What happens after you die. (I'm not asking, I'm telling you, so pay attention.)
What happens is that you become a disembodied mind drifting invisibly somewhere in the dim, dusty, dark matter-cluttered cosmos. The contents of your once embodied mind survive death, and whatever was there at the moment of death is all you will have for the 1000 year duration of your disembodied existence.
What is the upshot of this situation?
Whatever you had when you died is the cud you will be chewing on for the duration (which is 1000 very, very slowly passing years, after which you abruptly dissipate (because god is slightly merciful). No, you will not meet god. He has his own problems to deal with. No devil, no heaven, no hell, just whatever was between you ears when you dropped dead.
I advise this:
Get busy and start reading as much as you can! Listen to as much music as possible, see as many movies, have as much sex, eat as many delicious foods, etc. as you can. in other words, load up with as much baggage as you can hold because you will be taking it with you. If you have filled your mind with crap, then that is what you are going to be thinking about for 1000 years.
There are no bookstores, media outlets, fine restaurants (or bad ones either), or sex organs after death. You will not be able to fill the tank once you are dead. No conversations allowed, either. (No mouths to speak, no ears to hear, no telepathy either, just in case you thought you'd be able to tap into somebody else's supply.)
I was informed that there are a lot of disembodied minds out there absolutely desperately craving SOMETHING to think about. What would they give for a sleazy tabloid or the worst novel ever written! Anything!
BTW, if you think existence is pointless now, just wait! If you have a sour, negative outlook, you would do well to get into attitude class pretty damn quick. 1000 years is a long time to be peeved.
What is the upshot of this situation?
Whatever you had when you died is the cud you will be chewing on for the duration (which is 1000 very, very slowly passing years, after which you abruptly dissipate (because god is slightly merciful). No, you will not meet god. He has his own problems to deal with. No devil, no heaven, no hell, just whatever was between you ears when you dropped dead.
I advise this:
Get busy and start reading as much as you can! Listen to as much music as possible, see as many movies, have as much sex, eat as many delicious foods, etc. as you can. in other words, load up with as much baggage as you can hold because you will be taking it with you. If you have filled your mind with crap, then that is what you are going to be thinking about for 1000 years.
There are no bookstores, media outlets, fine restaurants (or bad ones either), or sex organs after death. You will not be able to fill the tank once you are dead. No conversations allowed, either. (No mouths to speak, no ears to hear, no telepathy either, just in case you thought you'd be able to tap into somebody else's supply.)
I was informed that there are a lot of disembodied minds out there absolutely desperately craving SOMETHING to think about. What would they give for a sleazy tabloid or the worst novel ever written! Anything!
BTW, if you think existence is pointless now, just wait! If you have a sour, negative outlook, you would do well to get into attitude class pretty damn quick. 1000 years is a long time to be peeved.
Comments (106)
What happened to "Against All Nihilism", or whatever?
You should be working on Tolstoy. Trollope, or an unabridged dictionary right now. Just shove it in while you still have time!!!
There's nothing pessimistic about "eat, drink, and be merry"; but "shove it all in while you can!" is basically nihilism personified.
Maybe you misunderstood. Read "shove" as "shovel"; shovel in as much as you can. The separate etymologies of shove and shovel is one of those things you can think about after death.
Bullshit.
Well sure, my response, "bullshit", is just as probable as your entire OP, since no one knows what happens after death. Is that your point?
Thanks for the edit here; I did read "shove" as "shovel", hence my use of "shove" in my initial comment....
Which 1000 years? I have a sense of humor, but it doesn't manifest itself when confronted with bullshit.
Again with these edits, as I re-read. Are you just placating me here? Or is this some fodder to make your case look better? I really don't know.
You probably assume, via the avatars of BC and myself, that we're two old men bickering about chess pieces. I'll dispose you of that false notion right now by letting you know that one of us is a phony, in that regard.
What do you mean, "which 1000 years"? I've only mentioned 1 millennial stretch.
I mean witch ever 1,000 years you originally mentioned; I can't adequately answer your question, because I too don't know which 1,000 years you were referring to...
Read further.
Why would my possible death be reason to assume I should follow BC's advice? And what specifically made you think my avatar should lead to my inherent death?
So this thread is a joke? I was playing the joker and the philosopher at the same time, as I always do, because I thought there was something real here to be discussed.
Bell rings in the lounge. Edit for clarity for Noble Dust: Ding!
Bullshit. 1) you don't know who I am, and 2) you don't have a grasp of the aesthetic potential of grayscale.
How do you know it was God? You might have been hallucinating.
I'm a clueless home-schooler; you need to expand on what you mean.
Don't be sorry; I was going along with the fun you were having.
René has a conversational relationship with god, so maybe he does know who you are. And grayscale is good.
For instance, when I said "you don't know who I am", I was referring to my avatar itself. Maybe too subtle for such an exchange....
Wait, what are you suggesting about my identity? I'm "dying" to know.
I guess I'll take this opportunity to smoke a cigarette...
Good idea. Enjoy it, because you won't be able to smoke in the near total vacuum of space. How much do your cigarettes cost? Apparently you have been forced to smoke outside. Too bad. I always enjoyed writing and smoking in the house. But that was... 23 years ago.
It would depend on how good the cake was. If it was a day old discount store cake, no -- just taste it for politeness sake. If it was a really good cake, then eat more. But nausea isn't something you'll want to have a lot of memories of, and there are enough nauseating people, places, and things for one to encounter, so just don't over do it.
You won't have 1000 years of boredom if you stock up on things to think about, rethink, mull over, remember fondly, recite, etc.
You understand, I hope, that this thread IS a joke. It was posted in The Lounge.
But the bit about non-physically anchored minds plugs into the joke. There are all kinds of serious threads speculating about God, the soul, life after death, other universes... all topics about which we know nothing and about which we probably should not be chattering away about as if they were certainties.
But it is also true, and in line with having a good life that is worth living, that we should seek out good, rich experiences. Of course: sometimes we have to clean the oven, rake up all the leaves in the yard, mow the grass, do laundry, and other such boring jobs--never mind the brightly lit hells of the modern office park. But when we can, we should opt for better.
A lot of the time when I was working and dealing with life as we know it, I had neither the time nor the energy to opt for much of anything. Then when I retired, I found I finally had the time to read more books, listen to more music, enjoy time passing.
Happy Birthday. Which number was it? Chocolate cake?
What we call in the UK: bollocks.
Sounds like I'd be quite comfortable with this, granted the practice of meditation :P
Glad you liked it.
Oh definitely, you are a dead wringer / dead ringer for the 1000 year post-mortem meditation milieu. You're well read, you know programming languages (you can code for a couple of centuries), you have lots of opinions to sharpen, and so on. You are somewhat deficient in sexual experiences, however. At some point before the flying fickle finger of fate finds you, and while you are still able, you should spend a couple of weeks in a non-stop orgy. You should also come to the United States for a couple of years so that you can be totally appalled and amazed by American culture. That will give you a lot to chew on, too.
A ringer is a horse substituted for another of similar appearance in order to defraud the bookies. This word originated in the US horse-racing fraternity at the end of the 19th century. The word is defined for us in a copy of the Manitoba Free Press from October 1882:
The "dead" part means exact. Don't ask me way, but like "dead center" -- or precisely in the center. On the other hand, "dead line" has always had more ambiguous and ominous meanings, as in "if your toes aren't on the line by 5:00 pm, you'll be dead". In other words, late = dead. But that isn't what it means in dead ringer. It intensifies "ringer" which is a duplicate; in other words, an exact duplicate, even though that is redundant, because a duplicate is presumably exact, or we would call it similar. If one horse was all white and its ringer had a black star on it's forehead, or a short black ankle, that would not be a very exact duplicate.
I will be spending a lot of time during my 1000 year stint mulling over matters like these.
Bitter Crank is being at least semi-serious here, and obviously means his details allegorically, and so I'll comment:
Quoting Bitter Crank
I've been saying that, at the end of lives, there's no memory that there ever was, or could be such things as body, worldly life, identity, time or events.
Oh, drifting around in this physical universe with the dust and other matter? We can take that as comedic allegory.
There can be no experience of a time when there's no experience. Only your survivors will experience the time after your complete shutdown.
The "1000 years" is more comedic allegory, justified by the fact that shutdown is a gradual process. But, at the end of lives, it's misleading to imply that there's anything like waking consciousness for very long. It soon becomes just sleep.
But few would agree that the moment of death determines your subsequent experience. It's the general course of your overall life that makes the difference. But, below, Bitter Crank says that too.
Dissipation will be gradual, in the sense that your sleep will become deep-sleep, which will become ever deeper.
I don't know how long will be the subjective duration of your waking consciousness during the death process. Easterners speak of heavens and hells before reincarnation. Maybe, for the extremely negatively deserving, a hell could have very long subjective duration. I wouldn't want to even try to guess how long ...likewise a heaven for the extremely positively-deserving.
I don't claim to know about the heavens and hells (so no need to challenge me on that), except that they sound a lot like what the near-death experiences (NDEs) report the beginning of.
Atheists talk about God more than anyone else does.
...you hope.
Good luck, Crank :D
..and you're sure that, for you, there isn't any hell in there?
All perfectly good advice (...if given the benefit of the doubt and interpreted favorably).
...except that it sounds like gung-ho hedonism, rather than the Kama and Dharma referred to by the Hindus. Even pursuit of one's own satisfaction and enjoyments should be done yogically, moderately, controlledly and self-honestly. Not just "Spill wine", and "Party like hell", etc.
Basically, there's no purpose or meaning in life. As the Hindus say, it's just for play, "Lila".
But, secondarily (that's my impression) , because others' lives are important to them too, you want to live right, in regards to your relation with other living beings.That right-living is called "Dharma" by Hindus. In general, It's self-responsibility and self-honesty.
According to their tradition, a life should be sufficient in both of those regards--1) Play, free enjoyment, openness to life, and exploration; and also 2) Ethical, non-harmful, right-living. In other words, live and let live.
...instead of accumulating longing, dis-satisfaction, regret and guilt.
Those two considerations are the Hindu purusharthas of Kama and Dharma. It's my impression that the former is primary and the latter is secondary, deriving its importance from other beings' lives being important too.
The matter of whether, at the end of this life, a person will reach the end of lives that we've both been referring to, or instead will experience reincarnation, is a whole other topic. For the purpose of this discussion, I've accepted the assumption that there isn't reincarnation. But Bitter Crank can't be sure of that.
I suggest that there's probably reincarnation, because it's metaphysically-implied.
If so, it's unlikely that anyone at these forums will reach the end-of-lives at the end of this life.
If there's reincarnation, then perfection of one's lifestyle (as described above), over (finitely) many lifetimes, will inevitably eventually result in life-completion, and the end-of-lives.
That suggestion that there might be, or probably is, reincarnation, is very unfashionable here at these forums.
For that reason, to argue that issue would be a distraction for this topic, and that's why I've assumed, in this post, that the end of lives will occur at the end of this life.
Michael Ossipoff
Why does anything reproduce if it doesn't sense a future?
Is the 17 year old girl getting screwed silly by the idiot bastard's son§ thinking about the future? Not at the moment. Not until she's unmistakably pregnant. Then what? Dither dither, hither thither, can't afford an abortion; morning after pill is 4 months too late. Looks like reproduction is sliding down the chute.
Future? What future?
Ob-la di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra
La-la, la-la life goes on.
No need for future sense.
§ Frank Zappa lyrics proceed along the lines of...
The idiot bastard son:
I've never committed allegory -- I swear!
True, of course. Nothing to regret, nothing to be happy about. And that is my belief: death is nothingness.
Babies, especially lobotomized babies, would have a rather nebbishy time of it, but by another sign of God's skimpy mercy, infants would only spend a year in this limbo. Nothing to think about, and nothing to think with.
The greatest sign of God's larger mercy is that non-human animals are spared all this rococo rigamarole. they just drop dead and that is that. Which, btw, is what I believe happens to our animal species: We just cease and desist and that's it. There are no second acts in America or in eternity.
Existential nihilism is the belief that life has no intrinsic meaning or value. With respect to the universe, existential nihilism posits that a single human or even the entire human species is insignificant, without purpose and unlikely to change in the totality of existence. The meaninglessness of life is largely explored in the philosophical school of existentialism.
I suppose somebody might think I was a nihilist because I have, on a number of occasions, said that "the universe is meaningless and does not provide us with meaning". The universe is meaningless, it can't give us meaning. We can impose meaning on our world, in our lives -- or on the entire universe for that matter. We are meaning makers. We are where meaning comes from. A theistic believer holds that God provides meaning, but if one is not a theist, and not a nihilist, one has to provide meaning.
We have gone so far as to actually create God, and describe God as the Creator of the Universe and all things in it. This isn't merely colossal chutzpah on our part; it's our greatest task -- to find ways of imposing meaning on the cosmos, on down to our own lives.
So, I don't think that life is meaningless. A consequence of failing to maintain meaning is anomie: "Anomie is a "condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals". It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community, e.g., under unruly scenarios resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values. It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim."
I suppose many people feel nihilistic at times: Life just seems bleak, meaningless, flat, uninhabited. It's a bad feeling. No, I don't think it's a mental illness, though depressed people feel pretty bleak at times. It's a philosophical illness, something that decreases one's fitness to live in this world. I understand that people become deeply disenchanted with life, and then it looks like ashes. It's always in our best interest to resist nihilism, and the anomie that it can engender.
There are more advantages to being anchored in a faith tradition than there are disadvantages. And being "anchored" leaves plenty of room for interpreting, reinterpreting the tradition as changing circumstances arise. "Time makes ancient good uncouth." A faith that worked as a child cease working later in life, but the "tradition" remains, and with it one's social guides, morals, ethics, liturgies, and so forth.
But... I'm glad you overcame your brief encounter with nihilism.
Why were you a nihilist, and how did you overcome it?
Mmmm, from the British I learned that this is called a shagathon. You know, like a marathon, but for shagging, not for running >:O (though I guess that just like you can run a marathon, you can also run a shagathon!)
What do you think BC, do the ladies like a man who has good shagathon stamina?
You're a disgusting pervert....nah...just kidding...you're beyond disgusting... ;)
Maybe you missed the tongue-in-cheek tone of that initial exchange, or maybe it wasn't clear by way of my responses.
So how should I have responded instead? Thanks for the feedback, but it seems like a small post in the scope of a 4-page thread for you to make a response towards.
Also, if emotion has no place in a philosophy forum, then I want no place in such a catatonic place.
Disagree. Evidence and good reasons without emotion are husks with no corn.
No, emotion can do that, but, ideally, emotion drives the issues. Emotion is, in that sense, primary, and comes before reason; bias, for instance, comes before reason. And bias is emotional. But there is a right bias and a wrong bias, I think.
Quoting Sam26
What does "similar" mean there? Something being mathematically correct has no bearing on something being morally correct, for instance, and morals and emotion are inextricable. Again, there are right emotions and wrong ones.
For example,
Modus Ponens in logic...
If P, then Q.
P.
Therefore, Q.
If I am human, then I am a person.
I am human.
Therefore, I am a person.
The conclusion is devoid of emotion and rightly so.
No, you shared this opinion:
Quoting Sam26
Thanks for the refresher on logic.
That refresher doesn't have anything to do with my contention that emotion plays a primary role in arguments.
Yes, that's an example of what I mean.
So. therefore, get as many experiences as you can of all kinds, real, read, or heard about. Then you will have more raw material for the reactors of your imagination.
Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. David Hume
The mainspring that runs our brain is the limbic system (the emotions) not the pre-frontal cortex (our center of reasoning). Moral education is more the instruction of the passions than the instruction of reason.
Emotional states, which many use to guide their reason, can only lead astray. This is why there is so many irrational beliefs in religion, politics, ethics, etc., etc.
Moral education is about one's ethical duty apart from how you feel about moral right and wrong. Your subjective passions, which many use to guide their reason, are not what makes something moral or immoral. Abortion is a good example, it's the passions on both sides that cloud the issue.
I believe that life is continuous so you will have a new body when you die.
Why do you think that you will have a memory after death?
Probably so. Contrary to popular belief, it's probably a better default presumption is its negative.
I mean, we're here, and whatever the reason for that is, and if that reason continues to obtain at the end of our life, then what does that suggest?
Michael Ossipoff
You may be giving the "passions" too negative a spin; they are not the 7 deadly sins. After all, your desire to pursue logic above all else, is a passion. The satisfaction of achieving logical argument, and the pleasure you take in doing logic, thinking about logic, are passions.
Of course, the passions can lead one astray; logic isn't fool proof either. But both passion and logical reasoning can lead us along the right paths.
Good to know. Looking forward to it. Is there an option package?
It is like of advance body, it takes different shapes. I know this from communication with deceased persons.
Eternity is longer than 1000 years... just saying you know.
You are saying passion is not needed to solve the equation, knowledge of the rules and order of operations are needed to solve it. I think what the others (and myself in agreement) are saying is: You have to care about learning the rules in the first place, care about working out the answer, care about whether you get it correct or not and if not, then care about getting it corrected.