(June 20, 2015 at 12:01 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: If you could take a pill that would cause you to stop aging and render you immortal until the end of the world (whatever this means to you), would you take it?
Please explain your answer.
No way. I think a much better pill would be one that ends consciousness instantaneously without any pain or suffering. That's the only part of death that I fear - the process - but that's something we all have to go through, even the religious. But where the religious see it as the transition to immortality, I see it as the last moments before non-existence. But non-existence is not some dark, scary void that we live in for eternity. It just means we cease to exist, just as we did not exist before we were born. There's nothing bad about it at all and it offers no vantage point from which to envy or miss anything about life or immortality. It helped me a lot when dealing with the prospect of death to think about this hypothetical kill pill (well I called it a kill switch, but same principle) - it made me realise that the only part I fear is the painful process of death, not the non-existence that follows, because if it weren't for my family and the people I care about I'd be happy to flip that switch right now. Not because I'm depressed but because even if I had the best life imaginable it wouldn't make any difference because I wouldn't be around to miss it.
