If everyone died at once

Just thinking if there were a worldwide calamity, and humanity -- 8 billion of us -- all died at once. And let's also suppose there's an afterlife. Suppose that would be better than an individual dying alone. I mean, 8 billion of us floating up to some afterlife realm or realms. 8 billion bewildered souls in telepathic communication with each other asking where are we, what is this, where do we go? Be less scary than if one just died by oneself.

Instant liking of others

It's funny how some people really connect. I think it happens when they share the same values, ideas, what constitutes fun etc. It could be 2 knuckleheads who think that life is all about screwing as many women as possible. Or it could be 2 people that are "woke". But there's that connection there, an immediate liking of that other individual who is so like them in so many ways.

But what about the poor unfortunates like myself, who are utterly unique?

Dr. William B. Province's view

Dr. William B. Provine, now deceased but who used to be Professor of Biological Sciences at Cornell University, once said the following:

There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either.

Well, thanks for letting us know, William! No purposes? No goal directed forces of any kind? Hmm... so how do iPhones come into existence? By sheer happenstance?

Good looking women

Why do guys act so sycophantically around good-looking women? Get sick of hearing stuff like:

You have intelligence, courage and a keen sense of self and your place in the universe. You're a very feisty lady that can handle pretty well any challenge that is thrown at you, dare I say you have inspired me with how you live your life? Your awesomeness emanates from your very being, it is almost a tangible thing! OK . OK . .I made that last sentence up.

Dwelling on our mortality

Some people dwell -- unduly in my opinion -- about their own deaths and the meaning of it all. Yes, we are all going to die -- just as ~ 100 billion people did before us (this is a rough estimate of the total number of human being who have ever died).

We either survive, or we don't. If we don't then it will be exactly the same as the time before our lives. It will be akin to deep sleep. If we survive? Then it's an adventure which will happen at some unspecified time in our futures. Meanwhile, let's just lose ourselves in our lives. Enjoy ourselves.

Life is interesting. Existence is fascinating. Let's not lose sight of that.

20,000 years ago

I'm just thinking what would happen if I accidentally walked through a time portal and went back in time 20,000 years? Would I eventually meet other human beings? Would they be hostile? Would they think I'm strange? What would my life be like?

Not that I believe that backwards time travel is possible; indeed, I believe it's metaphysically impossible. But I might be wrong, and besides, it's interesting thinking about such things.

Enjoyable work

What makes one's job enjoyable? What makes us work hard? I think essentially, one needs to be intimately and emotionally involved in the product you're creating or the service you're providing.

Our society tends to assume how hard we work, how much effort we put into something, is closely related to how much we get paid for that work. I disagree. I reckon what motivates people to work hard is not so much how much you get paid, but rather the sense of achievement in producing something that other people really appreciate, together with the knowledge that not many others have the requisite skills to do what you've done. It's working towards some goal, and for others to exclaim "wow" when they see what you've done. It's pride in producing something, or providing some service. And this in turn will make one very much enjoy the work they're doing.

But much work under capitalism tends to be repetitious, just doing one task. You're not creating the object, only part of it. Hence, you're a cog in the overall machine. And the object is not ours. It belongs to someone else. Hence, we are alienated from that we are creating, or the service we're providing.

The Voyager Spacecraft

From here.

NASA placed a .. message aboard Voyager 1 and 2, a kind of time capsule, intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. 

It’s almost certainly the case these records will never ever be listened to or viewed. The spacecraft will be drifting through space long after the extinction of humankind. It will drift for countless trillions of years. All other signs of the human race will have long since been obliterated. In fact, the whole Earth will have been swallowed up by the death throes of the Sun as it expands into a red giant. Just those discs that no-one and nothing will ever view or listen to as a lasting memento of human culture and life on Earth.

Are our lives for the purpose of soul-making?

People tend to either think that their lives are purposeless in the sense of absurd, or that our existence is a process of "soul-making" -- that we're here to learn lessons and for our souls to thereby develop to become better and more enlightened beings. I used to think the latter, but now I reject this dichotomy.

Much of what we do in our lives we do purely for the experience. That might be something as trivial as having a good night out and getting pissed (i.e. affected by alcohol). Have any lessons been learnt? Has our soul developed during that one night? Probably not, so why should it be any different for a whole life?

However, that's not to say our lives are purposeless. It is perfectly possible for there to be some ultimate purpose to our existence, some ultimate reason, without thinking that life is like school whereby we are required to progress to some specific end. What this ultimate purpose might be, I don't know, though. I'll leave it to those who have had mystical experiences to answer that one.

The end of the age of the dinosaurs

If the asteroid that hit our planet ~ 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, had hit the planet perhaps as little as 2 seconds later, it might have fallen into the ocean instead of shallow water. Hence, the consequences would have been very different. There would have been vastly less vaporised rock, and sunlight could have still reached the Earth's surface in the following weeks and months. Hence, the temperature all over the planet wouldn't have catastrophically fallen. Hence, the dinosaurs might not have been wiped out. Hence, human beings might never have evolved.

The fact that human beings ever came into being is an extraordinarily unlikely series of events. But then, what do we make of the notion that there is an ultimate purpose to our lives? That we were born for some ultimate purpose? On the surface, it might seem incompatible with any such purpose, since we're here by sheer colossally unlikely blind happenstance. 

There's stuff here I think that we're simply not understanding. Perhaps if dinosaurs had survived, they would have evolved into intelligent creatures comparable to our intelligence? Perhaps our souls might have inhabited these dinosaur descendants? Lots of questions, lots of speculations. But all very interesting -- well... at least I find it interesting!

An all pervasive spiritual force

From here:

Completely independently, many indigenous groups developed concepts of a fundamental ‘spiritual force’ which they perceived as pervading the whole of reality. ... As these peoples perceived it, this force is not a personal being such as a deity, who watches over the world and requires human beings to worship it. It is usually seen as an all-pervading force or power, with no gender or personality.

Yes, I think this is pointing along the right path. Reality as a whole is somehow infused with awareness, and indeed a manifestation of awareness? And all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be, is infused with ultimate meaning. A meaning that eludes us in our daily day-to-day existence, but whose existence might be very briefly glimpsed with peak experiences and mystical experiences. Jus' thinking aloud.

A Sobering Thought

Sobering thought to think that by around 2150 I will have been completely forgotten -- as if I had never existed. Unless my blogs survive, or my Facebook posts etc, which I doubt.