sneaker.

in yourself. Easier in others. My nephew is an old soul. His mother is often perplexed by it.

Go to a pub, with friends. I have on occasion after a few beers completely figured out the world and everything about it. Unfailingly I have forgotten what that was the next day, but always had a good time anyway.

Some thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of years ago, some human tried to figure out the meaning of life - how we got here, why we're here, etc. He or she decided it was all started by some god, goddess, or giant flying guppy for some stupid reason or other, known only to the god, goddess or giant flying guppy.

Most people were convinced that this was as good an explanation as any and went back to picking the lice out of each other's hair.

The odds that the first explanation was the right one are as close to zero as it gets.

... the question concerned what you say you know, not what you quite understandibly don't believe.

There's a section of Our Town that's been haunting me for months:

"Emily: Oh, Mama, look at me one minute as though you really saw me. Mama, fourteen years have gone by. I'm dead. You're a grandmother, Mama! Wally's dead, too. His appendix burst on a camping trip to North Conway. We felt just terrible about it - don't you remember? But, just for a moment now we're all together. Mama, just for a moment we're happy. Let's really look at one another!...I can't. I can't go on.It goes so fast. We don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on and we never noticed. Take me back -- up the hill -- to my grave. But first: Wait! One more look. Good-bye , Good-bye world. Good-bye, Grover's Corners....Mama and Papa. Good-bye to clocks ticking....and Mama's sunflowers. And food and coffee. And new ironed dresses and hot baths....and sleeping and waking up. Oh, earth,you are too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it--every,every minute?
Stage Manager: No. (pause) The saints and poets, maybe they do some.
Emily: I'm ready to go back."

I wish I were (had been) a saint. Or a poet. But I'm neither. That one's best days are behind him is a crushing realization. That it's his own fault? Debilitating.

But I still don't believe you. (I do.)

Hiltler's body was burned and CO2 enterred the air and dispersed with some likely to have been taken up by plants and made into sugars which you may have ingested. Assuming this to be the case, has part of Hilter been imprinted on you, perhaps you are thinking about invading Poland? ;)

. . . that's a hyperbolic extrapolation (deliberately and amusingly so), but you're in the neighborhood of what I'm getting at (or what I might be getting at, as the flipside of gnosis is agnosis, or, It's All Theory, Anyway). Take the first part, and let the second remain more abstract. A version of original sin, perhaps . . . or better yet, the Buddhist notion of shared karma: having introduced distinctly modern versions of despotism and genocide into the world, by way of either ideological passage or biological infection (probably both), Hitler passes these errors on.

I'm very much in touch with my inner despot; one of the reasons industrial music resonates so deeply with me is that its orinators and I share a love/hate relationship with the notion of cult of personality, an attraction/repulsion as regards the totalitarian impulse.

That said, I've no interest in Poland. :)

there is no God. Psalms 14:1

Very strange. I have had a cold for the last few days, which has led me to think a lot about death. The antibiotics seem to be working, because today I found myself thinking about rattlesnakes. Till I read your post.

Anyway, I believe both immortality and heaven are way overrated. They are attractive primarily because people haven't thought through the consequences.

Biological immortality wouldn't buy you immunity from obsolescence of all kinds - of knowledge, skills, motivation, social adjustment, acquaintances (depends on whether you drank the potion yourself or could share with family and friends). After a million hearings, even Beethoven might sound stale. After a billion fucks, you'd probably want to be celibate. It is difficult to learn a new language even in your twenties. I believe aging is a deeper phenomenon than osteoporosis. My favorite quote from the Waste Land is the quote-within:

I have seen with my own eyes the Sibyl hanging in a jar, and when the boys asked her "What do you want?" She answered, "I want to die."

I expressed my problem with heaven here. I mean, can you gorge on chocolate mousse or boink your best friend's wife once you cross the pearly gates? If yes, rest assured that all hell will break loose in no time and the rewards for your earthly restraint will be short lived. If no, what the fuck was all that self denial about?

At any rate, I wish there were more posts about rattlesnakes.

Like the gods, none of the other wishful inventions of the human ego are true, either. No soul, no immortality - none of it. Again, the idea that some working class guy on the outskirts of Roman civilization would be the guy to figure it out (Jesus says you go to Heaven, Billy) - or some Iron Age Hindu (reincarnation, nirvana, etc.) - is a bit absurd.

Plus, there's the evidence of what actually happens to people when they die, as opposed to what is imagined to happen.

I guess one convincing argument that death is not the end. So far, nothing.

So much of so many people's lives depends or is contingent on the belief in an afterlife and I see no reason for it.

Hilter's legacy was passed on because of human recordings, eye witness accounts in books or radio recording and movie films. His ideas might be referred to as memes, but I see that as part of culture and nothing biological or of any spiritual nature.

But I would say absolutely that biology has imprinted on you, which would be from the DNA of your mother and father, and then the environment of your mother's womb. In someways this contradicts existentialism, but at the moment of conception, your existence is established but also much of your essense, although much more essense is developed later on. Its really amazing that the single cell zygote contains all the information needed to make a completely new individual. It is a constructive synthesis and a remarkable act of creation.

Suddenly didn't believe in all this shit anymore? Imagine life without an afterlife, religions [like farming, music, writing, science, architecture] without god and living without eternal punishments or rewards.

I always thought it first started with daring-do: 'Hey, troglodyte, I dare you to eat that plant.' Said caveman gobbles said plant, trips, hallucinates, sees god in a burning bush, satyrs in the trees, unicorns fucking and goddesses ready and willing to pleasure him. He never looked back, appointed himself chief padre and stole all the young wans.