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Chris Crazy Question 5. - The life problem.
Earthninja
WandererWest Australia Veteran
Hey Guys!
You know I like a good ponder, ok so here's the next one.
5 The fairy returns and grants you an ultimatum, do you want to continue this life of yours OR, as long as humans are on Earth. You can live for ever!!
Immortal and invincible as long as humans are on planet earth. No sickness ageing or death.
Do you accept? And if you do, why do you want to live for ever?
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No thanks.
The fairy has already granted my wish to have my mind transferred to a cyborg and a limitless supply of ice-cream, so yeah, I would like to live for ever. Of course I would do all sorts of nice helpful Miss World type stuff to benefit mankind, including travelling back in time to rescue some whales so they could talk to an alien space probe.
No, but I want to live long, and live well.
Every granted wish has a dark side, rather like Yin and Yang, or Newton's 3rd Law of Motion....
So whatever one chooses, one has to look out for the 'payback'.....
Not as much fun if I can't leave Earth but it would probably help with the bodhisattva path.
Actually, if I can't be killed and humans still live on Earth there's nothing stopping me from exploring elsewhere.
You ask some interesting questions.
My answer would be like Jodi Foster's in the movie, Contact when she was given the suicide pill for her journey into space. She said something like, 'I wouldn't go all that way just to commit suicide.' I don't' wish for my body's death, no matter what. If too much pain comes, I guess I'd just conk out. I've always wanted to live forever. Either way, it's like Thelma & Louise - Thelma said, 'Just keep goin'' -- death isn't death -- we just keep goin' anyway.
"Forever" on Earth isn't going to last much longer. I don't want to be around when mass hysteria hits. Humanity's gonna be toast, people, barring a miracle, like a sudden ice age, when ocean currents get disrupted.
Eeek! So how long have we got, I mean should I bother renewing the insurance on my house this year?
Life's not the problem "I am" ..."I" used to think and live as if "I" was going to live forever and so was everybody "I" knew and loved...
Just think of all the crap one would have to continually contend with, thinking "Ah when will it all end ?" "Never...so suck it up...You're in it for the long run" ....
I would sooner be a Bodhisattva and keep coming back to help other sentient beings in different environments/situations and circumstances .....A renewal of a life less boring so to speak.... Well that's my aim.....
Thanks but no thanks Fairy, you can wave your wand elsewhere...
My neighbors are JWs and I've had a chance to talk to them a number of times thru the years, about their beliefs.
So I got to thinking about what eternal life on earth might look like. I imagined spending several million years learning to do everything that that anyone has ever done, cllmb all the mountains, play all the musical instruments, learn every language and speak to everyone else on earth, and everything else that I ever felt like doing. Then relax for a hundred billion years or so till I got bored with that.
No thanks.
@robot yeah I had JW come over and explain that would happen to me if I follow Yaweh.
I would be resurrected and live on earth for ever and eat grapes the size of basketballs. Apparently this is paradise.
I would see the same people for eternity.
Hmm I don't think this is what life had planned, why else would we have kids.
Experience through a brand new set of eyes. Constantly renewing life's experience of itself.
Gorgeous
I recognise that; that's Jehovah Witness literature. In the 1920s they published a leaflet titled "Millions Now Living Will Never Die", later it was changed to "Millions Now Living May Never Die".
They're just about all dead now.
There are some JWs who are a little more sophisticated in their afterlife beliefs who say "God wipes away the tears" (from the Bible); indicating that they don't know exactly what living forever will be like, but it won't be suffering.
And funnily enough Buddhism describes Nirvana in the negative (it's not suffering) because it's impossible to conceptualise.
I was chased for a period, by a JW 'friend' who tried to recruit me, so I did some research on them. It wasn't for me though.
I wonder if this's what god figured out after his little experiment:
You seen one person - you've seen 'em all.
Then proceeded to abandon his 'work'.
No. There is more suffering than aging or disease. The cruelty of people towards each other, the cruel albeit necessity of animals violently killing each other. People being mean for fun, people abusing each other. A planet that is wilting and dying and not nearly enough people caring. I'm not about to give up and leave,but I don't really want to purposely extend my stay, either.
Also I wonder with no fear of death or anything else what would be to stop people from being even worse than they are now. I think it would be even easier to take joy for granted when the opposites aren't there that help us appreciate our lives.
Humanity as a whole isn't, right now, worth hanging around for forever. I assume it's just me with immortality, as humans can't reproduce and not die for long before we kill the planet entirely. Why would I want to stay only too lose everyone I've ever loved and go through that cycle forever?
2 quotes from The Green Mile:
"Mostly I'm tired of people being ugly to each other. I'm tired of all the pain I feel and hear in the world everyday. There's too much of it. It's like pieces of glass in my head all the time. Can you understand?"
"I'm 108, Elaine. Oh I've lived to see some amazing things Elly. Another century come to past, but I've... I've had to see my friends and loved ones die off through the years... Hal and Melinda... Brutus Howell... my wife... my boy. And you Elaine... you'll die too, and my curse is knowing that I'll be there to see it. You'll be gone like all the others. I'll have to stay. Oh, I'll die eventually, that I'm sure. I have no illusions of immortality, but I will have wished for death... long before death finds me. In truth, I wish for it already."
That is a pessimistic view, @karasti.
That is a wonderful movie, but it does portray a lot of the worst in some of us and yet clearly illustrates the wonderfulness of the meek.
I happened upon this quote earlier today: "Life is a peephole, a single tiny entry onto a vastness--how can I not dwell on this brief, cramped view of things? This peephole is all I've got!" - Yann Martel.
I want to hang on, no matter what.
I know it is. It changes by the minute. Today I have raging, horrific PMS, I've had a headache for 12 hours, and it's -30F out. Not optimistic about much today
Just how I feel sometimes. And truly, I wouldn't choose to stay forever even on my best day. I appreciate every moment I have (mostly, headaches and frozen nostrils excluded, and even then I'm still happy to be alive to experience those things). But I don't have a desire to hang on to the tomorrow that isn't here yet. Death is simply part of life the same darkness is part of light. That is how it should be.
The Hindus tell the tale of the man who was walking along the beach and stubbed his toe against the obligatory bottle that always shows up in such stories. He digs it out of the sand and as he is rubbing away residual sand, POOF!, the obligatory genie appears and offers him endless wishes.
There are, however, conditions, namely that the man has to keep the genie busy fulfilling wishes or the genie will kill him. I can't remember the particulars ... maybe the man had to wish at least one thing per day.
The man thinks a moment and then goes all in -- says he will take the deal. And then he starts wishing ... for money and power and castles and women and whatever else he can think of. But it is not so many days before he realizes that he is running out of wishes and thus bringing his own life that much closer to an end.
In a panic, he runs to a wise man -- they're obligatory too in Hindu tales -- and lays out his problem. The wise man gives him what I like to think of as a you-schmuck look but then agrees to help. From his satchel he withdraws a pig's curly tale and tells the man to ask the genie to straighten the tail using only his fingers. An endless, fruitless task to counteract a fruitless premise. Ah! Salvation!
And the man, now chastened, is saved from an untimely death ... and is free to find a new-and-improved way to screw up his life.
I flip a coin. Really.
All alone? Or will there be company?
I really don't have a satisfactory response.
I think that when I woke up, I would say I had a weird dream.
Or I would ask, what hallucinogen was on that pizza?