this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2025
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I would dearly love to believe that there is something other than oblivion waiting. However I know that my yearning for this doesn’t make it true, and that yearning is probably the source of the fairy tales everyone tells about this.
If I had proof that the afterlife existed and I faced either eternal joy or eternal suffering based on some dogma I had to obey…? Fuck that’s oppressive. Makes me feel like some cosmic kid’s action figure. What does my choice matter with that kind of coercion? Maybe oblivion isn’t so bad after all.
The only thing I really believe about the 'afterlife', or whatever you want to call it, is that what we observe as 'reality' is only the tip of the iceberg of actual reality. In practice, it's unknowable and therefore not worth worrying about. What's happening right now is the only truly knowable thing, and right now I need to get off my arse and go to work.
Yeah I’m not fool enough to call myself a gnostic atheist, and I do agree that there is much we don’t know. Recently I’ve thought a lot about what a narrow band of sensory experiences we rely on to perceive a vast and complex world around us. So I think what you say is true even in a very literal everyday kind of way. We barely have a pinhole to look at this universe through. Science is all about working around that so we can understand more.
Sadly, I would assume oblivion was no longer a choice at that point, but yeah, given the choice, reincarnation or oblivion for me, or I'mma at least ask them to let me see what hell's like before deciding.
Frankly I find heaven the greater mystery. I can imagine many forms of eternal suffering. But perfect bliss? That’s really not in our nature. I’m not sure there is any version of that where I would be “me” anymore.
Maybe it’s just hell or oblivion.
Heaven is spending eternity singing "glory, glory" to a narcissist. So it's just a form of hell.
Valhalla sounds OK, though: fight all day, drink and fuck all night, no negative consequences. Though I suppose there'd be a point at which it becomes boring. But it's not for eternity, since in the Norse world view, the whole world including the gods gets destroyed.
Exactly my thinking on the matter.