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

Positive thinking will make you live longer. But making you immortal is quite a big step. That´s more a job for gene technology and computers. And I really doubt that levitating the white house

Immortality, IMO, is neither possible nor desirable. Our souls may exist for ever, but in a continual state of change and movement - they don't stay in this life for ever. That'd be boring.

Monica managed to get it up.
It didn't stay up long but she got it up. And she was using very little mental power.

LOL MaW. I would have beaten ya to the post but I paused to delete a second paragraph I had written about 'immortality being a thing not to be desired'.

And who was Monica? And did it perhaps happen just as everybody accidently looked away?

Monica was an intern for the President before George the second.

Well this conversation has not only gone off topic it's gone into the toilet as well.
'unsubscribe'

Better get it back on topic then. Yeh I believe in death after life.

Reality as belief? An interesting concept. Think it'll catch on?

Death after life... well that's fairly easy to believe in really. I don't think whatever comes after life could be in any way described as more life... otherwise it wouldn't be after life, would it? It'd just sort of be tacked on to the end.

After life comes "death".
And after death....? Nothing? Re-incarnation? An eternity in heavenly bliss or hellish torment?
Hmmmm, I've put this thread back to square one.
Perhaps that's the key? Living the same life over and over again...what do you call that? Karma?

Incredible bad luck?

Depends if you're a lottery winner or married to one...

J B Priestly had it that suicides are caught in the loop of living the same life over and over again. They can only escape the loop by not commiting suicide.

I heard of a lottery winner {not a fortune, but 6 figure...enough!} who upped & left her partner while he was away.
She left him the house & everything in it.
Apparently has no-one else.
Makes you wonder how many people stay with people they don't want to be with out of necessity/circumstance...
Doesn't it?

Not necessarily ..but under the circumstances..

I hesitate to put a figure on it or even a percentage, lest those lucky, wealthy or young enough to still be in love might think me a cynic. So let me just say 'most'.
Or at least it used to be. Now that women are more finacially independent, divorces and separations are at record levels, more accurately reflecting the reality that life ..is change.

But still people stay together out of fear, {of being lonely}; financial, practical...
I know more unhappy couples than happy ones.
When my friends tell me they'd "leave their partner if they won the lottery" I think "what a waste of your life!" How can people live with someone they *don't* love?
I asked that question to a good friend and he replied that it was better then being alone.
But at least alone you stand more of a chance of meeting someone nice!
Don't you?
Says she, in her 16th year of being single

Well that's still better than 29! To get back to the point: I think the idea of a looping life is interesting. Consider the idea of alternative or parallel universes - there's supposed to be a reality that represents everything that could possibly happen. Now this is only a hypothesis but there are scientists who take it seriously. Now suppose that after your death you got to live your life over again, but with a small variation... and so on and so on until at the end you've had a chance to do everything you could have possibly done. Like the movie Groundhog day, but for an entire life.

Yes 'Case ..back to the topic, thank you.

I have a notion that to begin to understand 'alternate' realities (of life or death) it is necessary to step outside of linear temporal concepts.
Time - the so-called 4th dimension - is seen, in our 3 dimensional world, as a series of nows - a long line of 'the present moments' - those already experienced called the past - those anticipated called the future.
But what if time were not linear?
I hesitate to suggest a moebius strip or celtic knot as a visual reference but perhaps a gaseous cloud would suffice. This allows me also to re-introduce my radical idea that 'reality' is merely what the majority agree it is, based on rigid 3 dimensional observations, mostly confirmed by sight and sound and therefor probably not a good point of observation.
Modern pharmaceuticals give us proof that the mind is most susceptable to chemical stimuli. Even the physical proofs of reality (sight, sound, touch) are ultimately converted to electro-chemical data by our brains. Shakespeare's 'congregation of vapours' is probably the most accurate description of the world.
If all time was a cloud of gaseous vapours, with aromatic signals that could be translated into 3 dimensional perceptions...
I fear I am losing the thread of my logic ..inevitable in a non-linear reality.
~jwf~ (his head in the clouds)