immortality

**zelazny** · April 24th, 2003, 01:52 AM

Sorry, i just couldn't help but post here after that nostalgia thread in the acropolis.

But to remain ontopic, i have this little idea about immortality, not the physical type where you live on forever, or the type where you go to some heaven and stay there to play cards to infinity.
A lot of people try to be immortalized by leaving something to this world, something that will remember people of them, letting them 'be' by proxy, in a way.
But considering how all that is lost too it just seems a futile attempt to outrun something that has already catched up to you and finished.
Then it kind of struck me that whatever happens with your life, you are, in a way immortalized, your actions, your movements, your thoughts, the whole world around you may be 'lost' in the past, you can never go there again and touch it, but it will always have been, whatever you do, it will have happened at some time, and from then on, will always have happened. Sure you might not be able to go back in time to ressurect you, or to calculate back to simulate you, but the information, you is safely tucked away in the past, every infinitely small slice of it.

It's not really much something that helps, i mean, you die and you stay dead, but i find it a little consoling knowing that even though stuff doesn't have a reason, at least the universe is stuck with me, in a way, forever.

**SHATOUSHKA** · April 25th, 2003, 08:04 AM

don't you think that's a little deceiving to yourself?

i mean, we all have ways to establish the proxy, sure....
but its also the mindset (or fear of being finite)
that creates the mind-set in the first place.

why wish for that comfort at all?

(good topic, btw [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img] )

**zelazny** · April 25th, 2003, 08:38 PM

Well, we are finite , there's no use in being afraid of it, even though it's hard to get your ratio and your feelings to agree on that.
And the fun thing also is that when you reason from my philosophy that you become un-finite, in a way, always having been. i think it rocks, but on a purely.. eeh... mental level, i guess, there is absolutely no safety from finity there, but you will always have been finite, making it a sort of infinite finity. (which is a pretty cool sentence if i may say so)
[edit] (sorry if i can't go any deeper into your point, i'm not really awake at this point)

<font color="#6699ff" size="1">[ April 25, 2003 05:41 PM: Message edited by: zelazny ]</font>

**Hannibal** · April 28th, 2003, 01:27 PM

I'm not finite!

**zelazny** · May 8th, 2003, 06:54 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><table border="0" width="90%" bgcolor="#333333" cellspacing="1" cellpadding="0"><tr><td width="100%"><table border="0" width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="2" bgcolor="#FF9900"><tr><td width="100%" bgcolor="#25004f"><font size=2 face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by Cow Cud Is A Twin:
I'm not finite!</font></td></tr></table></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE>

post again in about a few thousand years, maybe you'll be more convincing then.

**zelazny** · May 12th, 2003, 01:13 AM

but at least there's some infinity in finiteness.
just like this thread, the server may crash, and lose it, but it will always have been, regardless of anyone knowing about it.

**Hannibal** · May 18th, 2003, 11:58 AM

Will it really "have been"
or will it still be, after all we cant' REALLY "undo" it.

**soulfilms** · May 21st, 2003, 12:01 AM

this reminds me of the proverbial tree in the forest.
(ie if a tree in the forest fall and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound).

it's a little different. but not so much.

i really like the original post zelany, it has an infinite hope. but in the big picture, it can only console ourselves in the living as everything is forgotten at some point.

i think this is why i like to remain as annonymous as possible. just because i exist does not give me the right to demand everyone notice me or pay tribute to me at death.