Ya know, I kinda went back and forth between two versions of this, but I think I like the shorter one… ANYWAYS, this is based on a super old idea I had back in the day in a class about world religions. Basically, in Buddhism (or at least some sects), a vow is taken that none shall escape the circle and go beyond Nirvana until every blade of grass has reached enlightenment. Meaning, no living thing gets left behind. (if you totally have NO idea what I’m talking about, check out some articles on Buddhism and the life cycles)
So yeah, when I heard that quote about the grass, I had only one thought in my head… maybe I should be a bit concerned… but it was this. The most efficient way to make the whole world reach enlightenment is to blow it all up! XD There can be only one…
Right, I was going to have the second part of my crazy science thing to go with the other version of this… but maybe that’ll have to wait for another time.
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That musta used a LOT of C4.
Also, I er on the side of nothing after death (with a perspective anyway, tons of decomposition in the future) based on the actual evidence present (none that I’ve seen) to support it. It can go both ways, but that’s where I stand.
man, I really should have done the other one… anyways… I’ve always like reincarnation, don’t ask why, just do. though I’ve always had a problem figuring this out… if there was nothing after death, then why would you even exist right now? what I mean is, why would you even experience anything, wouldn’t it mean your existence is just a tiny blip? wouldn’t temporary existence be the same as nonexistence?
but then, if you look at it like a computer… you have a program that you run, and then destroy the computer down to every atom. the only information that proves existence of that program was the observer. so maybe that’s the factor, as long as there are observers to observe eachother (like people or other life) then it verifies existence and provides an anchor point.
anyways, that’s what I’ve been wrestling with in my head… I call this the “Shawn Is Totally The Best Paradox About Persistence Of Consciousness Or Something Dumb Like That” theory. again… I totally want to screw up science text books in the future. lol!
Lol, I’ve had the same idea several times as well; especially each time I listen to Bob Marley’s “Real Situation” (“Nation war against nation. Where did it all begin? When will it end? Well, it seems like: total destruction the only solution”). The only problem is that you’ll defy the vow to enlighten all living things if you blow them up, plus if one have taken the enlightenment vow, you’ve also already taken the vow to not cause harm to others ;-P
As for what happens after death - it’s a complicated matter which solely depends on one’s viewpoint. If one wonders what happen with “me” (“me” as in “a somewhat conscious human”), then there is only nothingness when one dies (when the hardware (brain) stops, the operating system (consciousness) will cease to operate and my memories and personality will disappear as the hardware is deteriorated). If one looks at it from another viewpoint, the universe will always continue(*) and whether “I” will turn up somewhere else or not is impossible to know before I go there (“I” in the sense of some sort of soul or concept of consciousness). I’ll come back and tell as zombie when I know.
Wall-o-text footnotes (testing a new way to make my long posts friendlier for readers – you won’t miss anything if you skip it):
(*) The universe must always have existed (the big bang is not the start, it’s just a transition). If you look at it from a linear point of view (**), the big bang looks like a start where nothingness spawns somethingness; although it is rather naive to think that we’re the first thing that ever gets spawned in this way (if it can happen once, it must have happened several times already and will most likely continue to happen for eternity). On the other hand, if you look at it from a cyclic perspective, it is not impossible that we will at some point “create ourselves” - at the end of the existence of our particular universe, it is most likely an inversion (***) where everything is “sent back” to the origin - our gnaB giB will be what causes the Big Bang for the next universe.
(**) Most humans have trouble to not look at the world in a linear fashion since we’re too small to see any of the larger (length) scales - compare it to when people believed the earth was flat since they couldn’t perceive the curvature. It took us until the first sailors on a big boat with a high enough mast to climb in to realize that there is a curvature at all (and no, Columbus had nothing to do with it)
(***) How such inversion will take place is impossible to foresee. The simplest way (simplest from our perspective) would be that only time goes backwards (as comedy example, see Red Dwarf S3E01). A more likely way would be inversion in other dimensions; how such universe would look, I have no idea. Claiming that this is impossible due to that we live in a forward moving universe which obeys causality proves nothing; it will not limit the possibility that there will be a backward moving universe that takes on when our current ends.
This is all part of my personal beliefs and not something I can prove, and I do acknowledge that some will disagree. I’m not after to start an argument of who’s right and wrong (this is, after all, a matter in which no one can prove his/her viewpoint to be more right than anyone else’s viewpoint). If you don’t like my point of view, then all I can add is to quote Buddha “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense” ~_^
well, the fun thing is that we’re now starting to think that our brains actually do quantum computing, which offers some interesting theories on the possibilities of consciousness continuing… meaning… quantum acts like a needle poking through one side of a fabric and back down to the other. we only see the one side. so… in that vain, we could theorize that information can just slip into the “other side”, for whatever that is. just a theory anyways.
* - lots of fun theories on the big bang… I think my fav is that space is curved, like spherical, so even though it keeps expanding, it’ll reconnect when it gets far enough. dunno why I like… just seems more fun.
** - lol, that was part of the science thing I wanted to do… maybe next time… but anyways, the next science will be more about time and how we view it in a really strange way. there’s no reason to assume that it only travels linearly in one direction. it’s just that we are hardwired to perceive it that way. this idea gets stranger when you think about big bangs and whatnot, because there’s theorized to be a point where time didn’t exist, which is beyond reason to us. anyways… wibbly wobbly timey wimey goo… that’s pretty accurate I think.
*** - one of the great mysteries of nature… why is this universe made of matter and not anti-matter? both are viable but don’t exist together. so a backwards moving universe isn’t impossible.
exactly! when you get down to it, it’s all just belief and speculation. but when I finally get a game over, I’ll try to come back as a zombie and let you know what’s on the other side… well… when I’m not too busy eating brains and whatnot…