Comment by ryuuseijin
1 day ago
Great list. Also, Anne Rice's Vampire stories.
I like Alan Watt's view on death: "it's absurd to worry about death because when you're dead, you've got nothing to worry about, so you'll be alright".
And Neil deGrasse Tyson, I think in reference to life after death: "it's the same as before you were born". Kind of mindblowing perspective - you've already experienced the state of not existing, it's the same as before you were born.
This brings it home that really it's the now you should learn to live and appreciate to the fullest instead, not some future you have no control over. Still struggling how that translates into worrying about my future health, but I suppose there is still the now of the future to worry about.
> Kind of mindblowing perspective - you've already experienced the state of not existing, it's the same as before you were born.
Your consciousness might have existed before, in another body, and it might do so again after your death.
The fact is you don't know what happens after you die. Maybe you'll cease to exist and will never again come into existence, even over all the hundreds of trillions of years yet to come in this universe, and even in any of the who-knows-how-many other universes that will ever exist.
Or maybe the physical requirements to create your specific consciousness will reoccur again and again and again.
You just don't know. Nor does Neil deGrass Tyson. Nor does, for that matter, the pope or the Dalai Lama.
You may want certainty. You may crave it, even need it. But that's too bad, as you'll never have it.
> it's the same as before you were born.
That's how I've long viewed it. As a practical matter we live "forever." Still makes me a tad nervous if I find myself thinking about it in the dark at 2am, but during the day it is a satisfactory explanation.