-speed or whatever of these ideas, memories,
realizations, emotions and so on is even faster, by the way — exponen-
tially faster, unimaginably faster — when you're dying, meaning dur-
ing that vanishingly tiny nanosecond between when you technically
die and when the next thing happens, so that in reality the cliché about
people's whole life flashing before their eyes as they're dying isn't all
that far off — although the whole life here isn't really a sequential thing
where first you're born and then you're in the crib and then you're up
at the plate in Legion ball, etc., which it turns out that that's what
people usually mean when they say 'my whole life,' meaning a discrete,
chronological series of moments that they add up and call their life-
time. It's not really like that. The best way I can think of to try to say
it is that it all happens at once, but that at once doesn't really mean a fi-
nite moment of sequential time the way we think of time while we're
alive, plus that what turns out to be the meaning of the term my life
isn't even close to what we think we're talking about when we say 'my
life.' Words and chronological time create all these total misunder-
standings of what's really going on at the most basic level. And yet at
the same time English is all we have to try to understand it and try to
form anything larger or more meaningful and true with anybody else,
which is yet another paradox." Page 11
I could give more quotes but I am scared about copyright violations. It is really an interesting description. I have not thought about all of that in detail beforehand. I am not sure on which basis this was written. He explained t with a lot of confidence. Though I am not sure whether this description fits empirical scientific knowledge. I rather think it is how DFW imagind it himself.
I have read many people shit themselves when they die. But I don't know about what happens inside your mind. I am not sure whether this flashing of one's life is accurate. But it seems logical that it is not necessarily in this chronological order. For me it is not that important. As long as I cease to exist afterwards I am not this nervous. But I am scared what will happen before my death/suicide. I expect that a lot of horrible things will happen which finally will drive me to commit suicide. But this is another story.
What do you think happens inside your brain/mind? Maybe it is even differently for many individuals I could imagine that.
