RE: Alzheimers in heaven.
October 22, 2019 at 10:26 pm
(This post was last modified: October 22, 2019 at 10:32 pm by John 6IX Breezy.)
(October 22, 2019 at 10:09 pm)mordant Wrote: Apart from how one is allegedly supposed to comport oneself in heaven, it is ETERNITY and I don't personally believe that we are adapted to it (in the sense of "natural selection"). As such ... hedonic tone insures that eventually, out of sheer boredom, one would not wish to have more new experiences. Even imagining biological immortality here on earth is hard for me to fathom beyond maybe a couple hundred years. Much less some sort of celestial theocracy. Maybe my curiosity and ability to experience novelty is more robust than I know, and I could go hundreds or thousands of years (especially if there were no real economic or experiential constraints somehow), but eternity, I'm quite certain, would be out of the question.
Therefore to exist happily in heaven one would have to be transformed into something other than human. Some have suggested a lobotomy. I don't know that it would have to be that crude, but I would no longer be me, and that is the same as there being no heaven for me. It'd be for someone else.
I think this presupposes that there aren't infinite amounts of things to do in an infinite universe; but lets just say there isn't. I think some people definitely catch the travel bug, or are more novelty-driven individuals; but I feel like the vast majority of people on earth are content living their whole life in the same country, or city, or even neighborhood. We almost dislike having too many options and choices and prefer sticking with the same things.
My prediction is that, in our current state, if we were given eternity. We would settle into routine fairly quickly. Perhaps becoming glacier-like, happily sticking with those routines as they slowly drift across eternity. I don't think boredom will be an issue. But speaking of evolution, it is odd that a feeling such as boredom exists at all. I don't know if there are papers on it, but boredom seems like one of the few emotions that suggest that the portion of the universe we are given isn't enough for us, we want eternity.
