From a young age I was oriented by my parents to living a life that would be one with my eternal existence. As a fundamentialist Christian I grew up being taught that Christianity was the only was to be one with that existence and the only way to build a rewarding afterlife.
At around 18 years old I had some in depth conversations with some fundamentalist Muslims and realised that Muslim and Christian teachings were equally valid and also mutually exclusive. As such I rejected both as invalid. Over the years I proceeded to reject all religion systems due to mutually assured destructive beliefs. After I had exhausted most religious belief I fell to philosophy. From there to Bhuddism and finally to rigorous scientific investigation.
Event though I rejected religious systems, in all those years still I held on to a belief in the afterlife. I wasn’t really that aware that I had though. It was a sort of default assumption of the possibility of eternity. I was still seaching for that one system of undertsanding to help clarify an appropriate lifestyle that would be rightly oriented with a possible eternal existence. It was only in the last year that it truly hit home that
a) I still believed in the possibility of an eternal existence and
b) my understanding now ommited the possibility of a (meaningful) afterlife.
What makes us, us? I argue it is memory and personality. Take an individual’s memory away and they are no longer a functioning person. Your memory is the core of your existence. Without it there is no context and no personal identity. Take an individual’s personality away and they are no longer the same person. Family and friends don’t recognise the individual.
Memory and personality are both physical. Both have clear correlations with physical locations in the brain. Both memory and personality can be modified and completely destroyed through physical means. A body can persist without memory and personality but it’s not ‘us’ anymore. The brain is destoyed on death. Memory and personality will be destroyed along with the brain. Even if part of our ‘being’ persists after death it wont include our memory and personality and as such is not an afterlife for the ‘us’ that we understand ourselves to be, day to day. As such there is no possibly ‘meaningful’ afterlife.
If there is nothing of ‘me’ that persists after life then there is nothing for ‘me’ to do in relation to an external existence. As such, things have changed over the last year, especially the last few months.
Where I was seeking eternal answers I now sit and watch time pass. Where I was looking inward I now look outward. Where I was constantly searching for meaning for myself in relation to eternity I now look for actions that communicate coexistence with others in a temporal world.
I have lessenned, become more ephemeral. The world I exist in has become more substantial, more fleeting and more beautiful.
By understanding I have less time I have made more.
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