I've come to see reincarnation as a metaphor. As much as I dig the poetic idea of 'coming back as an ant', this is closer to something like the existentialist idea that you are essentially reborn with each second, giving us an astonishing amount of agency and power to put things right, minimise the amount of harm you do and to make (attempt to make) the correct decisions - in actions and morality.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:09 (two years ago) link
In lieu of reincarnation I dig the notion of whatever life experience and knowledge and abilities I've accrued being divvied up and disseminated among those who can best make use of it. Kind of like willing all my books to a local library except granting my sikk whistling skillz to the whistle-deficient. Just like upload that shit to the cloud or whatever. You know, technology.
― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:37 (two years ago) link
i know we should ask about what happens after death. hey squashed fly!
https://i.imgur.com/6T3SiSM.png
what's your ideal version of what happens after death?!
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:41 (two years ago) link
just place your hands to heaven and praythat we'll be back together some day heyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
― making splashes at Dan Flashes (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:46 (two years ago) link
*raise
― making splashes at Dan Flashes (Neanderthal), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:47 (two years ago) link
Tonight I need your sweet caressHold me in the darknessTonight you cause my breastlessnessDo you believe my sandwich?
― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:54 (two years ago) link
perhaps that fly is in insect heaven, drinking kool-aid all day long
― Z_TBD (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 21 July 2021 15:56 (two years ago) link
If we dont remember past lives if we do reincarnate, then how is that practically any different to ceasing to exist?
I want to go on as a bodiless ball of energy/thoughts, interacting with all the other minds. Like the internt but without the pesky shit body cage weighing me down. I dont want to stop existing.
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Friday, 23 July 2021 05:43 (two years ago) link
https://i.imgflip.com/2z9jkz.jpg
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Friday, 23 July 2021 05:46 (two years ago) link
If we dont remember past lives if we do reincarnate, then how is that practically any different to ceasing to exist? If you - Trayce - are at this moment a reincarnation of a previous life, are 'you' practically 'ceasing to exist'? This Trayce incarnation, with all its problems, crises, hopes and joys etc, feels different from just 'checking out'.
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 10:42 (two years ago) link
If this amorphous essence carries no recollection of the current me then i cant fathom the way in which it can be said to be me
The christian notion of a soul but divorced from my consciousness feels far less me than the actual me sitting here tbh
― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Friday, 23 July 2021 10:56 (two years ago) link
I guess it depends on the design of the 'ideal version' of what you wish happens after death. Do you want to build in some 'recollection' aspect of continuing consciousness etc.
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:02 (two years ago) link
what freaks my nut out is the thought that death can be thought of as like a giant comedy hammer smashing your brain to pieces - in the final microseconds, your cranial neurons are still firing, but they have been rent asunder, separated - what then is the moment of death, what is the consciousness, what state is it in, how can it be preserved intact, what is the point of system restore, etc
which makes me think 'ghost' is still the best answer, because a ghost is an echo of a self at a certain stage of life before death, an echo of the living consciousness and not the one whose neurons are being smashed apart by a hammer
― imago, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:15 (two years ago) link
quite fancy lunch now
Reincarnation - ideal version design options
(i) no continuing essence or 'soul' during incarnations
(ii) continuing essence or soul Option A: constant awareness of continuing essence or soul Option B: intermittent awareness of continuing essence e.g. at death/between incarnations
Design question: Is the continuing essence on some kind of journey with an aim in mind (e.g. undertaking incarnations with the aim of learning something,?) or are incarnations random or selected with any purposes.
It gets complicated very quickly.
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:16 (two years ago) link
(x post)
Who is it that quite fancies lunch: is it your soul, your present incarnation, or an karmic development resulting from decisions and actions made in your previous incarnation?
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:24 (two years ago) link
The divine fancies lunch, with me as vessel, obvs
― imago, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:32 (two years ago) link
The thought of final micro-seconds of death also freaks my nut, in that I irrationally and phobicly can't help envisaging it as feeling subjectively like an eternity of time (similar to the experience of time slowing down in a severe accident).
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:40 (two years ago) link
The afterlife as an eternal perception of one's dying moment eh
― imago, Friday, 23 July 2021 11:55 (two years ago) link
Zeno's paradox as applied to consciousness, your final second slowed down and stretching into infinity
― Marty J. Bilge (Old Lunch), Friday, 23 July 2021 12:11 (two years ago) link
More an adaptation of the black hole approach
― imago, Friday, 23 July 2021 13:05 (two years ago) link
Before you fuse with the singularity, an endless instant of pure agony
― imago, Friday, 23 July 2021 13:06 (two years ago) link
Or pure bliss!
was listening to an expert speak on the topic (on radio 4) the other week and it turns out the time-slowing-down thing is a trick of the memory rather than something experienced in the moment, they had an experiment with having people watch rapidly flickering displays and suddenly starting a bungee jump.
― A viking of frowns, (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, 23 July 2021 13:11 (two years ago) link
when I was a child, I imagined that when you die you get handed a set of trading cards that collect all the key moments of your life
― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Friday, 23 July 2021 13:16 (two years ago) link
and then you try to collect other people's better key moments
― imago, Friday, 23 July 2021 13:23 (two years ago) link
trade you one 'having a child' for that 'built a pagoda'
Hanging around the pearly gates waiting to scam new arrivals out of their rares.
― jmm, Friday, 23 July 2021 13:26 (two years ago) link
HOT STAMPERS
― making splashes at Dan Flashes (Neanderthal), Friday, 23 July 2021 14:15 (two years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd4rgyZzseY
04.45 minutes onwards
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 14:28 (two years ago) link
...I remember that afternoon, not as so many minutes spent in my drawing room interrupted by these strange excursions in time, but as years and years of heavenly bliss interrupted by short periods in my drawing room
― Luna Schlosser, Friday, 23 July 2021 14:43 (two years ago) link
i'm getting to thinking that genuine belief in heaven/hell is psychotic and drives a lot of evil behaviors
― na (NA), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 14:40 (two years ago) link
Well yeah tbh
― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 15:08 (two years ago) link
absolutely it does
― Read between the lines Zach (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 16:30 (two years ago) link
if you think that heaven is real, that hell is real, that they're both eternal, and that there is a god that decides, then you will do whatever it takes to get there.
― Read between the lines Zach (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 16:32 (two years ago) link
above family
― Read between the lines Zach (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 16:33 (two years ago) link
i really, REALLY wish that the protestant movement had developed some sort of Purgatory-like belief, just to provide some sort of option between absolute bliss and absolute torture. it really is just the biggest extremes they could possibly go with. you can so clearly envision the Great Awakening preachers just scaring the absolute crap out of ignorant people, realizing that the control they could gain by doing so
― Read between the lines Zach (Karl Malone), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 16:43 (two years ago) link
I remember the first newspaper article I saw that explained Parallel Universe Theory had it “in a parallel universe, you could be Cliff Richard”.I decided that was dumb, because either way it would not be me *or* Cliff over there.
― Mark G, Wednesday, 4 August 2021 17:42 (two years ago) link
i think foucault's analysis of knowledge-as-power has deeply affected my worldview on everything, including this. heaven/hell and similar kinds of beliefs, quite obviously, to me anyway, constitute institutional power structures. religion was at the forefront of figuring out how to tap into all the worst aspects of human behavior and psychology vis a vis these hard definitions of total fantasy, while feeding on the human spirit, in order to accumulate power. i think purgatory may have been the result of some kind of compromise that religion had to make with the state?
― Linda and Jodie Rocco (map), Wednesday, 4 August 2021 17:54 (two years ago) link
I hope its just this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsS_VMzY10I
― frogbs, Friday, 6 August 2021 15:44 (two years ago) link
Not exactly ideal. But at my dentist's earlier today, I imagined Hell as an exponentially prolonged dental procedure, in which the painkillers didn't quite take and the dentist's tools keep scraping your gums and tongue.
― Infanta Terrible (j.lu), Friday, 6 August 2021 18:11 (two years ago) link