Happy New Year – We Are All Going to Die
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”.
