This is just a thought...however its a blog.
I've often thought about this thought many times before, but after the lecture on Thursday it really got that thought going again.
I'm slightly scared to share my thought at the risk of you thinking im rather weird but I'm sure you do already so I may as well. And I just thought, Ive used the word thought quite a lot already....well that is just because I have put a lot of thought into this blog.
Anyway, that aside here goes..
Now when I was a lot younger I always used to try and imagine not being alive. But I never could. It was a too big a thought for my little brain. I could not comprehend what not being alive would be like. I still can't although I can create a slightly better picture in my mind of what nothingness might be like in my eyes.
Try taking this one stage further, what if your parents didn't exist, what if no one ever existed, what if the world did not exist. What would there be. Fact -at one point billion and billion of years ago there was no form of human existence and earth did not exist. And before space? Well Einstein would argue that there was literally nothing as time did not yet exist. The question I am asking is what is nothing? Well I suppose that nothing is nothing, something we would not recognise if we saw it, or be able to describe it. Its the whole idea of the obelisk from 2001 space odyssey.
Anyway I am very aware this may not make a lot of sense. But if you were to listen to someone who had seen nothing then described 'nothing' to you, I'm sure it wouldn't make a lot of sense either.
The fact is we will never know what nothing is like. I suppose its like being dead.....maybe?
Nobody knows what it is like to be dead because nobody who has died has come back to tell us. But people have been under general anesthetic or in a coma which is the closest to zero brain activity. The strong sensation that people have is that the time between 'going under' and reviving simply disappears; or that is the perception.
ReplyDeleteBefore you were born billions and billions of years elapsed but you perceive that as no time at all. The most plausible thing to think is that death is not an experience of any sort and is therefore nothing to fear. Fear of death I think comes from Judeo-Christian-Islam which instill fear of hell into very small children. Fear of hell - ironically - can even cause people to kill themselves (eg Iranian Human Wave attacks who think that by dying in battle they are guaranteed a place in heaven. If you were exposed to Christianity or Islam as a child it can take decades to cover from the trauma of that. There is no hell. Death is merely non-existence. Even Spinoza - a decent Judeo-Christian moralist - said the only response to death is to ignore it. Enjoy your life - be decent to others - we are all on the same road to nothingness, so just try and be decent to people along the way. Enjoy this life because it is the only one you have got. The universe will eventually suffere a heat death anyway, if the laws of thermodynamics - so nothing any of us does has any long term significance. That should be a liberation more than anything else because all your sins and shortcoming s and mistakes will eventually be forgotten, so there's no need to be forgiven for anything, Also if you take this point of view I think the world become much more interesting. You never get bored because even the most minor event takes on this existential significance and you see the desperation in everyone - the searching for just a moment of love and meaningfulness before the great void re-engulfs. That's what I think anyway.
People hang on to fear of death because of a thing calls Pascal's Wager which I personally think is by far the most powerful weapon of the priests. People who play the National Lottery I think are always going to find Pascal's Wager very enticing, illogical as it is.
More to the point can you organisation the football tournament on Friday week as discussed? I am doing all this marking and it really wrecks my health and fitness, so I will need some exercise. Also it will be a great way to round off a really fantastic year.