General / Off-Topic Re: Immortality
- Thread starter PaxtonNewt
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One of my all time favorite things comes from Iain Banks (who, as you'll suspect, was the source for my original sentiment). In his Culture books one of the Culture's favorite ways to bury the dead was hyperspace them into the centers of stars. That way, when the stars go nova, the atoms of the their dead would spread out among the cosmos and help seed the next generation of stars (and life).
Interestingly, while some individuals would choose immortality it was always considered a little weird by the rest of the populace.
One of my all time favorite things comes from Iain Banks (who, as you'll suspect, was the source for my original sentiment). In his Culture books one of the Culture's favorite ways to bury the dead was hyperspace them into the centers of stars. That way, when the stars go nova, the atoms of the their dead would spread out among the cosmos and help seed the next generation of stars (and life).
Interestingly, while some individuals would choose immortality it was always considered a little weird by the rest of the populace.
Unless those atoms had been split during the lifecycle of the star.
But it's poetic at least
In my view, the death of a sentient being, by anything other than it's own informed free-will, is a travesty, no matter how natural, no matter how inevitable, no matter how necessary, that death may be.
Answers with no solutions; a lot of stories and not one reason to believe any of them, other than that they are, perhaps, more pleasant than the alternative...or peer pressure. Both are damn shoddy reasons, IMO, for anything.
People tend to normalize, even embrace, the inevitable. Maybe they have to in order to give their limited existences meaning.
One of the greatest sources of my general resentment of humanity is that they have wasted so much time and effort glorifying death and fantasizing about the greater meanings they have collectively attributed to it, that relatively few people have stopped to wonder if it really was inevitable, or if it was a problem to be solved. Oh, there have always been a few who have mused about actual immortality, but mostly people just bought into the systems of control that promised them reward in the afterlife in exchange for their obedience in this one. Only recently have we really begun to learn enough to think that death may be a problem that may eventually be solved...but I wonder how much earlier that realization may have come without all the stories, and the conflicts over who had the best one, that have swallowed up so much over the last ten thousand years.
Answers with no solutions; a lot of stories and not one reason to believe any of them, other than that they are, perhaps, more pleasant than the alternative...or peer pressure. Both are damn shoddy reasons, IMO, for anything.
Interestingly, while some individuals would choose immortality it was always considered a little weird by the rest of the populace.
People tend to normalize, even embrace, the inevitable. Maybe they have to in order to give their limited existences meaning.
One of the greatest sources of my general resentment of humanity is that they have wasted so much time and effort glorifying death and fantasizing about the greater meanings they have collectively attributed to it, that relatively few people have stopped to wonder if it really was inevitable, or if it was a problem to be solved. Oh, there have always been a few who have mused about actual immortality, but mostly people just bought into the systems of control that promised them reward in the afterlife in exchange for their obedience in this one. Only recently have we really begun to learn enough to think that death may be a problem that may eventually be solved...but I wonder how much earlier that realization may have come without all the stories, and the conflicts over who had the best one, that have swallowed up so much over the last ten thousand years.
Never felt the need to live forever.
The opposite is true.
The only thing that has made life endurable for me is the assurance that it would end eventually.
Ever since I was a teenager I thought that I would die within a decade or so. Several decades have passed since
.My health isn't the best, so I still think I will die within a decade. And to me to think that is a relieve.
To think that life would never end seems pure hell to me.
I could not agree more. There is one (not) small problem with immortality however. You'd have to pair it with enforced population growth control, at least as long as we're confined to this one planet we currently live on.
Death is something that goes beyond me and worries me.
When I'm going to die, I hope I'll find all the cats that I have known in my life, and to give them my love again and for the eternity, obviously.
When I'm going to die, I hope I'll find all the cats that I have known in my life, and to give them my love again and for the eternity, obviously.
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As an ex-christian I have just come to the conclusion that I won't worry about dying when im dead. There will be nothing and the dead dont worry about nothing, so there is nothing to worry about .....
..... That or Im wrong and I will burn for eternity because I didnt pray hard enough .....or give enough money .....or didn't attend or pray over food I bought busting my hump at work all week.
.......... That or Im wrong and I will burn for eternity because I didnt pray hard enough .....or give enough money .....or didn't attend or pray over food I bought busting my hump at work all week.
If we knew it was nothingness before the birth, we could suppose it’s nothingness after the death.
But who remembers what he was before his birth ?
But who remembers what he was before his birth ?
Well, it's fine before death and it's fine after.
It's just that transition bit that tends to be uncomfortable, so yeah, go to the cinema, instead. Or something.
Obviously an afterlife without cats is not worth living.
Permadeath for me, please. With or without cats or dogs.Yes without cats, I prefer the death after the death.
As Jim Jefferies said:
"I don't want eternity. It doesn't matter how good it is. It's eternal. You get used to it and then you get bored."
I got nothing............
I've considered this myself. Yet no matter how old I get, today is not the day I want to die. That said, my life is pretty good right now, even with these health issues. If I had a terrible life (which depression has tricked me into believing in the past), perhaps I'd feel differently."I don't want eternity. It doesn't matter how good it is. It's eternal. You get used to it and then you get bored."
It's a way of saying that probably there is nothing after the death, as there was nothing before the birth.
But there is no certainty about this, because who can say that he has the memory of something before his birth ?
So basically we do not know if there was something before being born, and by extension what there is (or not) after the death remains a terra incognita.
To conclude, if we remembered something before we were born, we could have great hope that there is something after the death.
Death is not necessarily the end of something and birth is not necessarily the beginning of something.
The life is perhaps a passage between what there is before the birth and what there is after the death.
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You can not know.Permadeath for me, please. With or without cats or dogs.
As Jim Jefferies said:
"I don't want eternity. It doesn't matter how good it is. It's eternal. You get used to it and then you get bored."
Jim (and you) consider the eternity from the point of view of your miserable earth condition (
) .The eternity in the Beyond (if it exists) is certainly completely different.