32519, on 2013-October-09, 00:38, said:
A question for mikeh:
Suppose you were not only a scientist, but also the most successful businessman that ever walked (or will walk) planet earth, successful to the extent that you ended up owning not only everyone, but also everything on planet earth and in the universe. You are the owner of so much wealth that you can never hope to spend even a small fraction of it in umpteen thousand lifespans. How much of this wealth would you be prepared to surrender to acquire eternal life? 1%, 10%, 100%? Or how much of this wealth would you be investing back into science to find the answer to stop the process of ageing? Or even better, to reverse the process of ageing? Time marches on, you are getting older, and thus far the scientists have come up with…..nothing! In desperation you try something that science has managed to do, you get the scientists to clone you so that you can live on. Alas, the cloned thing/individual also died/dies. What now?
Sorry, I keep forgetting. It all has no purpose!
The fact that you think this is a useful question says far more about you than it asks of me.
What a horrible life you have imagined for me! Where are my friends, and family? How can I have real friends if I 'own everybody'?
I can't imagine wanting an eternal life. I can certainly imagine wanting a far longer period of being middle-aged and relatively healthy than I am going to experience, but I think I'd want that for a lot of other people, even if only to avoid loneliness and bitterness, as well as sorrow as all my friends die.
Then I'd have to worry about the envy of the less long lived.
Then I'd have to worry about the harm that I am doing.
I hope I am going to grow old. I hope that I retain my mental faculties to a good degree...at 60 I am sure I would score lower on a range of cognitive testing than I did when I was a young adult, and that is going to get more so as time marches on. So far I think I am ahead of the game because what I have lost in mental acuity, I think I have made up in gaining knowledge and understanding.
I know I am going to die. There are times when I think of that fact and feel some resentment...not fear. I think it is Mark Twain I am paraphrasing when I say that I was unaware of my non-existence for billions of years before I was born and I will be unaware of my non-existence for the duration of time after I am dead. The state of non-being is devoid of emotional or any other experience, so when the light switch is flipped into the off position, and the small light that is me is turned off, I won't be aware of it or hurt by it.
I feel sorry for you that you are so frightened of living as a contingent fluke of the universe that you feel a need to find a purpose where none exists, or yearn for an afterlife to assuage your fear of non-being.
You should not think that your weaknesses, fears, or ignorance are experienced by all others.
Finally, it is open to all of us to find a purpose for ourselves. I choose to find a purpose based on my view of reality, and the fact that I am a human being, with emotions as well as intellect, and with the ability to hold mutually contradictory views just as all of us can. I find beauty in life. I find joy in the mere existence of the world. I ask you this: go out into the country one clear night and stand there looking at the stars. While doing so, try to picture yourself standing on this enormous planet....enormous until you try to grasp the significance of what you are seeing. With luck, you might see a satellite passing overhead, or a shooting star.
Imagine the unlikeliness of 'you' being there at that moment and being able not just to see this but to have some understanding of what you are seeing. There is no need to invoke a god merely because the scale frightens you or you feel you don't understand how you could be there otherwise. Just accept the wonder of it all.....if you are at all like me, you will be filled with awe.
For the religious believer, this may be interpreted as some sort of spiritual reaction: to me it is just a very enjoyable, humbling glimpse of the magnificence of the universe. The fact that nothing out there, other than the possible satellite, has any concern with or interest in humans doesn't detract from the experience....if anything, it adds to it.
This is why I find it so annoying when people like you claim that my life is bleak
Seems to me, based on your fear of death, that it is you who live a bleak life.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari