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Craig Earl
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 13 July 2019
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 1304
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 12:23pm | IP Logged | 1 post reply
People deal with grief in different ways. Some are affected far more than others. I guess, if people need to feel that there's something else 'after' to get them through a rough time, then that's their choice.

I lost my stepmum just before Christmas last year. She had been ill for a number of years but the end came suddenly and traumatically (my dad passed 12 years ago in a lingering, slow way). Like Matt's experience, their ends came in very different ways.

In retrospect, I'd agree that RIP as an acronym seems way too blunt for what is intended. I guess the 'peace' part of it is really just a substitute that most people use for a well-meaning 'end to suffering.'
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Wallace Sellars
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 01 May 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 17690
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 3:29pm | IP Logged | 2 post reply

 John Byrne wrote:
To quote Burt Reynolds in THE END, death is “lying in the ground with dirt on your face and holding your breath forever!”


I realize it’s not the same thing, but this reminds me of poor Bethany.
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Michael Casselman
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 14 January 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1238
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 4:51pm | IP Logged | 3 post reply
I'd like to second the roll-of-the-eyes towards "Rest In Power"' as mentioned above. 
I'd just as soon Rest In Peas. Make me some garden fertilizer.
I'm not gonna be around to hear any of the praise, scorn or even indifference heaped towards me when I die, so people can say whateverthefuck they want.
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Tim O Neill
Byrne Robotics Security


Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10935
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 5:35pm | IP Logged | 4 post reply

"Rest in Power" origins and use come from eulogizing POC
and LGBTQ communities subjected to hate crimes, so pissing
and moaning about it is just another dog whistle.
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James Johnson
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 March 2009
Location: United States
Posts: 2111
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 5:52pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply
Thank you, Tim!👏
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132835
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply
A line from NATIONAL LAMPOON has stuck in my brain for decades: “Death is just like going to sleep, only it hurts like a bitch.”

When I was about fifteen a 12 year old girl I knew distantly was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Inoperable, so it was just a matter of waiting for her to die. She was in constant pain. Finally hospitalized, she was given medication, but the pain became so great the doctors refused to give her any more.

They didn’t want to risk killing her.

Scenarios like this are among the things that inspire us to wish someone will “rest in peace”.

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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132835
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply
…it is just another dog whistle.

•••

I don’t know what that means.

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ron bailey
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 16 October 2016
Location: United States
Posts: 1001
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply
Yeah, its origins started 20 years ago or so in the graffiti culture of Oakland to eulogize a victim of a shooting, but you could easily forgive someone for not knowing that and give them the benefit of the doubt that it simply sounds odd to the ear if you're not familiar with its inception.
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Sheila Friedland
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 11 July 2022
Location: United States
Posts: 57
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 9:10pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply
"Rest in Peace" is I believe a Christian concept and Christianity understands the spirit at being in conflict with the body/sin/the world.  Like Buddhism, life is classically understood as perpetual struggle. So once the body expires, the conflict is ended and hopefully the spirit is free of sin and united with God.

The difficulty with the phrasing of death has to do with that we just don't know what it's like; we CAN'T know what it's like.  No perception of self, time, or space.

If you go to Heaven or Hell, we don't know what that 's like.

If you're gone and don't even know you're gone we don't know what that's like.  And if someone is "gone" then the natural question is, "where did he go?"

Even the sentence, "He is dead" is not correct.    When someone is dead, there is no longer any "he" nor "is" he anything.  

 It's a mysterious thing that we can't comprehend while alive and when we're dead we don't know it! 


…it is just another dog whistle.

•••

I don’t know what that means.

Racism of course.  OR It means that Tim blows a normal loud whistle for hateful crazies.


Edited by Sheila Friedland on 18 February 2024 at 9:21pm
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Michael Casselman
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 14 January 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 1238
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply
I wasn't aware of the origins. Not even sure the first time I heard it used for anyone, but it sounded like an awkward corruption of 'rest in peace'.

So, to the point of the original post, is "rest in power" any better of a phrase because of who we use it for?
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John Byrne

Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132835
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 10:17pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply
Any term that assumes an afterlife is self deception.
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Rebecca Jansen
Byrne Robotics Member


Joined: 12 February 2018
Location: Canada
Posts: 4635
Posted: 18 February 2024 at 10:22pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply
I associate it with someone has good thoughts about that person now gone. Any literal part of it having fallen away for me. It's too late to wish them well.

'Popped their clogs' is a term around some of my family... not sure if that's English or Dutch actually. Probably the Irish have the best idea... have a party in their honour! Pop an acorn in my mouth and plant me in a burlap bag, or use ashes for something growing, anything but most of the things we do in the Western world.

I am very against people who try to apply shame or guilt to people who don't attend funerals. I tend to appreciate a formal funeral myself, a ritual that does help me put a period punctuation mark on the person and their/our time, but for people who don't want to attend I think zero about what that means about them other than they have different needs or ways. One of the few things that will really get me to tear into somebody is if they are making someone feel badly at a time they have had a loss. It's a sort of form of praying in public and a big sin in whatever religion I'm capable of having, showing off one's mourning, and attacking those who opt out, yuck.
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