An excerpt from your original...
Either we persist as individuals, with a life history and memories, or we do not. If we do not, then most of the things we care about are transient and futile:
This statement from you seems consistent with that...
Yes, the only solution is eternal life. What that would be like precisely, I cannot say. I am merely laying bare alternatives, as I see them. There is room for doubt, and therefore disquietude.
Your second remark seems to have tempered the "futile" of your original post, a bit. In any case, my goal is to understand.
Your reliance on eternal life as the only solution to this sense of disquietude or futility appears unequivocal. But I confess that it puzzles me.
Apparently, a Higher Purpose would not be sufficient to relieve this apprehension--not unless that Higher Purpose included eternal life. I draw from this that it is eternal life that informs meaning for you, and not purpose itself. So that even should you develop a certainty today (perhaps a private visit), that you are part of a Higher Purpose, and that you will live 716 trillion years, at which time the Higher Power is going to use other stones in his sling shot--even under this circumstance in which you are knowingly serving a Higher Purpose, it is neither the fact of purpose nor the nature of that purpose, but simply the certainty of eternal life upon which the question of futility rests...and thus your statement: "Either we persist as individuals, with a life history and memories, or we do not. If we do not, then most of the things we care about are transient and futile".
Can life be free from disquietude, then...only so long as it is believed (without doubt), to be capable of eternal endurance? Also, do you have that certainty now? Do you think anyone does? And is there a philosophical name for this point of view that you are espousing as the necessary one for those without certainty? |
