Our reality is made up of many dimensional facets, the perfunctory ones being length, width, height and time. We are a natural part of that construct, and we function perfectly well as such. As an individual; one of many, I occupy a finite portion of that construct. This is, of course, necessary to function properly. If any of my dimensional aspects were to be changed to a value of infinity, I would no longer function correctly in reality. Imagine a person infinitely tall or infinitely wide. That would entail immobility at the least. This is why a desire for infinite life, i.e. infinite time is not reasonable to me. It would be like wishing you were infinitely tall.
Given this information, my question is, why would human beings find immortality or "life after death" desirable?
Thanks for thinking with me on this.
6 comments:
Wow, I can't believe you still believe in time....
Wow, I can't believe you can't believe I still believe in holding two mirrors up facing each other on either side of us not being able to believe in the thing that the other believes in, and watching the reflections of our disbelief trail off into infinity.
or....
Yes. I believed just in time.
OT: How'd you change the line spacing? You geek.
Are you referring to life after death in a "heaven" sense? Are you lumping reincarnation in with this?
Optimality Theory: I didn't change the line spacing, I geek.
I don't know what from you speak.
I might be referring to the "re" part of reincarnation, I guess, in the sense that humans have the urge to continue in the same form (one way or another) along a linear path. I'm not discounting the idea that parts of me, or other living beings, exists in other places and times. I just think it is constraining to believe they must needs be sequential.
Is it still called reincarnation if you are or were a tree? After all, trees and other plants are not made out of carne.
LOOK AT THE LINE SPACING! SOMEONE OR SOMETHING DID THAT! It's happened on 7rl too. Me = bitterly envious. (Jealous? Oh, g'wan, both.)
Remember that there are reincarnation-centered belief systems that feature different parameters. Ex: some indicate that it's human-only, some don't restrict it to linear time, etc. I m'self often fall into the linear thinking, but mostly that's because it's what I've been trained to do since birth, and for me it's a mostly helpful construct, especially when I'm already struggling to work with (not against) the more helpful bits of societal structure.
Wow, I am listening to a song by DeVotchKa that I actually like on first ear.
Hey what's that shiny th
Anyway, getting back to your original post, and in particular the content rather than the layout,
"Given this information, my question is, why would human beings find immortality or 'life after death' desirable?"
Depends on the belief system, of course, but for some it's a natural impulse to want to continue to experience nice things, or the idea that there's a reward for all this crap. For some reincarnation-inclined folks (but not all), it's the notion that ya get more chances to learn and try things and maybe someday be a better version of yerself, react to situations in such a way that one can be proud of oneself, and not find oneself reflecting "y'know, I really didn't need to spit in Mr. Jones's coffee cup for that cosine joke he told in trigonometry class, it probably wasn't directed at my grandmother."
But there are a myriad of reasons why one or more of the post-death lines of thinking would be attractive to a person. I find it very intriguing that you've got a brain the size of a planet (and they've got you writing Chinese characters over and over again) and yet you claim you can't understand why someone would want to think that way. Reminds me of someone else we know.... (*snork*)
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