Over the pandemic and thereafter my family has had a lot of deaths in it. So, I've been forced to think about it a lot, to sit with others over it, and to just deal with a lot of the mundane parts of it too.
Death is horrible. It makes no sense. When people say they have had a 'loss', they're not kidding. You feel like that person should still be there, but like a kid at Disneyland, they are lost to you and you're searching for them. I'm dealing with a fair few relatives that just are not processing all these losses. Grief is a strange, personal, and unique thing too. It manifests personally and yet stereotypically for every individual.
That said, I think Death is the way.
The reasoning is complex and long. So, I'll try to sum it up for a simple comment, and I'll do that poorly, sorry.
The big reason stem from this article on Wikipedia. I think it's one of the best there is on the whole site:
Say you were truly immortal. That timeline would be your future, as far as we currently understand physics. You get to spend a lot of time between universes if the last entry is to be believed. In fact, they don't even bother with giving the units. Nanoseconds or gigayears are pretty much the same st those timescales. Our time here on Earth is essentially as brief as the entire non-black-hole era to an immortal like that. Purgatory in the black void is more like what such an immortal would experience.
Or say you get to relive your life when you die. Poof, you're reborn to your folks and have all your memories again somehow. Repeat forever. You're doomed to live and die the same life, like 'Groundhog Day', but for ~80 years long and not just a day. Another purgatory after enough lives, I'd guess. Sisyphean.
Heaven, hell. An afterlife is our best hope. Somewhere we can't possibly understand with our minds right now. A total lack of understanding of the life hereafter is the only path where you retain something of you. Where you can grow and change, time can continue in, I dunno, 7 dimensions. I've not a clue, and I think that's great. If I did, right now I think you'd just end up in a form of purgatory given enough time.
But an endless dreamless night is just fine too. In no other way except an afterlife that I cannot possibly understand do we get to have 'happily ever after'. I think everyone would take that Socratic apology given enough time and I think they'd be right to do so.
I dunno, been sitting on this a while, and it's late for me and, again, sorry that this is a brief and jumbled comment.
Death is horrible. It makes no sense. When people say they have had a 'loss', they're not kidding. You feel like that person should still be there, but like a kid at Disneyland, they are lost to you and you're searching for them. I'm dealing with a fair few relatives that just are not processing all these losses. Grief is a strange, personal, and unique thing too. It manifests personally and yet stereotypically for every individual.
That said, I think Death is the way.
The reasoning is complex and long. So, I'll try to sum it up for a simple comment, and I'll do that poorly, sorry.
The big reason stem from this article on Wikipedia. I think it's one of the best there is on the whole site:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future
Say you were truly immortal. That timeline would be your future, as far as we currently understand physics. You get to spend a lot of time between universes if the last entry is to be believed. In fact, they don't even bother with giving the units. Nanoseconds or gigayears are pretty much the same st those timescales. Our time here on Earth is essentially as brief as the entire non-black-hole era to an immortal like that. Purgatory in the black void is more like what such an immortal would experience.
Or say you get to relive your life when you die. Poof, you're reborn to your folks and have all your memories again somehow. Repeat forever. You're doomed to live and die the same life, like 'Groundhog Day', but for ~80 years long and not just a day. Another purgatory after enough lives, I'd guess. Sisyphean.
Heaven, hell. An afterlife is our best hope. Somewhere we can't possibly understand with our minds right now. A total lack of understanding of the life hereafter is the only path where you retain something of you. Where you can grow and change, time can continue in, I dunno, 7 dimensions. I've not a clue, and I think that's great. If I did, right now I think you'd just end up in a form of purgatory given enough time.
But an endless dreamless night is just fine too. In no other way except an afterlife that I cannot possibly understand do we get to have 'happily ever after'. I think everyone would take that Socratic apology given enough time and I think they'd be right to do so.
I dunno, been sitting on this a while, and it's late for me and, again, sorry that this is a brief and jumbled comment.