muichimotsu
Holding All and None
muichimotsu, is your stance that no kind of immortality is desirable?
No, but many kinds are, especially those that are forced or innate upon humanity.
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
muichimotsu, is your stance that no kind of immortality is desirable?
Do you require me to qualify everything I say as my opinion for you not to interpret such statements as these to mean I'm claiming facts? If you want to criticize these statements, which are beliefs at most, not statements of fact, then offer a counterargument. That's only fair, right?In the following two cases you express your opinion as fact:
"But an inevitability we shouldn't try to avoid is death."
"When we start controlling life and death we begin to get an inflated sense of ego beyond what is beneficial."
In the following two cases you project how you view the matter into everyone else:
"In more relevant terms, the fact that we don't live forever means we are motivated that much more to make our lives worth something."
"The transient nature of life is what makes death meaningful"
That's reassuring, at the very least, but you're being fairly noncommittal to any beliefs on your part, or you're withholding them for some unknown reason.I don't doubt that i am talking to you.
An "immaterial" existence. That is the only relevant part of it when it was brought up in the discussion. If you need to ask for further details, you should ask Penumbra, not me.
It wasn't further qualified when i said there is no reason to assume it would get boring eventually.
No, but many kinds are, especially those that are forced or innate upon humanity.
Absolutely. I think every experience would be joyful. It's very much a state of consciousness.
Hmm. I would think innate immortality would be better than the alternative.
You brought up immortality as desirable because it could serve as a motivator. Or did you already forget that?
It is a discussion as far i am concerned.
The best we can hope for is staving off death, not avoiding it entirely. Technology has limits and there's also concerns of profitability from patents, etc.
The nature of existence is change, there are, far as we know, no exceptions to this, therefore the existence of a state of permanence is unlikely.
]Do you require me to qualify everything I say as my opinion for you not to interpret such statements as these to mean I'm claiming facts?[/B]
If you want to criticize these statements, which are beliefs at most, not statements of fact, then offer a counterargument. That's only fair, right?
That's reassuring, at the very least, but you're being fairly noncommittal to any beliefs on your part, or you're withholding them for some unknown reason.
If we don't qualify the nature of the immaterial existence, there is far more room for speculation, which is the issue that we're trying to avoid in excess.
.Where did i say that? ...
I said: "Many people are motivated by the belief that they will live forever.
Both stances can be used to motivate people."
How you understood that from what i have said is completely beyond me
I see no reason to assume that humans will survive for the incredibly long period you're suggesting, but even if they did, there is always the likelihood that delays based in profit, etc, will prevent immortality from being widespread or significant beyond simply delaying death, not preventing it outright.Currently that's correct.
I see no reason to assume this in the far future.
You are correct to a point. The nature of time is change. However, not everything must change in every way.
By the way, you went from 'immortality can not exist' to 'immortality is unlikely to exist' in the split of a second.
I'd rather have firm convictions than no convictions at all. That's not to say I couldn't admit I was wrong, but I have standards for that.Not to express firm conviction on them would suffice.
Otherwise, if not possible, then it would certainly be desirable to qualify them as such.
Counter arguments can only be offered against arguments.
Statements which are beliefs at most are not arguments.
I do rather not commit myself to any position in this case.
Given an undefined high ammount of time, everything regarding our human subjective experiences becomes speculative at best.
On what grounds would you speculate that this existence would be boring?
One might be more used to innate immortality, but problems still exist in that if there are non immortals involved then you have the potential for a sense of superiority in the immortals, not to mention a society of immortals seems to have less to unite them in one way, since there is no death to make you appreciate people for the short time they have on this earth relatively speaking
Would you describe your experience as hedonism or would you say it is different than hedonism?We believe they/we are perceiving the spiritual reality in those moments. Whether a person in trance sits for 5 minutes or a whole week, he/she would not be aware of the difference.
Even if this experience through the physical body is not the same as is apparently the case in the spiritual form, at least this experience provides an idea of what it may be like. I can imagine timelessness because of my personal experience.
There's a thread where I've asked people if they're enlightened and to describe their experiences.I'm not sure. The difference between this and the option of God-Realisation as presented by my religion is still quite vast. For instance, the cause of the Bliss in God-Realisation is the sense of unity with all things and the awareness of all things. The Bliss is not just extreme happiness, it is a sense of complete Love.
Furthermore, the state of spiritual existence in the Vedic understanding is not about taking away ability such as thought and action and awareness. The only thing eliminated is the sense of separation of self from 'other' and instead to realise oneness with the divine (and all things). Otherwise awareness and capacity for action are limitless, since God is apparently the cause of all causes and the mind behind every mind.
In comparison your hypothetical seems very limited. It might be like a pleasurable sleepy state. While that would still be preferable to non-existence, it wouldn't be hugely different. What I want is to feel real and alive, to be aware. To be blissfully aware.
If you're idea of spending time interestingly involves quadrillions of years of increasingly advanced video games, I guess we're just on different wavelengths here.If video games are still created to that day, sure. Why not?
In terms of description, you've done little. That's the point. It's undefined.I can not show what i haven't done.
Can you show what you claim that i have done?
If you're idea of spending time interestingly involves quadrillions of years of increasingly advanced video games, I guess we're just on different wavelengths here.
In terms of description, you've done little. That's the point. It's undefined.
What is up to me? You responded to my conversation; I didn't respond to yours.
You've proposed that if we change undefined parameters we can make immortal life interesting?
(re living 'forever' on earth- or as long as the earth exists)
Do I get to produce offspring?
Is my 'immortality' in my DNA?
We could evolve the ENTIRE world.
I wrote a short story before about inter-dimensional beings offering a percentage of humanity immortality at the expense of reproduction in order to safeguard against overpopulation. They were also warned of an unavoidable plague that would come within a few centuries. They all accepted immortality of course. After several hundred years, they also survived the apocalypse. They rebuilt a community and went on living.
Over time, the absence of any children began to bear down on some of them. Others started to notice a lapse in their creativity as if their potential and motivation was being sapped from them. The instinct to live had been satisfied at the expense of the instinct to create. They were doomed to becoming static. They were living, but had lost the context of what it genuinely means to be alive.
Heading towards a static state of indifference, they exerted their last desires towards understanding their own immortality and creating the technology for time travel. Unfortunately, the process resulted in severe mutation, but they anticipated this. They were the "inter-dimensionals" that gave themselves immortality in a strange loop in space-time.
Most of them concealed this fact from their alternate past selves, except the one female protagonist. She revealed the truth of their predicament and her regret. Her past self chooses to reject the gift/curse of immortality. This was in contrast to what the future alt had previously chosen when it was revealed to her, indicating that alternates were not pre-determined to make the same decisions and could become catalysts for alternate future timelines.
The mortal protagonist goes on living a normal life. She uses her time wisely on creative endeavors, getting married, and having children. She lives a long life and dies painlessly in a hospital without any regrets. Her children also live full lives and pass on their genes to their descendants. The protagonist's great-great-great granddaughter becomes a genius scientist that finds a cure for the plague that was destined to wipe everybody out. In the end, the relatively short lives became more meaningful and the immortal lives became more meaningless and self-serving over time.