what happens when one gets damned? is there a secular version to this word? also the consequences of being damned and/or forgotton are different if one is alive or dead. why not blessed? why not remembered. perhaps if more options are available......
People sometimes imagine they're leaving behind traces of themselves in their children (as if who we are could be transmitted through our DNA). As for your DNA, it's already been diluted by 50% in your children, and it's down to less than 1% by the 7th generation. Doubtless, you'll be remembered by your children and perhaps by your grandchildren, but it's unlikely that you'll be remembered by your great grandchildren. In any case, you'll be forgotten by the fourth generation. You're not a living monument to your ancestors; neither will your descendants be a monument to you. Of the 60 billion humans that have lived on this planet, how many are remembered today? Prince or pauper; all of us will eventually be forgotten. Even if your name could be known by the last conscious creature to evolve from our species; that creature too will die; and along with it, so the memory of you. Of course, it doesn't matter; not even a little. No one has ever lived their life in another person's head. Michael
That is such a great question. I hate the idea of disappearing; to vanish without anyone caring or knowing that you are gone....that is not a good feeling. People act like I'm not there even now. I am hard to miss, but they ignore me when I walk by or offer a comment.
I don't think that being remembered is such an important thing in the end. It isn't to me anyway. The point has been made that in the end, everyone is forgotten, no matter what mark you have made. Is it important to any of you to remember any particular person that lived a few hundred years ago? I don't mean the history we can study, and by all means should study, I mean the people themselves. The most recognised and remembered figures in history are remembered for what they've contributed, not for who they were. I guess that's what makes being remembered lose its appeal in my eyes. If I can be known only for my actions, and not for my character, then its worth nothing to me. No one three hundred years from now could get to know me, nor would they have any reason to want such a thing. We're all experiencing this reality, we will come and go, and others will also do the same. We're given the chance to come into this world, grow in it, create relationships, discover completely amazing concepts and feelings, the only catch is that we're not here for very long... not long at all... There's always that little tap on the shoulder letting us know that none of this is ours, and our time with it is very limited. Others will be granted the gift of this experience after we are long gone, and my ego doesn't hunger to burden those others with the useless lagacy of just another passer by.
I think that if I were an astronaut, I'd leave "something of myself" behind in space just floating around. That would always give me a cool feeling. I would be on Earth dying and my little dudes would be chillin around the universe. I would rather be forgotten then be damned. I am on a mission to do the most good in the world with the least recognition. That way I can just have self-contentness.
Orthogonal 1) You discount the possibility of genetic memory. 2) You must keep in mind, with your percentages, that each of us is 100% made of, genetically, of those before us. All that DNA doesn't come from nowhere. 3) What about while alive?
Hi Adam, I understood your question to have been about us as individual humans, not us as generic blobs of genetic material. 1) Which individual ancestor of yours genetically bequeathed his or her own memory to you? 2) Allowing 25 year per generation (ignoring multiple paths back to the same ancestor), in 20 generations (only 500 years ago) you had just over a million direct ancestors (2^20 = 1,048,576). 3) The vast majority of the 6.2 billion people on this planet will never forget me while I'm alive for the simple reason that they don't even know that I'm alive to begin with. It's a statistical fact that at this moment I have molecules of water in my stomach that once were part of Aristotle's body. Similarly, there are currently molecules of air in my lungs that were once breathed by Charlemain and Ghengis Khan. If you allow enough time for mixing of the molecules around the planet (say, 100 years), you may safely assert that molecules from any historical figure you care to remember are at this moment part of your body. This was lifted from a physics exam on the Internet: "Assuming that the atmosphere has become completely mixed over the last 2000 years, how many molecules from Julius Caesar’s last breath are in your lungs at the current moment? Estimate the volume of the lungs as two cylinders 30cm in length, 5cm in radius; V = 2 lungs x Pi x (0.05m)2 x 0.3m = 0.005 m3. Julius Caesar's last gasp had (1.3x10^44)x(0.005 m3)/(5x10^18m3) = 1023 molecules, of which (1023)x(0.005 m3)/(5x10^18m3) (about 100) are in your lungs right now." The material in your body will be endlessly recycled. Do you remember this children's saying? Man eats bird Bird eats worm Worm eats man So, even if you aren't an organ donor, nearly every part of your body will eventually become part of some new life. It's not so hard to imagine how completely your body (DNA included) will be disseminated when you remember that the atoms in your body (the ones heavier than helium) were produced in stars that exploded some billions of years ago. In the time-scale of human events you might be remembered for a short while. But on biological, geological, and astronomical time-scales your body won't even continue as dust. In time, even the very molecules of your body will become disassociated. Michael (well...at least for now I am)
Biological Descendents Is this why so many people seem obsessed (or at least cannot let go of) the need to reproduce "themselves" in a child who is biologically "theirs?" I mean, why is it so many people want to have children from their own bodies. What is so different from passing on your philosophies and love to a child who has been abandoned by their biological parents (in the case of adoption) and passing on those same philosophies/love to a child of one's loins? I just cannot see a truly logical reason for giving birth to another child when there are so many unloved and unwanted children just waiting for someone to give that love and sense of belonging to them. Just as blood (genetic material) does not create an instant bond, lack of genetic material does not mean a child will be any less one's "own" child than one's own (genetic) offspring.
evelina its just outdated marketing techniques. perhaps if these kids were packaged nicely and 'sold" off in an upscale boutique. how about online "purchases"? free delivery? complemetary toaster and a year's subscription to "toddler" magazine? half price on "raising kids for dummies? what say you? Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think people already do that in some sense. I live in a society where if you don't like your kid, you throw them away. My mom was a social worker for 34 years and time and again she came across parents who either threw out their kid because the child had begun to speak his or her mind, the parent wanting the government to take care of the now troublesome child. Also, she would tell me of the cases where people would just leave their newborns places to die, like the famous "dumpster babies." One of the major problems of a consumption obsessed society, as I see it. Children become just another product to be retrofitted (i.e., sent to therapy, put on ritalin), ignored if too time-consuming to maintain, or thrown away if too much trouble.
Damned and remembered. Even if I was damned by society, every one prominent enough to be remembered in history has a few loyalists who agree with him. Look at Hitler. Society is stupid for the most part anyway.
In my experience its your actions that allow others to percieve your character. Your actions are what draw people in or push them away. Your actions are how people get to know you. Your actions are you. They're you makin good deciscions or bad ones. They're you asserting what's important to you. Sometimes actions are all people see, and if you're actions to a stranger helped them, why not let them remember your action, and in turn view you as a good person? Do you understand what I'm saying? I realise i may have lost the point somehwere.
