Forever is a really, really long time
A couple weeks ago, I went to an open house for a local temple. I live in Utah and I have to admit, the Mormons here are dedicated and devout to their religion. They often lead good, upstanding lives and I respect them for that. They are my friends and neighbors.
At the open house, we got to see their temple, a place built just for performing the rituals of their practice of religion. It was a beautiful building and everything was just so. Every room is purpose built for a particular ritual.
But at the very beginning of the tour, they showed us a video that describes the elements of their religion in some detail. The video described a beautiful life rich in ceremony and fellowship. I could almost feel myself slip into a world where I don't have to think anymore. I could just be like them and be good until I go to Heaven, forever.
That word that kept ringing in my head after watching that video, forever. "You'll live with your family in Heaven forever". "You'll be with your loved ones, even ancestors that you haven't met, forever." I'm not so sure I want anything forever.
To put this in perspective, I noticed recently that some scientists have come up with a rough estimate of when they think that the universe will end: 10139 years from now. That's 10, followed by 139 zeroes, not 10 * 139. Not even close. Every zero is like multiplying again by 10. Our tiny little brains are just not equipped to comprehend what that amount of time means. Here's an excerpt from an article I found at Gizmodo to provide some context for that mind boggling number:
The universe is around 10 billion, or 1010 years old. 10139 is a completely unfathomable number of years. If you could imagine the entire length of the universe from the Big Bang to now as a single day on Earth, 10139 years would still be... far longer than the current age of the universe. It’s more than the amount of time it would take to count every atom in the universe, if you had to wait from the Big Bang until now in between counting each atom. That number of years eludes any rational attempt to understand it (Which is probably why it sounds so close—our heads just short circuit and say, threat!!!). It is forever. (emphasis mine)
Back to that video I saw on what we'll do in Heaven and for how long. I heard the word forever in my head for days after that. As I was reflecting on that word, a key element of their religion, I considered the effort required to just be conscious. I wake, I write, I work, I talk with my wife, I play with my kids and care for them, then I sleep again. Over and over again.
Do I really want to be conscious, forever? I put that word in bold for a reason. We really have no clue just how long that is. I certainly don't. I do know it's a really, really long time - past, present and future.
And then I thought about how kids think. My kids are 5 and 3 years old. I'm 53. In their time scale, an hour is a long time. A day is too long to wait for ice cream, to go to the park, or to watch their favorite show on TV. A month to a kid is forever.
For me, a day is a blip. Weeks feel like days used to feel for me. I suppose that when I'm 95 and walking in the park with my wife, a month might feel like the passing of a day.
I used to work in a retirement home where the average age of the residents was 82 years. That's the average. I've met someone who was 102 years old there for her birthday. If you're an 82-year old guy living there, you're gold to the women. Most of the men are dead.
But I found something interesting there, at that retirement home. The happiest residents were walking every day and cracking jokes. When you're 82, having a sense of humor is reason enough to live while watching your body slowly wear out due to DNA replication errors, and lack of replacement of bone, cartilage and just, well, everything. If they weren't walking, they were in a bed in the 24/7 care facility and that isn't very fun. So the people who really wanted to live were walking every day and cracking jokes at the drop of a hat.
Now there was one building that housed people with mild to severe dementia. Yeah, I'm thinking of these people when I think of forever. There was one woman there that I used to talk to a lot. I can't remember her name anymore, but we can call her Linda. I'd tell her a story one day, and she wouldn't remember it the next. She didn't know what day it was because that didn't matter anymore. Every day was sort of a blur to her. Are we sure we really want to live forever?
There was one other aspect of this "Heaven" place that also caught my attention. Bliss. It was a state of constant bliss. So I'm going to be living with my relatives forever in Heaven. Do I still have free will? Do I get the interpersonal skills required to get along and make Heaven a really nice place to live, forever?
What if I still have free will, and I don't have the skills required to get along? Do I go somewhere else? Do I get training? Do I get a second chance?
I choose to be nice to other people not because I want to go to Heaven. I do so because I have peace in my life, on Earth, right now, because I treat people with respect and courtesy. I am not a good person in anticipation of Heaven. It is not a trade to me. I have no expectations of anything from God or anyone else. I just want to live in peace, so I err on the side of peace, without further expectations.
So I have to wonder about the motivation of the people who live under this idea of being good to go to Heaven. Are they nice to me because they want to be nice, or are they nice to me because they live under the threat of going somewhere other than Heaven when they die? What if they don't have the interpersonal skills, but just work from memory, following a script? Is that intimacy?
Somehow, that doesn't seem like Heaven. And what I'm saying here, isn't a criticism of religion. If religion is used to get to know one's creator, a god, or simply to get spiritual, I'm fine with that. I object to religion as a means of social control. I would rather live in a society where people learn the skills required to get along and experience pleasure in exercising those skills, than to live in a society where everyone feels like they must be good or they will go to some other place than Heaven, regardless of their capacity to do good. Forever.
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Great Post, found you in my feed so someone re-steemed you.
I am constantly surprised at just how many people require a strong authority figure head to feel safe and secure. To have rules and laws with severe punishments for small transgressions. It seems to be everywhere. In religion in politics in business. And it is all fear based. I like to be kind because it makes me feel good. Those off days if I am grumpy and jump to a conclusion on some matter or person, I feel awful afterwards, I always regret that! So we learn, If we want to feel good, to be at peace, then we are kind to others. This to me, is especially rewarding in nature, with animals. This to me is Living in Love, rather than Living in Fear.
Thanks for the post, it sparked some good thoughts in me!
If you do it in the expectation of a reward, it is not love. Each religion has a different story. They all have the same moral teaching. They all involve the same "Higher Power". (See below.) The purpose of the story is to put "Higher Power" into human terms so that people can be "wholesomely connected" with Higher Power, which basically means that you see yourself as a part of something larger, from which you understand your purpose for living and your duty in any given situation.
Punishment and reward are a persistent theme in theology, across nearly all religions. I take a bit of exception to Buddhism on this point because Buddha made a sort of scientific inquiry across a range of experience. He knew wealth, tried asceticism and found something in the middle that worked for him. He was also very clear about how we are all connected. That's the higher power part.
What I find most interesting about religion (Abrahamic religion in particular), now that I'm thinking about it, is that it makes no serious inquiry into the source of "evil", or challenging behavior in kids and adults. "Evil" is a term used to ascribe a supernatural cause to challenging behavior in people. Rather than consider the possibility that challenging behavior in kids is a learned behavior taught by parents, the term "evil" is applied as an excuse to "beat the evil" out of the child.
This is why I've been sort of beating the drum about skills. Punishment and reward don't teach skills, they reinforce behavior. Teach the skills that people need to solve their problems and the challenging behavior goes away. No punishment, reward, or moral judgment is required.
The carrot/stick aspect of religious myth is universal because it works. Set aside the "population control" and other negative aspects and focus on the function of religion to help people live their daily lives. Religious myth has evolved to be effective across the spectrum of personal details, from rich, educated, and wise individuals to illiterate and desperately poor peasants to miserable inmates in prisons, hospitals, and asylums. In all of these varied contexts, religious myth enables people who are not wise and who do not have life experience to imitate wisdom by making wise choices.
I've just decided, moments ago, to suspend my involvement with all social media. I'll be checking in here occasionally, perhaps every 8 days or so. Regarding steemit and the STEEM blockchain, I'm skeptical regarding whether it will survive and whether it is suitable as a social media platform, so I'm going to take a "wait and see" posture to see how things develop over the next few months. Bye for now.
See you around later then.
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