For some reason, I found myself pondering mortality today. I found my thoughts taking some interesting (well, to me anyway) turns. For those who might be interested, I will share these thoughts.
It occurred to me that in the fact of mortality, self awareness is, quite possibly, a curse. In particular, self awareness combined with an imagination and reason. Any being equipped with those tools is able to recognize death and also to consider its implications. And these implications are frightening when faced with a survival instinct or even just a desire to survive.
We, as beings capable of pondering death, are well equipped to understand this. Based strictly on the science available to us today, death indicates the end of consciousness. Of self awareness. To any self aware being, this concept is terrifying. Given our frame of reference, we try to comprehend what it will be like to not be aware at all. This is ridiculous. It won’t be like anything; with no awareness, nothing can be. It can’t be painful, or beautiful, or anything else at all.
But suppose the death of the body is not the end of the self aware mind? Suppose there is a soul that continues after death? This, then, gives meaning to the question of what it is like after death. This opens up a considerable number of possibilities ranging from eternal bliss to eternal torment. And we have no objective way to quantify this if it is true. This leaves us with either believing or not.
For the sake of argument, suppose the soul does live on after death. This would be a sort of immortality. Assuming conditions are not terrible, would this truly be a blessing? To live forever, conscious through the long millennia of creation. What then, when the universe ends? Or perhaps the soul would live in a different universe? Would the soul persist after the heat death of the universe? What of a different universe that never ends? What would be worse?
My pondering followed this line. Being self aware, what is the worse fate? To be conscious until the end of time? To be conscious for some time after death but to end anyway? To simply end at death? I arrived at no answer at all. On the one hand, to simply stop at death would definitely end any suffering or pain. Yet to live on would give yet more time to enjoy consciousness. To live until the end of time and see the end of all things, perhaps that would be worse. Yet, along the way, one would have to endure the seemingly endless millennia.
Perhaps age determines the answer one would give to this question. Myself, I think I am young enough yet to hope to live forever. Yet I also begin to dread this possibility. Yet I still dread the thought of simply ceasing to be in a few short decades (should I live that long) even more. And still, even though I know the ridiculousness of it, I continue to wonder what it would be like to not be at all.