I can't wrap my head around the idea that I care about what happens after I die, but once I die, I no longer care.
The Orlando shooting, for example. We are sad for those victims. But none of them are unhappy with their current state of being dead. So what was lost? A hypothetical future. But they only cared about the future when they were alive. Now that they are dead, it isn't important to them. So has their being shot really harmed them in any way outside of the 1 to 10 minutes of being terrified while it was ongoing?
I think the only victims of death may be the remaining living who experience loss from the dead no longer being around? But the dead themselves are just fine.
It's definitely a mind bender for me. I care that my daughter has a long happy life, but once I die, she can get eaten by a bear the next day, and it won't matter to me. But I would die to keep her from being eaten by that bear even though I know that my dying means I will no longer care that she isn't going to be eaten by a bear.
Is the problem the inability to view oneself as temporary? I guess the propagation of the species evolution stuff has us predisposed to looking at things beyond our own lives?
What do you guys come up with when pondering this stuff?
The Orlando shooting, for example. We are sad for those victims. But none of them are unhappy with their current state of being dead. So what was lost? A hypothetical future. But they only cared about the future when they were alive. Now that they are dead, it isn't important to them. So has their being shot really harmed them in any way outside of the 1 to 10 minutes of being terrified while it was ongoing?
I think the only victims of death may be the remaining living who experience loss from the dead no longer being around? But the dead themselves are just fine.
It's definitely a mind bender for me. I care that my daughter has a long happy life, but once I die, she can get eaten by a bear the next day, and it won't matter to me. But I would die to keep her from being eaten by that bear even though I know that my dying means I will no longer care that she isn't going to be eaten by a bear.
Is the problem the inability to view oneself as temporary? I guess the propagation of the species evolution stuff has us predisposed to looking at things beyond our own lives?
What do you guys come up with when pondering this stuff?
