… From a subjective standpoint, we are all born equal and undifferentiated (before that, ‘we’ were dead), but, as mature selves we make a distinction between the individual and the surroundings. Still, the brain keeps changing throughout life, in a pattern of the shifting flux of its neurons; we gain and lose memories and feelings, essentially creating a new person over and over again. The self is thus not so rock solid as it seems. These moment-to-moment changes differ from death only in degree. In essence, they are identical, although at the opposite ends of the spectrum. So, we are not static things. Other neural networks will come to be in other, future people, albeit with an “amnesia” of what went on before in the brains of the previous others. Why should we be happy about this? We never can be, because the ‘I’ cannot operate outside of its own boundaries. The only viable alternative is to think of a way in which it is possible to ever continue on. What will it be like to be a part of someone else after we die, with our own particular narrative of life cast aside? This is the ‘zen’ of now and then and when.
This is something that as already been posted around here, mainly by me. There will always be a fear of suffering and death. Therefore the false promises of religion will never go away. Religion is here to stay, whether we like it or not. However, I may iterate that it is only the foolish who is truly afraid of the inevitable. All too often people treat death as if it's an option. Sorry, we are all going to die. Every living creature in existence eventually dies. So why be afraid, right? If we know it's going to come, if we have have complete certainty that one day we will die and that it will be the end of life as we know it, why be afraid? Well, the answer lay simply in the fact that most of religion, when analyzed at it's core, is not simply the promise of eternal life but rather also the feeling of insight, superiority and control. Religion teaches it's believers that if you believe this, or if you do that, then you are to be granted something better than those don't - something that is inaccessible to everyone else but you. It's that feeling of having a one-up in the world. Humans are naturally competitive. We want the best of the best, and we are envyous of anyone who has something that we don't have but want. So, in that light, we can see how religions teachings are specifically structured to ensure the existence of that religion. Christians and the like believe that because they believe, that God will answer their prayers, intervene in their daily lives, ensure their safety, protect their loved ones, and of course, secure a place in a so-called paradise for them when they die. It's all bullshit. Really, it is. But we are stupid, plain and simple. We reject facts and evidence at the rumor of some eternal life. Though we have no evidence whatsoever that shows that an eternal life actually exists, we make that leap of faith out of greed and fear - greed to know that we have something others don't, and fear of death.
Some humans have much pride, meaning little humility, thinking that stars shine and flowers grow just for their special promise. What hubris!
Onto the nature of belief… THE INTRINSIC INSTINCTIVE: THINKING ABOUT THOUGHTS THEMSELVES What is this conviction, in many, that innate sense of impression, fond, of those spirits invisible and beyond? Who or what put them there, those notions of the thin air? To investigate, one must put aside the very judgment that descends from the conclusion, deep-rooted, for the inherent blocks its own analysis. Whence it came forth, so prevalent, this indwelling urge to believe? The plot ever thickens and twists and turns upon itself, bare—natural selection put it there! One can have many feelings that surface from the heredity of long ago. Some are not so good, obviously, and some are even forbidden thoughts. Life’s still emotionally primitive—‘negative’ feedback mechanisms in the central nervous system, some useless, still send out thousands-of-years-old messages. And so the feelings may be banished, but subtle is the difference of these and those inklings closer to the boundary of distinction. We don’t fall for thoughts of violence, usually, although it is possible for some to hear these directions as gospel; yet, we may fall for some ‘innocuous’ views, slipping over the threshold, indiscriminate, saying, “Well, I felt it, so thus it must be so.” Do we control our thoughts or do our thoughts control us? Could we, silly as it might seem, just be falling, hook and line, for the thoughts? Think deep—thoughts may tell you the answer! We may fall for our thoughts, hook, line, and sinker: conditioned responses, reflexes, or overwhelming emotions, some spurious, or ancient, planted by evolution, or unbalanced. Emotions are slow to react to logic, like molasses or slow forming crystals, or not at all, like rocks, blocking one. Unless and until they change, progress halts. Reason and emotion are hard to coordinate, each having a separate pathway to the mind, and that perhaps is all there is to tell about the miseries and follies of human history. From its safe subjective place that’s free of fear, the higher self, our conscious awareness, can witness the strange thoughts and emotions that surface on the mind, sent there by the subconscious brain. First-level thoughts are beliefs and desires, but second-level thoughts are truths and facts about the lower beliefs and desires, thus becoming able spectators of the scene beneath. Higher awareness, which can but witness, is a safe haven from which to observe the drama of our lives playing in our minds, granting us a sobering distance from it. This detachment allows the “thinking about a thought” without the thought itself being able to steal the show.
The conflict: One side is of internal sensation, and thinking, but of that internal sensation via introspection and extending it to further structuring beyond the initial wish but ever forming it into what one wants it to be through emotion. It’s as if that if we feel a ghost then there must be a ghost, and then further that it does such and such because of inter-dimensions, and more, to protect the notion, etc. The other side is informed more than internal sensation and uses science, logic, evidence, reason, and even secondary observation of felt sensations, wishes, and strange thoughts arising. Never the twains shall meet but in collision.
Methuselah might have but he was run over by a cart after not looking both ways when crossing a road.
I believe we can live forever so there shouldn't be so much fuss over the fear of death and more concentration in living longer + there is so much unexplored out there so thats even more of a reason to want to live longer
I wouldn't mind either, drinking of life after the expiration date, but wishes, belief, and desires don't make anything so.
Action makes it happen, we know so much about the human body why hasn't somebody already made ways to live longer. Is there not a way to preserve our brain?
When DNA splits and replicates during cell division, a little bit more of the junk DNA at the tips gets worn or rips, such as with shoelace ends, eventually going on to degrade the useful DNA and so one way would be to either strengthen these or lengthen them. Their could be more to aging, this, and someday science may solve this and all.
Live forever—if you are careful crossing the street, and don't die from other accidents, until the end of the universe arrives.
