Thinking, lately, about death. If there is no afterlife, then once I am dead that’s it. What follows is nothing. Why should I want to be remembered as a good man? I won’t be around to appreciate that. And if I have been an evil man, that won’t matter to me either. Since everything that exists in time will be, for me, non-existent, once I am dead, everything is utterly and absolutely meaningless.
I might accumulate happiness and pleasures and good memories and friends, but in the end they are like the material things—property, money, titles—that I must leave behind when I die.
The belief in death makes everything meaningless—unless I also believe in community. And community proposes, or perhaps more simply is a kind of afterlife: but an afterlife about us, not me. And if I can believe in community, then I don’t need the kind of personal afterlife that religions help us to fabricate.
To believe in community means that I have to be good enough to want to make better and happier the lives of those who follow me.
Of course, I will first have to believe in the good. Unless I believe in the good—absolutely—as the highest value—everything moral is absurd.
This is not a new thought, and it doesn’t belong to me. Our languages have been teaching this for several millennia. Community, good, and moral are all together words: words that teach togetherness. Thus my afterlife is our afterlife.
If there is what is usually called an afterlife—a continuance of personal existence beyond death—that will be a happy bonus. But more important and more urgent is the life that goes on in this world after my death and beyond my personal existence. I have to be good in this life—good enough to make better the lives of those who follow me.
If I believe in the good, I have no choice but to try to live in this way. A life dedicated to the good has no room for our usual greed.
Bert Hornback
Abonneren op:
Reacties posten (Atom)
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten