MovieChat Forums > Det sjunde inseglet (1958) Discussion > Is death inevitable?

Is death inevitable?

posted 14 years ago by max_demian
40 replies | jump to latest

This is a question which most people would still answer in the affirmative - so not much has changed since the Middle Ages (except the religious reasons given then).

The proper answer is 'no'. (It's also not inevitable that the Sun will rise tomorrow.)

There will always be the possibility an 'accident', but the chance of this happening on any particular day can be reduced to a very small level, and, if you survive that day, you have gained a day of life.

We may be able to cure all diseases one day.

We may be able to prevent ageing one day.

I don't suppose that anyone alive today will live to see either of the above two conditions, so we can say that death is inevitable for us, but not that death itself is inevitable.

[–] Makalli 12 years ago

Is death inevitable?

How would you know when you had beaten death? You can't ever have lived forever.

Unless death was impossible, then the possibility of dying would always be there. How could victory be claimed?

If you want to live longer get good at chess.

[–] max_demian 12 years ago

There's a subtle difference between saying that you have 'beaten death' and asserting that death isn't inevitable, but it's hard to pin it down.

I suppose I'm saying that, of all the conceivable ways of dying (accident, homicide, disease, 'aging') none is incapable of avoidance in the future (heat death of the Universe excepted).

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] 12 years ago

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[–] rasheed_node 12 years ago

Death is not inevitable any more. Following is the prescription to avoid death, permanently.

Put one set of railway tracks exactly on the equator. A train on it and get into that train. This train must run at the speed of light, at least. You will never die in this train.

[–] max_demian 12 years ago

Put one set of railway tracks exactly on the equator. A train on it and get into that train. This train must run at the speed of light, at least. You will never die in this train.

If you could travel at the speed of light, you would appear not to grow any older, or indeed do anything, but only from the point of view of an external observer. You would continue to age, and those not on the train would appear move infinitely quickly to you. This basically was Einstein's 'thought experiment' where he imagined that he was riding on a beam of light. In fact, you can't travel at the speed of light as your mass increases towards infinity as you approach that speed. If you travelled very near the speed of light you would age normally from your own point of view, but external observers would see you moving (and aging) very slowly.

[–] speccyboy 12 years ago

Nothing is inevitable.

[–] bnwfilmbuff 10 years ago

Well not according to this movie. When it is your tie to die, it is inevitable and you cannot negotiate a way out. That is the message of this movie. Bergmann draws a parallel between the Holy Family and the family in the wagon. He shows Joseph a vision of death which leads him to take his family away from knight and his groups' trip to his castle. This was the same as Joseph's visit from the angel to take Jesus and Mary to Eqypt away from Herod's troups that had orders to kill all of the less than 2 year old male infants.

[–] kenny-164 10 years ago

Back to the OP, and leery as I am of philosophical discussions on IMDb...

I think Heidegger made the essential point, which ironically echoes Christian theology on the subject, that it is within the essential nature of human existence that we are as Heidegger put it Being Towards Death. Otherwise put it is essential to the nature of human existence on Earth that it is finite. It occurs over a time line, and Time itself provides for each of us a beginning, a transitional period, and an end.

Imo no amount of imagining at least within the 3 dimensional nature of existence in which we do exist can avoid the logical result of the recognition that we exist in time, and that the progress of time, even theoretically, will require some event occurs that ends each of our lives.

In fact I think this is so fundamental to human nature that even the contemplation of an afterlife requires that Death amount to a process where our fundamental human natures must change, through transcendence, to something else. But for all of us, believers, atheists and in between, this form of existence must end.

[–] Strazdamonas 10 years ago

I am inevitable.

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