Happy New Year – We Are All Going to Die

Yes, we are all going to die and that's it, the end.

Except for the Christians, of course, they get to go to an afterlife of either heaven or hell. There seem to be two schools of thought on who goes where. One seems to believe good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell. The other, more scripture based, says it does not matter whether you are good or bad, Jesus died for your sins so if you believe you go to heaven no matter how evil you are, and non-believers, no matter how good they are go to hell.

And then their are those that believe in reincarnation, that you come back in another life form, perhaps in another place, after death. The particulars of reincarnation, depending on belief, seem to be as varied as there are possibilities.

And then we have the Vikings. After death they go to live with the gods in Valhalla. But only if they die trying to kill other people. I do not know what happens to peaceful Vikings after they die.

These are, of course, all religious fables. I believe the technical term is “poppycock”.

As is the religion of individualism being so fervently promoted these days. This is represented by the promotion of the theory that “if everyone acts in their own self interest the best interests of society will be served”. This is just a way of trying to justify greed and promotes the idea that “he who has the most stuff when he dies wins”. Poppycock.

The fact is that our individual lives are just a tiny speck in the space time continuum, so tiny as to be meaningless by themselves. The only way our lives can have any real meaning is as part of a society that existed before we were born that will exist after we die. The only possible hope for any form of immortality, even just symbolically, is through what we do with our lives that leaves our society better after we die than before we were born.

The only New Year's Resolution anyone can make that means anything is “to make a difference”.