Sam Harris - Death and the Present Moment

Just heard an interesting (YT clip of the) presentation by Sam Harris titled "Death and the Present Moment" and posted two comments.

"A questioner at around 51:00  mentioned "a right to live." I do not believe there is such a thing outside of human-made picture of life. So, if that is true, if the right to live is a human construct, than it is not a fact, but an unprovable proposition that some accept as the truth and some don't. It may be of some use in certain circumstances, but the "nature" does not honor it."

"Mourning someone's death is really feeling the loss of something we really do not have -- that someone's future impact on our lives. The fallacy hidden in this state of mind is the expectation that the future moment will be the same as some past moment that we enjoyed. It never is and never will be. Everything always changes. That is the wonder of life. Expectations are crutches that our mind sets up. They many times help us along in our daily lives and many other times make us feel miserable. If we accept that the next moment, and all that it may or may not contain, is not guaranteed and accept that if it comes it will not be completely the way we expect it to be and are consequently ready to accept the consequences, we are free of the burden of needing the expectation to come true as the basis for happiness or fulfillment of some sort or actually of the existence itself."

Those sorts of presentations, regardless of the degree to which I concur with their premisses, analyses, and conclusions, always inspire me to study more. Douglass Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, and Bach" did that for me many years ago when I first read it. I might look YT Hofstadter's clips next.