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[jon_raleigh]

Wittgenstein, in his personal 1914-1916 notebooks, wrote:
"Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.
For life in the present there is no death.
If by eternity is understood not infinite temporal duration but non-temporality, then it can be said that a man lives eternally if he lives in the present.
In order to live happily I must be

Comments

[frolicsome]

That was

(a) beautiful
(b) perfect to read upon just waking.

[la_lu]

(c) depressing.

"But death is a fact and there isn't the slightest reason beyond our instincts to expect that anything awaits us beyond it."

Not everything we perceive or remember is true, so what should we follow if not our instincts? ..Curious why you consider longing for an afterlife instinctive.

[jon_raleigh]

The problem is that our brain doesn't have these clear cut categories... there's no reason section, no instinct section and no passion section. We mistakenly consider one sort of thinking to be "instinctive" and another "rational". I suppose instinct was the wrong word here... perhaps simply "longings

"different strokes for different folks"

[frolicsome]

My strategy is to slow down life to the point that it seems to stand still. I want to be sick of it by the time I'm 70. The same way that you're sick at the end of a roller coaster or a good lengthy movie. As much as you love it, there is a point where it shouldn't continue.

I agree with this and don't find it depressing in the slightest. Inspiring and life-affirming is more like it - but then again, I have had six years to 'recover' from my disbelief in an afterlife.

[cretin138]

"We know that consciousness is a product of activity in the nervous system and that when the nervous system shuts down, consciousness does as well."

Have you tooken the laws of conservation of energy into consideration?

[jon_raleigh]

Of course. The energy used to power my body simply leaves, goes elsewhere. Since consciousness seems to arise from the complicated structures of the nervous system, without those structures, it's just plain ol' energy again.

Same with the organic matter of my body as well. Once it ceases to be a part of that structure, it's no longer human. Put a person in the blender and you no longer have a person.

How'd you find my journal, btw?

[jon_raleigh]

Also, the when our nervous system uses energy, it expends it as well... whether it be my daily activities or my dying breath. To hold that the energy of our nervous system survives after death (in some conscious state) is as silly as saying that the energy I expell on a daily basis retains my consciousness.

As a wise man once said, "we're all part of the same compost heap". Matter and energy endlessly recycled until the universe dies.

weeeeeeeeeee....

[_steve_o]

I like the compost heap idea. It's also interesting that a planet's carrying capacity is determined by the amount of matter and energy available in the beginning. Even ash acts as a fertilizer to new life.

Do coffins create any ecological problem when they prevent our corpses from being eaten by worms?