I'm just curious about what, if anything, you people think about life after death. Is it possible? Probable? What would the experience be like? I have some ideas, but they're vague and not very well thought out, maybe I'll try to organize them later.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 02:34:13 PM
I'm just curious about what, if anything, you people think about life after death. Is it possible? Probable? What would the experience be like? I have some ideas, but they're vague and not very well thought out, maybe I'll try to organize them later.
I see three possibilities:
1. You sort of just sit there watching but unable to do anything when people do awful or stupid shit. I imagine Harry Truman's ghost, for example, is shitting on the oval office desk and trying to get Trump to notice. That's like hell, only worse.
2. You go to either heaven or hell, but in either case you are more or less fuel or spare parts for the endless tug of war between the two. Your actions in life just determine which tractor you become fuel for.
3. You wake up in your console and debate whether or not you have time for another round of
Humans.
I don't believe in an afterlife
after you die, maybe something is left over -- but if so, is it you?
I think about how major life events change people. I know somebody that was in a train wreck and it gave her travel anxiety for years. I'm sure part of that stress never went away. If you were to experience something as traumatic as death, and something still existed afterwards, how different would it be from the self that's walking around today?
I think that after you die, people that had real contact with you can potentially carry on a piece of you inside themselves--and so parts of you can continue to act on the world after you've passed. Maybe you could call that a 'soul'; some lasting presence on the world.
But in the end, I'm pretty materialist about death.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 06, 2020, 04:14:55 PM
I don't believe in an afterlife
after you die, maybe something is left over -- but if so, is it you?
I think about how major life events change people. I know somebody that was in a train wreck and it gave her travel anxiety for years. I'm sure part of that stress never went away. If you were to experience something as traumatic as death, and something still existed afterwards, how different would it be from the self that's walking around today?
I think that after you die, people that had real contact with you can potentially carry on a piece of you inside themselves--and so parts of you can continue to act on the world after you've passed. Maybe you could call that a 'soul'; some lasting presence on the world.
But in the end, I'm pretty materialist about death.
I don't think anything of "me" is left over after death. There's no reason to think that happens except magical or wishful thinking. I'm more in line with traditional Buddhist ideas about reincarnation - that is, what I think of as "me" is just a collection of habits and memories and there's no continuity of that beyond the Big Dirt Nap. But what I really
am isn't any of that anyway, I'm just a thing that the universe is doing, and after "I" die, the universe will do something else, somewhere else, and whatever that is will feel like it, too, is "I".
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 06, 2020, 02:53:09 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 02:34:13 PM
I'm just curious about what, if anything, you people think about life after death. Is it possible? Probable? What would the experience be like? I have some ideas, but they're vague and not very well thought out, maybe I'll try to organize them later.
I see three possibilities:
1. You sort of just sit there watching but unable to do anything when people do awful or stupid shit. I imagine Harry Truman's ghost, for example, is shitting on the oval office desk and trying to get Trump to notice. That's like hell, only worse.
2. You go to either heaven or hell, but in either case you are more or less fuel or spare parts for the endless tug of war between the two. Your actions in life just determine which tractor you become fuel for.
3. You wake up in your console and debate whether or not you have time for another round of Humans.
I like #3 except I'd hope there's something besides
Humans in that arcade.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 06, 2020, 04:14:55 PM
I don't believe in an afterlife
after you die, maybe something is left over -- but if so, is it you?
It has to be. The universe wouldn't allow something as cool as me to just
vanish.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 04:46:36 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 06, 2020, 02:53:09 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 02:34:13 PM
I'm just curious about what, if anything, you people think about life after death. Is it possible? Probable? What would the experience be like? I have some ideas, but they're vague and not very well thought out, maybe I'll try to organize them later.
I see three possibilities:
1. You sort of just sit there watching but unable to do anything when people do awful or stupid shit. I imagine Harry Truman's ghost, for example, is shitting on the oval office desk and trying to get Trump to notice. That's like hell, only worse.
2. You go to either heaven or hell, but in either case you are more or less fuel or spare parts for the endless tug of war between the two. Your actions in life just determine which tractor you become fuel for.
3. You wake up in your console and debate whether or not you have time for another round of Humans.
I like #3 except I'd hope there's something besides Humans in that arcade.
I'm more of a fan of #1, myself.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 04:45:00 PM
I'm just a thing that the universe is doing, and after "I" die, the universe will do something else, somewhere else, and whatever that is will feel like it, too, is "I".
I like that-- individuals are like a mask that "god" tries on for a little while
Alan Watts has a relevant section in
The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are: http://www.michaelppowers.com/path/taboo.html
Quote from: Cramulus on February 06, 2020, 05:15:54 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 04:45:00 PM
I'm just a thing that the universe is doing, and after "I" die, the universe will do something else, somewhere else, and whatever that is will feel like it, too, is "I".
I like that-- individuals are like a mask that "god" tries on for a little while
Alan Watts has a relevant section in The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are: http://www.michaelppowers.com/path/taboo.html
I credit Watts with two important things: describing things in a way that makes "materialism" seem way less sterile and dead, and having a pretty cool accent.
it could be something like this - words won't mean anything (https://youtu.be/tmozGmGoJuw)
I believe in the soul, in a sense, but I believe it is mutable, frangible, destructible, and that it doesn't survive the death of the brain by more than a couple seconds.
Some people say that the afterlife you get depends on your beliefs; if that is true, then I'm going to spend eternity in a waiting room, with nothing to do. I don't find waiting rooms particularly unpleasant, mind you, but it's going to be very very boring.
Was there death before birth?
We simply cease to be. This is important for two reasons. The first is that the limited quantity of time we have is what gives any of this a purpose. A promise of afterlife is why you have a bunch of weirdo death cults actively praying for The Rapture.
The second reason is that I understand that there's only one form of immortality, and it is fecal transplants. Donate poop, get poop inserted into people who need it, save their life. Brain gut connection alters personality. Bit of EoC lives on in every poop recipient.
Timelessness in shit.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on February 07, 2020, 11:43:10 AM
We simply cease to be. This is important for two reasons. The first is that the limited quantity of time we have is what gives any of this a purpose. A promise of afterlife is why you have a bunch of weirdo death cults actively praying for The Rapture.
The second reason is that I understand that there's only one form of immortality, and it is fecal transplants. Donate poop, get poop inserted into people who need it, save their life. Brain gut connection alters personality. Bit of EoC lives on in every poop recipient.
Timelessness in shit.
By that standard, I am literally the tetragrammaton.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 07, 2020, 02:54:24 PM
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on February 07, 2020, 11:43:10 AM
We simply cease to be. This is important for two reasons. The first is that the limited quantity of time we have is what gives any of this a purpose. A promise of afterlife is why you have a bunch of weirdo death cults actively praying for The Rapture.
The second reason is that I understand that there's only one form of immortality, and it is fecal transplants. Donate poop, get poop inserted into people who need it, save their life. Brain gut connection alters personality. Bit of EoC lives on in every poop recipient.
Timelessness in shit.
By that standard, I am literally the tetragrammaton.
:fnord:!
Quote from: Doktor Howl on February 06, 2020, 02:53:09 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 02:34:13 PM
I'm just curious about what, if anything, you people think about life after death. Is it possible? Probable? What would the experience be like? I have some ideas, but they're vague and not very well thought out, maybe I'll try to organize them later.
I see three possibilities:
1. You sort of just sit there watching but unable to do anything when people do awful or stupid shit. I imagine Harry Truman's ghost, for example, is shitting on the oval office desk and trying to get Trump to notice. That's like hell, only worse.
2. You go to either heaven or hell, but in either case you are more or less fuel or spare parts for the endless tug of war between the two. Your actions in life just determine which tractor you become fuel for.
3. You wake up in your console and debate whether or not you have time for another round of Humans.
I can't be said to believe anything about the afterlife for sure but I have
suspicions. I suspect that The System allows for ANY of these outcomes or more, Sysop permitted, but generally you reload another "game of humans" automatically in what some refer to as reincarnation.
I very much like the tractor pull analogy.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 06, 2020, 04:14:55 PM
I don't believe in an afterlife
after you die, maybe something is left over -- but if so, is it you?
I think about how major life events change people. I know somebody that was in a train wreck and it gave her travel anxiety for years. I'm sure part of that stress never went away. If you were to experience something as traumatic as death, and something still existed afterwards, how different would it be from the self that's walking around today?
I think that after you die, people that had real contact with you can potentially carry on a piece of you inside themselves--and so parts of you can continue to act on the world after you've passed. Maybe you could call that a 'soul'; some lasting presence on the world.
But in the end, I'm pretty materialist about death.
While death may be traumatic, it's not nearly as bad as you're thinking. I've talked with people who've survived flatlining and other near death experiences, and for the most part they're better adjusted about that than other more common traumas they carry around. The idea that the trauma of dying is enough to destroy an otherwise viable soul or soul-like object is just a non starter.
The people you describe sound like they survived it :lol:
even then - so much of what we are has to do with our bodies
without a body -- if anything's left, would you still be you?
beats me, man -- like I said, I'm not a believer in afterlife
I doubt anything that is recognizable as "you" could survive. But maybe if you reduce "you" to "the phenomenon of being aware", that could survive. Like you've said, even the moment to moment continuity of identity under normal conditions is illusory, so it may be that no matter how much of you dies with the body, it still *feels* like you keep going.
Is there life after death for "You"? Define "You"
Every atom, every minuscule part of you, has existed since the beginning. It will continue long after our sun is gone.
Things like memory, choice and experience are transitory, but those are only incidental to what you are: A process that began long ago.
Sure sentience is fleeting, or the vain trappings of consciousness, but what makes you, will go on until the end of all things.
The Flesh is willing, it is only the spirit that is weak.
I can't really claim being able to reason well so it doesn't surprise me that I also have trouble understanding the concept of death with any life after it.
And, any claims of my having "lived it up" as a consequence of that are also false.
Quote from: Cramulus on February 11, 2020, 10:27:07 PM
The people you describe sound like they survived it :lol:
even then - so much of what we are has to do with our bodies
without a body -- if anything's left, would you still be you?
beats me, man -- like I said, I'm not a believer in afterlife
Whether there is the possibility of anything surviving the process of dying is a separate question from whether the trauma of dying would be so scarring that it would fuck up an otherwise viable thing. The specific trauma of death is identical to the trauma of a near-death experience: you may experience hallucinations or physical pain, you may be cognizant of the fact that you aren't surviving this, you lose consciousness outside of the context of sleep. I've known folks who went through violent car accidents, fell through third floor windows, got stabbed in the neck, tried to poison themselves, boiled their brains in a fever... I think there's this idea that people who've lived relatively soft lives have that the pain we experience day-to-day is somehow less than what happens in moments where people die. My husband's been shot. It hurt more when he cracked a tooth.
I strongly suspect that absent the flesh you become MORE of who you are, not less, as the subconscious mind, which may be a manifestation of this "soul" business, becomes the consciousness. You remember who you were in every incarnation, and also Who you are as a divine spark.
I don't think that a soul is a thing in itself like a rock, but rath eris a coherent emanation from the great Consciousness of which we are all, except maybe rong, a part of.
The Aten solar disk with the radiating hands is a good illustration that I think deserved a better shake than the Egyptians gave it. Before Akhenaten there was already a latent defacto monotheism in Egyptian mysteries, called the cult of On, that was very similar to the Aten. If I am correct about this then we are all ONE thing essentially deciding to be many things that have forgotten who they are and so can functionaly be "individual".
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 12, 2020, 06:39:47 AM
I strongly suspect that absent the flesh you become MORE of who you are, not less, as the subconscious mind, which may be a manifestation of this "soul" business, becomes the consciousness. You remember who you were in every incarnation, and also Who you are as a divine spark.
I don't think that a soul is a thing in itself like a rock, but rath eris a coherent emanation from the great Consciousness of which we are all, except maybe rong, a part of.
The Aten solar disk with the radiating hands is a good illustration that I think deserved a better shake than the Egyptians gave it. Before Akhenaten there was already a latent defacto monotheism in Egyptian mysteries, called the cult of On, that was very similar to the Aten. If I am correct about this then we are all ONE thing essentially deciding to be many things that have forgotten who they are and so can functionaly be "individual".
The "Seven Souls" theory is also pretty cool, as is the rendition with Bill Laswell of Material and William S. Burroughs reading The Western Land.( I think they played it on The Sopranos too.)
QuoteThe ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls.
Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren the Secret name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that's where Ren came in.
Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power. Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.
Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she or it is third man out...depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light.
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 12, 2020, 01:25:07 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 12, 2020, 06:39:47 AM
we are all, except maybe rong,
:lulz:
at first i was like, "hey!"
but then i was like, "well, maybe . . ."
and now i'm like, "that's right"
Quote from: rong on February 14, 2020, 04:12:54 PM
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 12, 2020, 01:25:07 PM
Quote from: The Wizard Joseph on February 12, 2020, 06:39:47 AM
we are all, except maybe rong,
:lulz:
at first i was like, "hey!"
but then i was like, "well, maybe . . ."
and now i'm like, "that's right"
You're so right
You're rong
Quote from: tyrannosaurus vex on February 06, 2020, 02:34:13 PM
I'm just curious about what, if anything, you people think about life after death. Is it possible? Probable? What would the experience be like? I have some ideas, but they're vague and not very well thought out, maybe I'll try to organize them later.
I think the dilemma is that we don't know what if any boundaries exist between the two and where those boundaries (if they exist at all) are located.
I liken it to the same question posed another way: where do
we go when
we die?
in which case not enough is known about the "we" in question to understand it's position in the question.
everything is possible.