Saturday 7 August 2004

how can you not believe in death

I dreamt last night that I died. I had some kind of heart attack, and simply started falling, thinking that the next thing I'll see will be... the next thing... It was strangely comforting, and I woke up disappointed. But I had a realisation that I do not believe in death.

How can you not believe in death?

In the same way you don't believe in rascism. Ideologically. I don't believe -- in spite of any evidence to the contrary -- that we will experience death. We can not be conscious of NOT being conscious. That would be a simple contradiction. When did you start being conscious? Is there a specific time? No, of course not. There was a gradual realisation of your existence. So for all intents you could have been alive for an infinite time before you began building specific recolections of your existence.

Perhaps death might fucntion in a similar way: how can you ever be conscious of that moment AFTER WHICH you stop being conscious? There will never be anything to, ahem, cross over into -- no point at which you, yourself, will be able to say: now I've died.

What will happen to our consciousness at that moment, when -- for the rest of the world -- it looks like we've died. Our consciousness wouldn't be able to reach that point, and what scares me is that we would possibly have to stay there, in that moment of recolection before death, for what would seem like ourselves as an eternity. We might end up having our own, private little afterlife, actually conscious-wise caught in a static limbo before the last possible moment where we would not be conscious anymore. (Time stopped, or at least slowed fractally.) Simply because our awareness would have no-where else to go.

All deathed up, and nowhere to go.

Also, China plays Japan tonight in the Asian Cup final. I'm hoping for riots and blood.

Also also: Blogger.com support confirmed certain countries are blocking access to blogger.com. which is why I now post via the handy post-via-email option.

I asked a Chinese person today whether he is concerned that his government doesn't want him to see certain things on the internet. He said no, because it has nothing to do with him.

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