The Argument for Nihilism Through Immortality

Value is a Function of Scarcity: This is the foundational premise. 

The reason we act with urgency, joy, and purpose is that our time is a finite and non-renewable resource. Every choice we make carries weight because we cannot simply "rewind" and "redo" it. Our lives matter precisely because they end. 

Immortality Eliminates Scarcity: A religious promise of eternal life fundamentally removes this scarcity. If an infinite number of tomorrows are guaranteed, then the urgency of today vanishes. The consequences of our actions on this mortal plane are temporary and can always be corrected in the next, endless phase of existence. 

The Loss of Meaning: When the inherent scarcity of time is removed, the basis for value dissolves. If the "game" of life can be played over and over again, with no finality, then nothing truly matters in the way it does for a finite being. In this philosophical framework, the promise of immortality is a paradox: it offers a grand reward, but in doing so, it destroys the very currency—the preciousness of now—that gives our lives meaning. 

Therefore, from this perspective, any system that removes time from the equation of life logically necessitates nihilism. The value you seek to claim is a function of time; without time, there can be no value in this sense.

In Pursuit of Pursuit

This hit me so hard the other day. https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2014/07/11/billy-mills-olympics Clearly, Billy Mills' pursuit of Olympic Gold and helping others, saved his life. As I continue to battle through my mid-life crisis, I listened to this and thought: What to pursue? I have pursued things and dreams in life and achieved some things and even met some goals...but now, with life half over (I'm a realist) and children to raise and help provide for, what to pursue? What are you pursuing? As Will Hunting asked in Good Will Huniting, "What winds your watch? Because time is ticking.

Dear Diary

My midlife crisis is, I guess, good for my physical health. I ran a 6:28 mile on Sunday and did a one and a half off the diving board. But still, the malaise of M's radiates and hums: Mid-life Marriage Mental Health Money all under the umbrella of Mortality...and the fact that I'm finite. I end. I am bound. Up in this world, with you people. What would I do without you though?

JuJu and George

I finished reading Hatchet, along with my nine year old son recently and toward the end of the book he recognized that my voice was “getting different” as I fought off emotion. I was emotional for two reasons: one was just finishing a good book that involves a teenager (not that far away for my nine year old) being rescued after surviving in the Canadian wilderness for close to two months and two, the more powerful reason is that we read it together, as father and son. And the truth is that he is difficult and I am more difficult but reading this book together, we had powerful moments of connection and it became a beautiful, what Heidegger might call, project. A project is powerful in this sense because it posits a future. Over the nights reading I could ask him questions as his excitement showed on his sleeve and I talked about the power of a good story, a good paragraph, a good sentence. We were inside of this book, and it was beautiful and of course, books come to an end, and we would no longer be inside, and I became emotional. The time ended. Which made me think about my radical thanatism: The steadfast belief that I am finite and that I do not transcend this earthly life and how this focuses THIS life and makes seemingly simple moments like finishing a novel with my son, into intense cherishable moments that connect me to meaning and value in the absurdity (absurdism is realism around 18:22). In short my thesis stands, my radical thanatism is healthy, believing individual humans are eternal is, not; it cheapens our individual and collective lives. 

Later that night I also finished George Saunders’ most recent, A Swim In A Pond In The Rain and cannot help but bring relief to the subtitle: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. The next day I would share Saunders’ thoughts on the power of a good story with my JuJu and I would again become emotional but I prefaced it by telling him why I was emotional the night prior. Because we did that thing together and that time, with you, that time we have, runs out. 

Pardon the imperatives here: Value time, cherish time, it is all you really have. If you don’t believe me, please believe George Saunders (bolding mine):

Hi – I'm reading "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life" by George Saunders and wanted to share this quote with you.

"We ended the previous section by agreeing to confine our expectations for fiction to this: reading fiction changes the state of our minds for a short time afterward. But that may be a bit on the modest side. After all, as we’ve been seeing, reading fiction changes our minds in particular ways, as we step out of our own (limited) consciousness and into another one (or two, or three). So, we might ask, how are we altered, in that “short time afterward”? (Before I give my answer, let’s just say, again, that there’s no need, really, for me to do that. We know how our minds were changed as we read these Russians, because we were there. And we know, if we’ve been lucky enough to have other beautiful reading experiences in our lives, what those did for/to us.) But I’ll give it a try: 

I am reminded that my mind is not the only mind. 

I feel an increased confidence in my ability to imagine the experiences of other people and accept these as valid.

I feel I exist on a continuum with other people: what is in them is in me and vice versa. 

My capacity for language is reenergized. My internal language (the language in which I think) gets richer, more specific and adroit. 

I find myself liking the world more, taking more loving notice of it (this is related to that reenergization of my language). 

I feel luckier to be here and more aware that someday I won’t be. 

I feel more aware of the things of the world and more interested in them. 

So, that’s all pretty good."

Why Plan For the End of Life When You Don't Die?

One of the benefits of rising at 4:40am everyday is getting KQED on the drive to the gym.

Michael Krasny is a great host and a better interviewer. And he's  an Ohio University graduate I might add.

This morning the topic was end of life care. You can listen here

Well this doctor, a very patient and intelligent sounding fellow, used this word I love: finite

I love that word.

He said our lives are finite.

Now most of you don't believe that shit for a second. Much less two seconds. No most of you believe that we are eternal. You equivocate on death. Yes, you. If you ask me to define death I do it thusly: the cessation of (individual) life.

I get it. Death reeks of finality. Stinks to high heaven (pun intended).

Now you'll come at me with some talk of "oh earthly death and earthly material matters and oh well all of that is fine to plan for: get a will in order, yadi yada."

But how in the name of cognitive dissonance can you plan for your death when you don't die?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. 

You might know it as John 3:16

I sense no cessation in "everlasting life."

My wife tells me that cognitive dissonance is easy to get around. You just add new beliefs. Or one can rationalize beliefs.

But my thesis is that hypocrisy is unhealthy. Equivocating in letter, spirit, action is unhealthy. Hypocrisy is insidious, it festers. I believe there are collective hypocrisy effects as well. The collective belief that we are eternal has physical, material implications.

To be continued

The Whole Time

This section from Paul Bowels’ The Sheltering Sky hit me hard:

Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times and a very small number, really. How many more time will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that so deeply a part of your being that you can’t conceive of your life without it. Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that.

Isn’t that just a terrible thought? That some memory you cherish, that fills you up when you recall it, when you know you need to recall it, will someday not? Irretrievable from lack of use.

To think of my parents, now passed, and beautiful memories of them once held, now, I don’t access.

And they are gone.

Others held to be sure but…not enough.

Growing up agnostic though I was, I used to think about how delightful it would be, when sitting before god upon my death, to watch the movie of my life. 

I want the movie of my life. So much. I need to know it is there. Not only my parents but my children? I won’t recall this moment where Juju did this and MisterMister did that?

Maybe I’m wrong.

Maybe before I go to hell, before judgement is passed on me, I’ll get to watch the movie of my life.

Watching that movie, knowing what is awaiting me, I’ll smile the whole fucking time.

Naïve Narrative or Excusable Trope?

Heard this on NPR last night:

Author Yann Martel On 'That Deeply Unreasonable Phenomenon' Of Faith

On this quote from the book and how it reflects his own thoughts about faith: "[Tomás] realized that this matter of faith was either radically to be taken seriously or radically not to be taken seriously."

Most people are not radical either way. They just sort of sit in this middle on this fence most of their lives. And I think important matters like religion — you have to decide one way or the other ... because it makes a big difference. Either there's nothing — we're just the result of chemical good luck, you know, this soup on Earth that yielded life somehow mysteriously. And that's fine, and you just deal with that — that life is a lucky, short-lived thing. Or it does somehow mean something. And if it does, then what does it mean? ...

I'm not at all a defender of organized religion or any kind of evangelism, but I'm just saying either life means something or it doesn't. Because life is about making choices, so either you throw yourself at it and believe there is something — then what is there? — or you don't and say there's nothing and so we just have to make life good right now.

Coupleuh things here: 1. Coupleuh is a word. 2. How is chemical good luck, soup on Earth that yielded life, nothing? 3. Notice the “or,” implying that chemical good luck that yields life is nothing. This forced dichotomy that Yann has backed himself into here just isn’t/doesn’t have to be the case. Why can’t it be that making life good right now IS the SOMETHING? Deep down in places we don’t talk about at parties, this trope runs thick like concrete from a mixer, that atheists and their ilk are amoral, immediate gratification monsters BECAUSE they don’t see/get/understand/accept the “life means something” religion in disguise idea.

Can life be finite and mean something? Your life, yes you, has a starting point and an ending point and because of this fact it means nothing? Nah, it means something and though Sartre and the existentialist are out of fashion right now, it is up to you to determine what it means. And you will. Good bad or ugly.

On the importance of stories

I believe that we are nothing without the stories that we read and that we tell ourselves. I think in a large part, our identity as human beings is the result of narration, of constructing things that have a beginning, a middle and an end, that have development. I've always been struck how religions, unlike science, religion is profoundly narrative. All religions convey stories and I think that speaks to who we are as a species. Our understanding comes through stories, [is] exemplified through stories, [is] understood through stories.

And our human brains crave metaphor. The metaphors are, unlike our individual lives, and like musical melodies, infinite. My narrative doesn’t involve deities and supernatural agents and isn’t it just as valuable as religious narratives. Human history is still a blink in geologic time and you don’t have to be Bob Dylan to know that the times they are uh changin’. 

I give you a song with a new narrative, a different view point of a religious narrative, namely Kingdom Come. 

http://www.markerelli.com/songs/lyrics/Little_Vigils_-oparen-2010-cparen-/1172

Kingdom Come

The wasp she lays an egg
'Neath a caterpillar's skin
It hatches and the larva grows
Feasting from within
It kills the host then off it goes
To sting another one
Seems to me there's too much misery to believe in Kingdom Come

Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come
Seems to me there's too much misery to believe in Kingdom Come

I've a secret guaranteed
To make the theologians squirm
All it takes is time to make a man
From the lowliest of worms
We are not the pinnacle
Nobody's chosen ones
Can the minds of men be trusted with such things as Kingdom Come

Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come
Can the minds of men be trusted with such things as Kingdom Come

Once I had a daughter
She died before her time
I sponged her fevered brow
And cursed her bilious decline
I feel her like a phantom limb
Pins and needles numb
Friend I cannot comprehend what makes you cling to Kingdom Come

Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come
Friend I cannot comprehend what makes you cling to Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come
Kingdom Come
Seems to me there's too much misery
Can the minds of men be trusted
I cannot comprehend what makes you cling to Kingdom Come

I've known communion in conviction
And the loneliness of doubt
Does the master mark the sparrow's fall
Or just let it all play out
If only for your sake my love
I wish I could succumb
Bridge the void and join for eternity in your Kingdom Come

Immortality

“It ends, can’t you admit that? It’s finite, you are finite, you end, there are bounds there are limits and they apply to you too and it’s not a bad thing. How could it be? How could you value something limitless, if even a life? On and on, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare, on and on it goes, nothing rare…