More death stuff

Reflecting on the Boss and Q's dialogue from the last post(!) causes me to think about notions of the after life. I don't really hold the Christian Heaven and Hell notion i.e. that at death we go to Heaven or Hell according to our behaviour on earth and our reaction to it in terms of remorse, repentance etc. I am all for us recognising our mistakes - 'sins' if you like and doing something about it (That's a whole other post) but I feel very drawn to Carl Jung idea expressed in his autobiography 'Memories Dreams Reflections' that if there is an after life it is probably rather like this one. And if there isn't there is little we can do about it!

So I don't want to wait for a better life in the after life and I am not convinced that the quality of my afterlife if I have one will be enhanced by how I behave now. How I behave now affects me immediately. So the task becomes how to achieve something closer to heaven on earth right now and not wait for 'Pie in the sky' or the final stage of Communism or for everybody to complete their therapy :)!

I made a connection between this and ethics on the bike but I can't quite recall the link but lets pretend for now the link has been made! (Goodness that's very unphilosophical but still this is a blog not a treatise) I think it was about that it is not about the after life it's about now about living today as good as I can. So my ethical actions are not to store brownie points for the future after life but are for now. I aim to act good because that makes me feel good. Rather like Bertrand Russell talking about the value of 'enlightened self interest' which I guess could equate to pragmatism? (For example if we selfishly wreck the planet we all lose out, if we have huge inequalities then we end up with a broken society, with a high crime rate and none of us feeling safe etc.)

It is more than that for me. I like the US Constitution saying that all men are created equal and that this is a self evident truth. To me that is true even if I and we don't act on it sufficiently. To me it is a spiritual truth also a humanistic truth. So equality for all races, genders, sexual orientation. It's obvious and the better people in our world know this and act on it. So how can any truly spiritually or religiously developed people not agree? Why are not Christians Muslims, Buddhists supporting Gay rights, women and gay bishops etc? More importantly in some ways why isn't the religious leaderships showing such support?

Enough!


Bill on bike