Archive for November, 2006
In reading “
Why I Am Not a Christian” by Bertrand Russell, I have uncovered an essay that has single handedly confirmed my belief that we cease to exist upon our death.
Before we can profitably discuss whether we shall continue to exist after death, it is well to be clear as to the sense in which a man is the same person as he was yesterday. Philosophers used to think that there were definite substances, the soul and the body, that each lasted on from day to day, that a soul, once created, continued to exist throughout all future time, whereas a body ceased temporarily from death till the resurrection of the body.
The part of this doctrine which concerns the present life is pretty certainly false. The matter of the body is continually changing by processes of nutriment and wastage. Even if it were not, atoms in physics are no longer supposed to have continuous existence; there is no sense in saying: this is the same atom as the one that existed a few minutes ago. The continuity of a human body is a matter of appearance and behavior, not of substance.
The same thing applies to the mind. We think and feel and act, but there is not, in addition to thoughts and feelings and actions, a bare entity, the mind or soul, which does or suffers these occurrences. The mental continuity of a person is a continuity of habit and memory: there was yesterday one person whose feelings I can remember, and that person I regard as myself of yesterday; but, in fact, which are now remembered and are regarded as part of the person who now recollects them. All that constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit.
If, therefore, we are to believe that a person survives death, we must believe that the memories and habits which constitute the person will continue to be exhibited in a new set of occurrences.
No one can prove that this will not happen. But it is easy to see that it is very unlikely. Our memories and habits are bound up with the structure of the brain, in much the same way in which a river is connected with the riverbed. The water in the river is always changing, but it keeps to the same course because previous rains have worn a channel. In like manner, previous events have worn a channel in the brain, and our thoughts flow along this channel. This is the cause of memories and mental habits. But the brain, as a structure, is dissolved at death, and memory therefore may be expected to be also dissolved. There is no more reason to think otherwise than to expect a river to persist in its old course after an earthquake has raised a mountain where a valley used to be.
All memory, and therefore (one may say) all minds, depend upon a property which is very noticeable in certain kinds of material structures but exists little, if at all in other kinds. We all know that memory can be obliterated by an injury to the brain, that a virtuous person may be rendered vicious by encephalitis lethargica, and that a clever child can be turned into an idiot by lack of iodine. In view of such familiar facts, it seems scarcely probable that the mind survives the total destruction of brain structure which occurs at death.
November 28th, 2006
It’s long been thought that people will do things on their own accord, and it’s often nearly impossible to make somebody do something unless they want to. This is something I know to be true. A friend of mine has for months been encouraging me to read The Stanger by Albert Camus. I even went so far as to buy the book the day he initially lent me the idea but never cracked the spine. It’s been sitting on my nightstand since, staring back at me begging to be read each time I gave a glance. Today’s the day I chose to finally embrace the idea and read the book.
The book is 116 pages and I was successful in my attempt to sit and read it through. I’m thankful that I waited until now to read it for a few simple reasons. The first, and probably most important, reason being the fact that I have read and learned so much more about life in the shard of time since buying the book. This new found knowledge afforded me the ability to understand and take more from the book; more so than if I would have read it sooner. For this I’m grateful. Secondly, I’m at a point now in life where each thing I read is simply adding itself to the snowball in my simple, yet complex, mind. It’s becoming quite the blizzard in here. The good news? We’re all gonna die, so best to live a life you can be proud of as this life slips from your control.
Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people’s death’s or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people? Couldn’t he see, could he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.
All of which leads me to some more good news. Do you remember the days in school when you would spend countless hours studying and preparing for a test? And do you also remember the feeling you felt when you discovered you had passed not only with an A, but with flying colors? Tonight, I passed a test with flying colors.
After I concluded reading the book, a couple friends invited me to join them in attendance at a dance club here in the city. Though hesitant, I agreed to goto a to club where I knew, without a doubt, that 60+ percent of the crowd would be either A) drunk or B) high. (My best bet was on the latter.) I was neither and didn’t plan on being so. I was completely, 100% sober. Now, not too long ago, one of two scenarios might have played out. I would have either sat in the corner, arms crossed, and had a horrific time, or I would have quickly chosen to chemically alter my state of mind so that I, too, might have a good time. Not tonight. Tonight I was able to amazingly control my thoughts and actions and have as good of time as ever. It’s amazing how powerful being in complete control of your mind is. Drugs and alcohol are a ‘quick-fix’ with which I’m finished. I’ve now officially entered the realm where I’m king of my beautiful little world.
November 26th, 2006
I’m reading Meme by Sean Sinjin. A meme is a concept, notion, or thought. Generally, it can be passed on to others. It is the information equivalent of a gene. I have no doubt that I am the fruit of billions of years of evolutionary change. I’ve come to fully realize I’m an animal just like any other, albeit highly more intelligent. (The fact that our DNA has evolved to produce a plethora of gray matter has granted us a great capacity for intelligence.) Life truly is about survival of the fittest. I wanna share an excerpt from the book:
This all happened by chance. Believe it. It sounds ridiculously unlikely that this could happen at all, and it is ridiculously improbable that it even did happen. Look at it this way: it’s very unlikely that you would be directly hit by a person-sized meteorite, perhaps a trillion to one. But, what if a trillion meteorites all came down at the same time? Chances are, you’d be finished. This is how phenomal odds can be overcome, by a phenomenal number of instances. There were incomprehensible numbers of these cells, over unimaginable numbers of generations, and each and every cell was subjected to the same random gene mutation mechanism. If you do the math, it becomes quite obvious that there’s nothing lucky about the evolution of life at all; it’s a statistical inevitability.
Read a book. Know things! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: knowledge is powerful; ignorance is dangerous. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor. (That does not happen by chance, it’s design.) Treat yourself, better yet, treat your brain to some information. Therein lie the building blocks for continued progression toward a better world for you and all that inhabit this wonderful niche in the universe we call home.
November 21st, 2006
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