Alzheimers in heaven.

[mordant]

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.

Schopenhauer regarded this as the fundamental problem of the human condition -- that we are in a constant contention between suffering and boredom.

I don't think he meant boredom in the sense that a lot of young people mean it ... that "there's nothing to do" that I'm interested in, when in fact there is, if you get off your ass and have a better attitude. I think it is based more in the notion that while there can inherently be no such thing as a totally non-novel experience, nevertheless experiences have much in common with other experiences and after a few hundred years of that, it will have insufficient novelty to be of real value. When there is little or no value in your moment to moment experience, then your moment to moment experience feels subjectively meaningless, and you grow weary of it.

So even in an infinite universe with infinite time -- maybe one can say, especially in that scenario -- the commonalities between current and countless prior experiences become far greater than their unique qualities.

Even at age 62 I have a strong sense of deja vu such that most anything I experience is generally familiar and so not an object of ardent interest (or excitement, anxiety, or loathing or whatever) as it was, say, 40 years ago. Even negative things are familiar. I'm about to travel to visit one of my brothers who is circling the drain physically and it is alarming enough to me that I moved the visit up by a few months, just to be on the safe side. But I have lost my son, my prior wife, my oldest brother, my mother, and some fairly close friends already to "other than natural causes" so I have been here, done this before. I know just what to expect. I know exactly how it will feel when I eventually get The Call. I understand the grief process. It's almost like I don't have to bother with it, except that I do.

As such, if I were to fall victim to a sudden fatal heart attack or stroke, and I were in the process of meeting the pavement just before the lights went out, my reaction would not be "no! not yet!". It would be rather sanguine, intermixed with relief. That's not to say there's insufficient value in my life at present, or that there's no enjoyment; it's just to say that my life to this point is sufficient and I do not want to live past my "best used by" date. Go out when you're on top, so to speak.

Where I'd be in 200 or 500 years, it's hard to say for sure; maybe I'd have some unexpected new lease on life. But I have trouble getting excited about never-ending life just the same. I'd have to be sold on it. Dog knows, I have never been particularly sold on it to date.