My two cents on the immortality thing

[maggie2]

The topic of the day is immortality and whether or not it's a good thing.  I tend to think it is not -- at least not if it's the sort that Spike or Angel has to look forward to, i.e. an unlimited number of days.

 

I should say before I start that I'm a theist, specifically of the Roman Catholic variety, and even more specifically of the variety that thinks that St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas pretty much have it right, though there are some modern theologians who don't completely suck (Baltahsar, Barth).

As a good theist, I think it is completey natural for us to desire immortality, because that is what we are built for.  What I don't believe is that immortality understood as an endless succession of days is the sort of immortality that would actually fulfill our deep desire.  We live in a culture that is all about desperately trying to get more.  More is always better.  More life.  More stuff.  More experiences. More sex.  etc. etc.  And for the last few hundred years, our culture has been quite good at churning out more.  We live longer.  We are more healthy.  We have more stuff.  We have more choices.  Woo Hoo.

We're not any happier.  Not by any measure we can find.  We have five times more income, adjusted for inflation, than our grandparents.  We are five times better off in a material sense -- across all dimensions -- bigger houses, more clothes, better and more varied food, more toys, faster transportation, etc. etc. etc.  Yet it is not the case that the average person is five times happier than their grandparents.   Indeed, we seem to be on average as happy with our lives as were our grandparents.  You can go back a few centuries and find writers extolling the opulence of their societies, yet the standard of living they are describing would strike us as the worst kind of impoverishment.  All this more-ness doesn't seem to do anything meaningful for us.  Indeed, if you look at measures of psychological health you could argue that we are worse off.  There's more depression, and anxiety and stress. 

I came to the view that the mistake was to think of the infinite or of immortality as "more".  We want life in abundance.  But if that's just a long string of days do we really get abundance of life?  It's not like you can add up the days and keep them in a jar somewhere.  If that were the case, old people would be envied because they've experienced more days than the young.  But we nowhere have that sense.  We see the young as enviable because not only are they sexier and healthier, but most importantly because they have more days ahead of them than behind them. How is it that the potential for days is better than the accumulated experience of actual days?  Seems to me that it's not unlike the Christmas phenonenon.  All the packages are so exciting because they could be *anything*.  But when you open them up they collapse into the one thing they are.  And  while they are often nice, even wonderful, that one finite thing is never as great as the infinite things the gift could have been before the package was opened.   Days ahead of us are unopened Christmas presents.  Days behind us are opened presents, finite, and wonderful -- but not satisfying.  I don't see that adding in thousands and thousands more presents or days changes the underlying phenomenon.    

Another way of looking at it is to notice that however long your life is, you only have that length in your memory or in your anticipation.  The place where you really have life is right now.   To find the abundance of life we crave, we should be as awake to *this* moment as possible.   Whether we have 1 year or 10 years or 100 years or 10000 years before us, the only day we actually have is today.  Be in it.  If you want to be fulfilled by time or by things (both of which are real goods) don't imagine that more unopened presents is what you want.  Open your present and treasure it.  There is an abundance of good there.  The mistake is to open the present, discard it and look out with anxious desire to make sure that there's a never-ending stream of packages to open.

I should add that one of the things I best love about Spike is that he gets it.  He throws himself into the moment.  Totally and completely alive now.  And Spike doesn't sit around moping about how awful it would be to get staked in battle and lose the shot at a thousand years.  He's not afraid of death because he's fully alive right now.

Related topics:

I don't think the fear of not-being is rational.  You can't fear something you will never experience and if you really end up not being, there will be no you to experience the not being. 

I do think you can think that being is better than non-being.  As a theist, I'm very strongly in the camp that thinks being is nothing but good.

But since you can't really add up all the days, the way to register the preference for being is to make sure you live now. 

My hope as a Christian is that someday I'll have the fullness of being I am made for in whatever it is that constitutes heaven.  As Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in God.  My hope is that it is a rest which is not stasis or boredom, but rather an overabundance of everything present in the one moment of the now.  "Heaven" is a designation for "really good", yeah?  really really good.

My fear is of an afterlife that is not in the presence of God.  Since I'm pretty much a total schmuck, I've got no standing to say I deserve a great outcome.  But as of now I get to hope in the mercy of God.

I don't think nothing is on the menu.  But if it were, I don't know how to fear something that by definition I will never experience.

Comments

[2maggie2.livejournal.com]

All that matters for Spike and Angel is what they think will happen - that's what impacts their choices.

And I agree about this. The question of what they'd choose is different from the question of what they should choose.

On the Shanshu: I was just wondering if the sense that they were hellbound was specifically linked to the fact that they are demons, and if so whether they thought becoming human would expand their possibilities.

[next_to_normal]

I was just wondering if the sense that they were hellbound was specifically linked to the fact that they are demons, and if so whether they thought becoming human would expand their possibilities.

Hmm... I think it's not so much the fact that they're demons, but that they're demons who have done great evil, and thus deserve hell.

Becoming human would probably make a difference to Angel, at least. He seems to view the shanshu as the point where he breaks even, when he's made up for all the evil he's done. Granted, he also doesn't really expect to ever break even and get the shanshu, but if it happened, I think he'd see it as a chance to start over with a clean slate (and thus, a chance at heaven).

It's harder to say with Spike, for a few reasons. First, his atonement has never been as explicit or about score-keeping - he's more about just doing good because it's good, rather than doing good to make up for evil. So I'm not sure if he thinks there's some balance he can tip where, if he does enough good, he escapes hell. Also, I'm not sure Spike would see becoming human as starting over, any more than getting his soul made him a new person.

[elisi]

Coming in late, but with a few points! :)

Re. the shashu, then it is stated (in 'Destiny' specifically) that the recipient of the shanshu will have his past wiped clean, so it's not just becoming human, it is getting a second chance, literally.

About the hellbound thing, then it is because they're *souled* vampires. (Pavayne: Beginning to understand, aren't you? The soul that blesses you... damns you to suffering forever.) Normal vampires go *poof* and that's it. But because of their souls Spike and Angel are destined for hell. It is *ridiculously* unfair, but those are the rules of the 'verse.

(Will be back later and respond to the post proper. It's wonderful!)