Thursday, February 8, 2024

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE

"Those who love us will miss us."  --Anonymous

“I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young, and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting.”
Bertrand Russell, What I Believe (1925)
Russell continues in the 1936 essay Do We Survive Death?
“What we regard as our mental life is bound up with brain structure and organized bodily energy. Therefore it is rational to suppose that mental life ceases when bodily life ceases. What constitutes a person is a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit. If, therefore, we are to believe that a person survives death, we must believe that the memories and habits which constitute the person will continue to be exhibited in a new set of occurrences. No one can prove that this will not happen. But it is easy to see that it is very unlikely.“

“To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.“  

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