Here is a thought experiment.
I define immortality in a very strange way. "For how many years after you have died, will people (some people, if not all) remember you at least once every day?".
Get the drift.
So if I die in 2020, and people (some...maybe my friends or my grandchildren) remember me in 2050, at least once in 24 hours......for say 7 days in a row....then hey....I did something that extended my mortality.
By that rule, Shakespeare did well for himself. Buddha was (is) a rockstar. Christ is another one. So is Prophet Muhammed. Alexander The Great, did not do too bad.
But why does immortality matter? For an atheist like me, that's all that matter. Else you take away any semblance of meaning in my life.
I have contemplated on this for years, and "immortality" might be the only game in town.
If we agree on that (I mean only game in town) and if we agree with the definition then.....
I might not be remembered more than a year post death. So all the meaning in my life - adds to just 1 year to my mortal life. The Buddha, Shakespeare, Ghalib will last another 5000 at least. So they stretched mortality to another 5000-8000 years post their life.
Bill gates will all be forgotten in about 200 years. Jeff Bezos too. Mukesh Ambani in about the same time or even lesser.
Does that mean - somewhere the shift to money or power as a metric - killed meaning and set us (humanity) along a wrong direction?
Human race as we know it might not last more than 10000-25000 years from here on. When this kind of human race comes to an end, however it might be.....I can bet that even for the penultimate human - we shall play Beethoven's 9th Ode to Joy as an eulogy to her/his life.
Beethoven/Bach/Mozart will remain immortal, right till human beings cease. Even if that is 500 thousand years later.
Whats the point of this post? Nothing, beyond the futility of most of our lives. Unless we are aspiring to be Beethoven, we are playing the losing game. Even aspiring helps....."the road to greatness is lined with hope too". The rest of us are damned. Dead weight on this planet.
I define immortality in a very strange way. "For how many years after you have died, will people (some people, if not all) remember you at least once every day?".
Get the drift.
So if I die in 2020, and people (some...maybe my friends or my grandchildren) remember me in 2050, at least once in 24 hours......for say 7 days in a row....then hey....I did something that extended my mortality.
By that rule, Shakespeare did well for himself. Buddha was (is) a rockstar. Christ is another one. So is Prophet Muhammed. Alexander The Great, did not do too bad.
But why does immortality matter? For an atheist like me, that's all that matter. Else you take away any semblance of meaning in my life.
I have contemplated on this for years, and "immortality" might be the only game in town.
If we agree on that (I mean only game in town) and if we agree with the definition then.....
I might not be remembered more than a year post death. So all the meaning in my life - adds to just 1 year to my mortal life. The Buddha, Shakespeare, Ghalib will last another 5000 at least. So they stretched mortality to another 5000-8000 years post their life.
Bill gates will all be forgotten in about 200 years. Jeff Bezos too. Mukesh Ambani in about the same time or even lesser.
Does that mean - somewhere the shift to money or power as a metric - killed meaning and set us (humanity) along a wrong direction?
Human race as we know it might not last more than 10000-25000 years from here on. When this kind of human race comes to an end, however it might be.....I can bet that even for the penultimate human - we shall play Beethoven's 9th Ode to Joy as an eulogy to her/his life.
Beethoven/Bach/Mozart will remain immortal, right till human beings cease. Even if that is 500 thousand years later.
Whats the point of this post? Nothing, beyond the futility of most of our lives. Unless we are aspiring to be Beethoven, we are playing the losing game. Even aspiring helps....."the road to greatness is lined with hope too". The rest of us are damned. Dead weight on this planet.
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