Who Will You Be When You No Longer Are?

Who Will You Be When You No Longer Are?

[Warning! There is a risk that as you read our notes you may think that we are suggesting that there is no "reason to live". That is not what we are saying at all! In fact we are saying the opposite, we have abundant hope that if you search your heart, mind, and soul, you will find in yourself the reason for living. If you are discouraged or depressed, please finish reading all the notes. Anyone who is, or becomes, seriously depressed should always seek immediate medical help. See Distress & Depression at the end of our notes.]

If in fact you do exercise meaningful freedom of choice, what good is it to be a unique human being if at your death you cease to exist? If you do not continue to exist in some form after death, what good are all the experiences, decisions, triumphs, defeats, all the moments of your life? If you do not survive the grave, if you return to the state of being that preceded your birth, then I suggest to you that nothing in fact does matter. While over the ages men and women have sought to perpetuate themselves through their children, their place in history, their role in society, and through intricate philosophical webs of existentialism and other essays on physical man's importance, the fact of physical death remains. If each generation's death means the end of those individuals, then we are all faced with an endless cycle of creation and destruction, the meaning of which, if any, is beyond comprehension.

If there is anything in life we can count on occurring without fail, it is physical death. The successful bank president, the champion athlete, the housewife, the famous, the unknown, every human being, you, die. While all acknowledge the certainty of their eventual demise, few think about death until they are faced with it. The very nature of human life denies death and shrouds it in the cloak of future events, events that are not yet real and do not need to be dealt with in the present. Living is too important and time consuming to be concerned with mortality. The fact that you are moving steadily toward your death is most likely, and literally, to be the last thing on your mind.

Observing the inevitable death of every creature that inhabits the earth, we may have a recurrent feeling that death is the end. On the other hand, it is virtually inconceivable to us that all we are, all we have been, all we will be, will be rendered void in that moment of death. It goes against human nature to visualize the effective destruction of our past, present, and future, which accompanies death without existence beyond death. Yet if each human being does cease to exist, then all human beings are, or in the case of generations yet unborn will be, waiting their turn to cease existing. If each and every human being ceases to be, then the feeling of continuity that pervades the human race is false (please remember we do not believe that life is in fact destroyed by physical death).

In their arguments for humanism, existentialism, etc., philosophers have spent lifetimes trying to construct a difference between the apparent continuity of humankind, and the periodic death of individual humans. Most of us think of our ancestors as a link to the past, and our children as a link to the future, yet if we do not survive the grave each generation dies an isolated death that mocks any assertion that humankind has a continuing existence apart from its individual members. If each person's death results in their no longer existing, then no manner of historical recording, social progression, or other remembrance in the minds of those whose time to die is yet to come, can in any way affect, preserve, or make any difference whatsoever to those who no longer are. No one will survive to remember. If each of us ceases to be, then your life has no meaning and your choices make no difference.

This is a very difficult conclusion to accept, it goes against our intuitive feelings about human life, and against our assumptions that individual physical lives have meaning and value. Yet if we are little more than doomed animals, our intuitive feeling of meaning and value would not be surprising. From the very beginning, to assure survival of any species, evolution would certainly have instilled in living creatures the feeling that there is a reason for them to exist, a reason for them to crawl out of the ocean and build cities. If there is no life after death, and our lives are in fact consumed by "nothing", it is no wonder that our genetic heritage argues so strongly against that possibility.

Think about it for awhile. If each person's consciousness is the product of their physical brain, then individual physical consciousness exists only during that person’s physical life on earth. If each of our physical lives proceeds from birth to death, then the consequence of each person's death necessarily follows their death. Who can be affected by that death? Certainly those who survive may be affected, but here is the "problem", the death cannot be of any consequence to the purely physical human being who no longer exists. The moment before the death of a human being it can be said that their impending death affects them, but the very moment after the person dies, he or she is no longer around to be affected!

Cause and effect, action and consequence, occur in a fixed order, the former always "preceding" the latter. Let us assume, for example, that a comet hits the Earth and all life is annihilated. It is very hard to accept, but if consciousness, our mind, is nothing more than a physical phenomena, if there is no non-physical life after death, the most logical conclusion is that the complete annihilation of humankind is of absolutely no consequence to humankind! While the words may sound bizarre and counter intuitive, in fact they are not. The moment after the total destruction of humankind there is no humankind left to be affected. Indeed, there is no humankind around that is conscious of the fact that the comet struck the earth!

The same logic applies to the history of individuals not visited by a catastrophic event. If you believe that each human being is nothing more than an individual physical entity, and therefore that there is no life after death, then at the time of their death each human being experiences the identical individual annihilation that all humankind would experience together if the earth was "destroyed" by a comet. If a human being named Bill dies at 12:00 noon, and there is no life after death, at 12:01 Bill is not "around" to be affected by his death. After 12:00 noon you could search the entire universe for Bill and you would not find him. If there is no life after death, the very moment after the event known as Bill's death, Bill no longer exists, and Bill cannot be affected by anything, including his death.

The logic goes even further. If you do not believe that human consciousness continues to exist after physical death, then death not only annihilates each individual's present and future, but also annihilates their past. Most people would agree that for an object to have a present and a future the object must exist. Yet many would make the distinction that while an object cannot have a present and a future if it does not exist, it somehow can have a past. It is clear that the present and future of an object are bound to the existence of the object, but so to is the object's past.

The problem lies in the use of the words past, present, and future both to describe that which is part of an object (a "past" that belongs to the object, like a person’s memories that “belong” to the living individual from birth to death), and to describe the existence of the person from a third party's view (a “past” which is a chronological description of a life, like a photo album containing pictures of an individual who has died).

It is a misconception to equate the fact that there is a "history" of all beings or objects that is set in the "past", with the statement that a being or object that no longer exists has a "past". The first idea simply says that the being or object existed over a finite period that is apparent to those who currently exist. The second idea is different, there is a “history” set in the past that is the sum of all lifetimes, but a person who no longer exists has no “past” that is unique to and dependent on their existence. A person who has died has no physical past, present, or future for the simple reason that the person no longer exists.

Admittedly, our conclusions about physical death are totally opposite to our "common sense" understanding of life. There are many arguments that purport to counter this logic, including assertions that a person's life before physical death has “existential” meaning in and of itself. Yet all of the humanistic arguments are based on the biophysics of existence before physical death. They are set in the time before death, within the causal sequence of events that precede death. We believe that none of the arguments adequately address the period after death (perhaps with the possible exception suggested by modern physics that is discussed below), and therefore none answer the question of how a person who no longer exists can have a present, or a future, or a past?

If death is the end of your existence, should you be frightened by the certainty of your destruction? If indeed you cease to exist, you need not fear death, for after your death you will feel neither pain, nor pleasure, nor peace, nor torment. "You" will no longer exist, therefore "you" will feel nothing. The resulting void is just that, a complete and total void. There is nothing to fear, for there will be no one to experience anything negative. There is nothing to look forward to, for there will be no one to experience anything positive. The only way you can visualize what is usually called a "nihilistic" death is to picture yourself after death as being in the same state you were in before birth (of course you were not really in any state at all). Such a fate would leave nothing to be feared.

Philosophers often speak of the void that would follow physical death without life after death as the abyss, the unknown, the approaching void, etc. All of these suggest that we are on a journey to a "place" which lies at the end of our physical lifetimes. If on our death we cease to exist, this idea that we are traveling to our ultimate destiny is false. We are not traveling to an abyss, the void, or the unknown, for these words suggest that we are moving toward something. I recognize the seeming absurdity of the language, yet if on our death we cease to exist, then "nothing" totally consumes us.

This is the heart of the problem, we cannot in any way whatsoever understand or visualize "nothing". When we think about “nothing", we turn it into “something” that can be thought about. The moment we attempt to comprehend or visualize "nothing", we interject something into "nothing", preventing us from reaching our goal. The only way we can answer the question "what is nothing?" is to answer it by not asking it, for if we ask the question we destroy the answer.

What about the fact that modern physics suggests that the physical existence of each human being somehow persists in space-time in the form of an individual's "worldline”. Worldlines contain every sequential event in a human being's life from birth to death. Classical interpretations often say that a human being is his or her entire worldline, but they do not really explain what is meant by this. They almost universally conclude that each event in a human being's life exists as an event in space-time, so that if we could observe the point on a worldline that is the tenth birthday of someone who is now eleven years old, we would see that person experiencing their tenth birthday. We would not see a "copy", or a "repeat", of the particular day, we would see the person's tenth birthday as it is occurring, period!

The interpretations tell us that each individual exists as discrete human consciousness in the billions of events located at every point along that individual's worldline. We might want to say that I am the "sum" of all the points, yet the assertion that a human being is his or her entire worldline, from birth to death, does not appear to be consistent with the general consensus that every event along a worldline has a singular existence that cannot be preferred over any other event on that worldline.

Some physicists describe the physical reality of multiple events along a single worldline by saying that there are many "now's", others say there are billions of approximate "isomorphs" of "me", many claim there are billions of other worlds in which various versions of "me" coexist, etc. It seems reasonable to conclude that modern physics tells us that literally billions of discrete, very real, versions of each of us occupy space-time. We might seek comfort in the existence of what appear to be permanent physical worldlines, yet all of the theories seem to lead us to the same metaphysical conclusion. If you do not have a single physical existence located somewhere on your worldline, your life has no meaning and your choices make no difference to “you”, simply because there is no single physical "you" that exists after physical death.

While we believe that Einstein and Minkowski’s theorems about spacetime are right, we do not believe that the current interpretations of the theories explain what the math actually tells us about our physical consciousness. We believe that Einstein’s relativity accommodates our intuitive feelings that we can’t go backward or forward in time by requiring human beings to pass through, to sequentially experience, each event on their worldlines. We think that modern relativitistic and quantum physics provide a mechanism whereby human beings do not exist, exist, do not exist at each point on their worldline. From what we know, whether there is no single “you” in spacetime, or there is a single “you” that moves along your worldline from past to present, we conclude that science offers us little or no hope of a permanent physical consciousness.

There is another possibility, that the intuitive feeling human beings have that their physical past cannot change or be lost is based on some real, yet unknown, physical model of our universe. For example, virtually everyone is certain that if they are eleven years old now they have already experienced their tenth year of life, and nothing can take from them the past experience of being ten years old. The intuitive feeling is very strong that our physical life makes a positive or negative contribution to human existence, and that our physical life is a permanent part of the physical universe. Perhaps there is some single physical consciousness that incorporates all of the events along our worldline, and that preserves our physical past, present, and future. We cannot rule out this possibility, if for no other reason than the fact that it is theoretically impossible to prove a negative.

The possibility that we have a permanent physical consciousness seems to require the existence of a physical consciousness that is not bound to events on a worldline. Yet it seems intuitively true that if consciousness of past events can be lost when memories fade in old age or are damaged when we suffer brain injuries or strokes, then physical consciousness has not incorporated those past events into a permanent singular “me”. In fact, every night between dreams we lose touch with our memories as we sleep. Einstein only briefly addressed physical (not non-physical) existence when he said “An individual who should survive his physical death is also beyond my comprehension, ….”

I can visualize and accept a “non-physical consciousness” that survives physical death, yet I am unable to have any confidence in the existence of a singular “physical consciousness” that survives the physical death of a human being. I may be wrong, yet I can say that after many years of thought I am convinced that any attempt to construct a model of permanent physical consciousness does far more damage to the centuries of accumulated scientific knowledge, than does the acceptance of the possibility that a permanent non-physical consciousness may exist.

A moment's comment on those who believe they may be able to physically perpetuate themselves through cryogenics, cloning, etc. Our universe will eventually return to a state of uniformly high entropy, so that the cosmos will become a hostile environment in which physical life cannot be sustained. While a physical end to all biologic creatures may seem absurdly far away, your great, great, great (to the 100th. power), grand-clone would find it frightfully real when the time came for their physical demise, a distant time from now which like all imaginable time is but a second in eternity.

What should our response be to all of this? We strongly believe that there is absolutely no reason not to live for the possibility that life has meaning and value. We think we are right about the transitory nature of physical consciousness, but we may be wrong. If our conclusions are wrong, perhaps we do in fact have a physical consciousness that survives physical death. If we are wrong, we may have a perpetual physical existence that gives meaning and value to our physical lives, even if there is no non-physical life after death. We will not pursue this possibility, yet you should recognize that it exists.

If we are right, if our physical consciousness does not survive physical death, our death may mark the end of our existence. Yet if our physical consciousness dies, it is still quite possible that we will not face a "nihilistic" death. Perhaps we have a non-physical consciousness that survives physical death, and that gives meaning and value to our lives. We will consider this possibility in more detail as we continue our search for a reason for living.

Beyond the human desire for meaning in life, we would suggest that the logical consequences of what philosophers call a nihilistic death, "require" the search for alternatives to nihilism. Those who believe that the nihilistic void is approaching are, by the very nature of their humanity, required to search for something to believe in other than the void. While it appears to be impossible to scientifically prove that life has meaning and value, it is equally impossible to prove that life has no meaning and value. No matter what the person who believes that life is meaningless may believe to be true at any particular time in their life, the possibility always exists that he or she may eventually find true meaning and value in their life.

There is no reason to be a "nihilist", no reason to believe that life ends at death. If nihilism is correct, if life does end at death, it makes no difference whatsoever if we believe it is correct, or not. If we believe nihilism is correct, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would follow death. If we believe nihilism is not correct, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would follow death. If we do not believe anything at all about nihilism, and it is correct, that does not alter the void that would follow death. Yet if nihilism is not correct, belief and/or faith in that which offers a reason for living may well be essential to our existence. If because we believe nihilism is correct we accept the void, and we are wrong, then we have doomed ourselves. If we recognize that the humanistic belief that there is no life after death leads to the nihilistic conclusion that the "void" will consume past, present, and future, then to escape the quicksand of nihilistic time we must search for alternatives that provide a reason for living.

It is very important to recognize that nihilism can never lead to suicide, for nihilism tells us that if we do in fact live in a nihilistic world, nothing that happens in our lives, no matter how "badly" we may feel about it at the time, has any "real" consequence at all. It tells us that what we perceive to be the very worst events in our lives are no better, or worse, than any other events. I am absolutely convinced that the philosophical neutrality that nihilism demands, means that nihilism never suggests or supports suicide as an option for any human being.

Furthermore, since it is absolutely clear that we may not live in a nihilistic world, and that nihilism may be wrong, there can never be any reason to terminate our life, risk the negative consequences, and abandon the possible positive consequences of living a meaningful life. We are a small part of the whole. Unless the answer is revealed to us by the whole, we can never know during our physical lives what really happens when our physical life ends. Life may have physical or non-physical meaning and value that we do not, and perhaps cannot until our physical death, recognize and understand.

There is no reason at all to reject the possibility that each of us has some kind of permanent physical or non-physical consciousness. There is absolutely no logical reason whatsoever to reject the possibility that nihilism may be false! There is no reason whatsoever not to search for an alternative to nihilism, to explore the possibility of a permanent physical or non-physical consciousness, to search for a reason for living. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever not to live for the possibility, however remote you may believe it to be, that life has meaning and value