h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

... and have us all being purely spiritual beings.

An end to social disharmony and economic oppression: no physiological needs, therefore no possibility of being deprived of physiological needs, therefore no possibility of oppression.

An end to environmental degradation: no requirement for resource use, therefore no overuse, leaving the environment healthy for the corporeal beings who remain.

No more old age, disease, suffering and death, and no more limitations; just endless freedom to traverse the universe as we wish.

Bod

No more children...no more sex...no more growing up and growing older..no more paddling in the sea...no more smells of baking...no more hugs...no more diversity.

Amen.

Some might say that that has already occured...

It's our form that makes us what we are - good and bad - without that we'd be nothing. You would never again be able to appreciate beauty, love, joy, pain or anything.

If we had to make a change, what about being able to communicate with other animals? If we were able to talk to the other creatures in the world, perhaps we'd be a little more considerate?

AHEM! CONTROVERSIAL THEORY ALERT!

Is it possible that we already share our world with non-corporeal beings, who might disrupt our electronic equipment or occasionally be sensed directly by us?

This would explain gremlins and ghosts, behind which there clearly has to be some explanation! (Other than bonkers, attention-seeking pathological liars of course)

I expound this because I'm bored with my and theories for the explanation of ghosts. BAH!

"It's our form that makes us what we are - good and bad - without that we'd be nothing. You would never again be able to appreciate beauty, love, joy, pain or anything."

Why not? Are love and joy not spiritual qualities which can be appreciated independently of physical form? Or do you take the materialist view that there is no separate "spirit"?

And how are you defining beauty?

"If we had to make a change, what about being able to communicate with other animals? If we were able to talk to the other creatures in the world, perhaps we'd be a little more considerate?"

When Europeans learned how to communicate with Africans they chose to enslave them ...

Bod

"Is it possible that we already share our world with non-corporeal beings, who might disrupt our electronic equipment or occasionally be sensed directly by us?"

Yes. And most of them live in my PC!

Hmm, I really doubt it's so easy to separate the soul and the body. But yeah, I'd think that would be an interesting route for humanity.

Precisely, if we eliminate human beings and have just spiritual forms then yes, we would eliminate pain and most problems but we would also leave behind all the things that we enjoy and are able to do as humans.

I think that it wouldn't work, besides, I think that it is pretty impossible to do that anyway.

Hi Bod,
it would depend on your definition of spirit of course, but if by spirit, you mean a kind on non-tangible, eternal ghost type thing, then I have to admit to landing firmly on the materialist side of the fence. I've got my reasons, which I wont go into here.

Love and joy are entirely dependant on physical form, they are generated after all by a physical device, our minds. And my definition of beauty is a subjective one - 'something that causes feelings of awe, inspiration and fascination in the observer' eyes and beholders come to mind - to link it back to the original topic, how can you have subjectivity if you are at one with the universe?

Can there be such a thing as objective beauty? - if there is, can you write down an objective, scientific formula for it, we could patent it and make millions!!

As for the European/African business - it was only after we (I'm a European) started listening to them that we began the process of abolishing the whole sorry process - while we still mistreat silent animals (not to mention the unborn) with a vengence.

Good points.

I think that millions ARE being made by persuading peopole that there is a formula for beauty - it's what the cosmetic industry relies on, innit?

I wonder if we could still appreciate subjective beauty without having a physical form? Apparently there was a recent BBC documentary about Near Death Experiences in which a woman who was medically dead (no brain stem activity) was able to observe and recall details of actions and speech by the medical team working on her at that time, as if viewed from the ceiling.

Opinions?

Bod

Thanks, sorry to push this topic - I know these types of conversations can become heated and dangerous, but at the same time, it's also a highly interesting one. Spirituality has a special fascination for me, but first the beauty point...

Millions are also spent persuading people that there's a formula for beauty - if one existed already, there wouldn't be such a thing as the cosmetics or even the advertising industry.

The near-death-experience-lady had a wealth of experience to draw on and so her experience must have been coloured by some form of subjectivity (which is by no means a bad thing). If we want to decide whether experience shapes 'spirit' then a more pertinent question might be to wonder what kind of spiritual/emotional/intellecual experiences an unborn child might have. And if we're talking about developing mammals, what kind of experience does an unborn cat/mouse/octopus have?

This is the problem that arises when I try to imagine that people may exhibit some form of spiritual entity - where does it come from? Do animals (who seem to have much more in common than we give them credit for) share the same spiritual assets? And if animals do (and I don't see why they should be excluded) then do we include all of them? Dogs, cats, mice, ants? Amoeba? I guess it's that old question, (slightly paraphrased) "Where do dogs go when they die?"

However, if there is a spiritual dimension to life (which I still think remains a highly debatable question), then it seems to me that it must be developed through experience - and we can only experience anything if we have a physical form to do it in. Isn't the journey through life more important than the goal? Or is the journey indeed the goal itself?

yo.

spiritual wave-like beings permeating Life via brainwave patterns working while interfearing with eachother. Isn't that beauty?
'Course the overstressed heated-up burnt-out creatures of us would degenerate the rest of the world in a jiffy, and some zillion american kids would [judging from the (..was it NationalGeographic?) national surveys] make the entire human population loose track of its own geographical position [alright, as would the French] along with a bunch of other, less wonderful facets of mindlife, but I'm game.
Plus we wouldn't have to spend as much capacity on the peripheral nervous system and could gererate all thought into just Being.

gosh that sounds depressig.
I'll keep my mascara, sex and boobs anytime.