Asymmetrical Information

Covered porch.

Light breeze cool enough that you need a jacket and strong enough that occasionally a few drops of rain will hit you.

A long, good book.

(And with any luck, Mom is making a huge pot of vegetable soup that will be done just about the time it is too dark to read any more.)

obviously, those millions have never heard of tivo.

Against boredom, even the Gods themselves struggle in vain.

But the Gods have even more time than we do. Personally, I can always find something to do.

You forgot a porch swing.

What's there to discuss? Most of those who long for eternal life also seem to fear some kind of hell or purgatory.

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz, Anger in the Sky

Assume that Sunday afternoon lasts 7 hours.
Furthermore, assume that every Sunday afternoon is rainy.

So out of a 168 hour week, you spend seven hours not knowing what to with yourself. For fairness sake, lets assume that everyone sleeps 8 hours a night, and compare this Sunday afternoon to the time spent awake. 7/112 is 6.25% of your time spent awake.

So millions prefer immortal life, even at the cost of spending 6.25% of it bored. This does not sound like a ridiculous price to pay to me - even ignoring that I provided a rather high estimate.

Eh. Usually we just comment here.

I'll pass on the issue of what "point" there is in something in us surviving bodily death. Here's a sobering thought for those who think it is "obvious" that we can't do that: If you think of the mind as a process... You know darn well that destroying a computer does not destroy any program that once ran on it. If there is something, somewhere in any sense of where or when, that can "run" your mind on it, then you can live again in the meaningful sense. It doesn't depend on spirit substances etc. What something to run it? Well, there could be the "platonic computer" imagined by substance-doubting modal realists, that runs the universe in effect as a sort of computer program. Maybe it, or something like that, can run your mind too without needing your body. It may give you the creeps or give you hope.

tyrannogenius

As long as I'm wasn't in a dry state or county, it's never been a problem.

I disagree with a couple of the premises:

1. Very few people actually do long for eternal life. When I tell people that I do, their reactions range from horrified to puzzled ("But wouldn't you get bored?").

2. The fact that someone fails to make good use of a few hours of free time after his plans are preempted by rain tells us very little about his ability to make good use of days, months, or centuries of free time.

I don't give a damn. I'll trade my soul for immortality and eternal youth.

Millions have no imagination. Personally I'd take a job as a night watchmen at Borges' infinite library. Read every book ever written. Read every book that was yet to be written. And then read every book that could ever possibly be written. When I'm done with all infinite number of them I would proceed to memorize each in turn.
I think that'd take care of eternity.

"I'll trade my soul for immortality and eternal youth."

That is a truly brilliant statement.

This strikes me as relevant:

"I'd rather sail away
Like a swan that's here and gone
A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world its saddest sound"
-Paul Simon

Hell, I've got sooooo many things I want to do, that maybe with eternal life I'd get to do them. Unless, of course, eternal life also came with the eternal grind of the eternal job.

Because, frankly, the reason we're sitting around listless on that rainy Sunday afternoon is that we're tired. We need some downtime.

So, I just might trade 50 years of liesure for an endless time of grinding it out, week after soulless week.

:) Really, I'm not all that depressed. Honest!

"Unless, of course, eternal life also came with the eternal grind of the eternal job."

Which leads to an interesting thought: How would immortality affect the capital and labor markets?

Well if you are a Mormon you have your entire family to hang out with, and for most mormons, that's a lot of people.

My dad had a saying that I think is pretty profound and has significantly influenced me.

"Only boring people get bored."

If there are eternal girl friends,(remember English metaphysical poet Andrew Marvell's lines starting with "Go and catch a falling star,
get with child a mandrake root") eternal life is good.
Enjoy not only sunday afternoons but all week here in the south-western stretch of peninsular India, where the south west monsoon hits right on June 1st and continues until september( continuous downpour day and night when you can't sometimes see the sun for days together).A cup of good tea (tea leaves from the Western Ghat's famous misty tea-gardens)and a company of good friends will fill you with "eternal" happiness.

It depends on what one means by "eternal life". Does it mean "unable to die", or does it mean "never aging"?

I wonder how risk adverse one might become if it were only the latter?

Unamuno had it right: the reason millions hunger for immortality is not that fourscore and ten is not enough time to do all the things they want to do, but that they hate the idea of extinction. That is a very different matter.

...and many imagine themselves capable of running the world, who haven't the guts to start up a simple business.

Sunday afternoons are when what's somewhat inaccurately known as Sunday Night Depression starts rearing its ugly head. You begin to realize that Monday's misery isn't all that far off.

And what about eternal life in heaven? What, excatly, do believers think they'll be doing there for infinity?

Head over to FLGS to play some Federation Commander with my buds...

I would trade eternal life for one utterly perfect, made to order life on earth. For me, the delights of happy surprise never wash away the sting of disappointment. Finite perfection beats eternal mediocrity.

Brandon, immortality would cause real interest rates to decline, as immortals competed to live off of investments. Currently people may live for years on their investments, but then they die and the heirs (and the state) consume.

As for what people who can't fill up Sunday think about heaven, I would guess they just think that heaven would be fun in unspecified, and unthoughtabout, ways. But you know, God is all powerful, so there's no real need to worry - He'll find you things to do. Muslims, the men at least, do seem to have spent some time thinking about it, and apparently sex in heaven is a big draw.

Zhong Lu says, "I would trade my soul for immortality and eternal youth."

This has already been analyzed, in a short story by Ray Russell called "The Cage". He does not concur.

When I was a child (5 or 6), I was terrified of eternity. I remember vividly the moment I was exposed to the idea that my soul would last forever (be it in heaven or hell), and it chilled me to the bone. It kept me awake at night. To this day, I can't conceive of something more frightening...

More on topic, Miss McArdle's original post shows a failure to understand the difference between "eternal" (i.e., timeless) and "endless". C.S. Lewis wrote compellingly on this failure, but I can't find the quote at the moment.

Leonard,

The celestial toilet could use a real scrubbing.

Who are these lucky creatures you speak of with nothing to do on their rainy Sunday afternoons? I must find them so as to learn their time management skills.

I don't yearn for life eternal. I yearn for enlightment.

If I could achieve enlightment then all the ages of the cosmos would mean nothing and I would happily cast off this existence without regret.

The longing for eternal life is more often than not fear-based, due in no small part to the fact that their dogmas which serve so well to enable them to sit in pious judgement of others during their lifetime tend to suddenly ring hollow when it comes time for them to step up and die.

I don't think it has much at all to do with how industrious they are, as if they're wishing for more time because they have so much to do, and so the Sunday afternoon comparison doesn't mean much. But it does sound very poetic. And hey, it makes a helluva quote.

Or I could be totally off-base. I haven't had a beer in three days, so I'm not making much sense.

Boredom is good for you.

The eternal life longed for in that quote is a life in Heaven.

Now, life in Heaven consists of admiring God. Beholding the glory of God.

Sounds lame? What you don't know is that God is like the best TV program ever. Only better.

The only problem with a rainy Sunday afternoon is that there is nothing on TV. That is not a problem in Heaven.

Why God is like the best TV program better (only better):

In beholding God, you also indirectly behold what God sees.

Thus, you have a fantastically intricate insight into the struggles and suffering in life on Earth.

It's like a super-duper soap opera!

This also explains the presence of evil and suffering on earth. Without this, Heaven/TV would be short of "content".

Thus life for us on Earth must always continue to be intricately neurotic and dramatically violent.

I find it amusing to suggest that "I would trade my soul for immorality and eternal youth" but I'm not sure the exchange rate runs in my direction on that deal.

Study UPANISHADs you will get the answers to the eternality question.Here is one line:

Om poornamadaha Poornamidam
Poornath poornamudatchyathe
Poornasya poornamadaya
poornamevavasishyathe.

Meaning (approx.):
That is complete, this is complete
Completeness originates from completeness
Deducting completeness from completeness
Results in completeness again.

I'd love immortality. It's taken me the best years of my life just to figure out how the world works. I'd like some time to enjoy it! And imagine the historical perspective we'd get from a few immortals. I've never understood the distaste some people have of earthy mortality. unless it's a matter of sour grapes.

GVV:
Adding completeness to completeness and multiplying completeness by completeness result in completeness again. Deducting completeness from completeness and dividing completeness by completeness are undefined.

Just a comment on the nature of God. I think some people's distaste for religion comes from the well-intentioned, but strange belief that heaven somehow consists of nothing other than sitting around and saying/marvelling how wonderful God is. Practically no one in this world does that now, and I imagine no one at all does it most of the time. So how can you be intellectually honest and pretend thats what you would want to do for enternity. No doubt a Christian would be willing to praise God for eternity, but they certainly wouldn't want to do nothing-but-praise-God for eternity. I wouldn't. Instead I'd prefer that my actions, my beliefs, my treatment of others, my example and my deeds themselves would be praise enough for God. I think its an awkward relationship between you and God if you imagine that people just sit around saying "God is great" all the time. I'm not sure how many people actually implement that kind of theory in practice, but for those that do, I can see why some who claim to be "enlightened" are turned off....it makes me pretty uncomfortable and I consider myself to be very religious.

brandonberg,

Mine was only of a very crude translation of the Saskrit original.I could not get a right word for the Sanskrit word "poorna" in English and that is the reason for the doubt.

cdub,

As per Indian Philosophy god is not somebody sitting in heaven. God is ever present in every animate and inanimate things.It is within you and also within an ant.If you want to know more about life, eternity and things like that you must learn the wisdom of Upanishads from an appropriate Guru (this is a world of many "lemon" Gurus; so you must be careful in finding the real Guru in the pursuit of truth and wisdom).

the following email ID will help you to clear your doubts on Indian philosophy:

pranopasana@gmail.com

If you want to know more about life, eternity and things like that you must learn the wisdom of Upanishads from an appropriate Guru (this is a world of many "lemon" Gurus; so you must be careful in finding the real Guru in the pursuit of truth and wisdom).

No guru is required. In fact, in reality there are no gurus and no seekers. Simply persistently investigate the nature of who it is who wants to know more about life, eternity, and things like that. . .

Mathew

True. Indian philosphy doesnt say that you need a Guru.If you can find out the reasons for existence eternality etc yourself, well and good.Upanishad wisdom answers all.

Mathew,

True. Indian philosphy doesnt say that you need a Guru.If you can find out the reasons for existence eternality etc yourself, well and good.Upanishad wisdom answers all.

Mathew,

True. Indian philosphy doesnt say that you need a Guru.If you can find out the reasons for existence eternality etc yourself, well and good.Upanishad wisdom answers all.

To piggy-back on GVV's posts, Indian philosophy sees eternal life completely differently than Western religions with the concept of samsara (roughly: reincarnation). The devout seek to escape samsara, not perpetuate it.

Christina,

"Samsara" approx. means "earthly existence","worldly existence" or just "mondane life" and not reincarnation (which is known as "punarjanma").

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