Not A Blog™

You have to presuppose an afterlife, otherwise this article won’t make sense.

The typical anti-materialistic pro-afterlife cliche goes, “you can’t take it with you.” The idea is, of course, that one should not spend life chasing material goods because when you’re dead, I’m dead, and everyone else is dead, our material goods will still be on Earth. In this way, people who are less well off (poor) can feel smugly superior to those who are more well off (rich), even though they’re jealous of the lifestyle and would adopt it in a heartbeat if given the chance.

One of my first instincts when encountering cliches is trying to come up with a counter-example. I try to find the exception that proves the r—I mean, I try to find the exception, because every rule has o—I mean I look for exceptions because… That’s the way I am. Even more fun is disproving cliches with other cliches. You might be thinking the same thing because, after all, great minds think alike. Except fools never differ. (There’s more here, if you’re so inclined.)

Anyway. Given that You Can’t Take It With You—is there anything you can? What could you take with you to the afterlife?

The funny thing about discussing afterlives in general is that as soon as you put the magnifying glass up to the idea, it disintigrates. It doesn’t matter what you believe regarding the afterlife, nobody actually knows anything about it. Nobody knows what happens after you die, although a few theories consistently hang around and muddy the waters.

The problem with talking about the afterlife is precisely the same problem with talking about religion: there are entirely too many versions to be able to address all variations in belief. That being said, I can reduce some of this confusion by addressing them in broad catagories to start.

No versions of the afterlife presume that one remembers things from previous lives because this contradicts experience. Some claim that past lives can manifest themselves, either under hypnosis, or in the mind of a young child, or what have you, but these are largely circumstantial, often contrictory, and generally not considered reliable. In general, people believe that we “start” when we’re born (or there-abouts) or they believe something which de facto is this. Reincarnation presupposes prior existences, but since you don’t remember it, this is like starting this life tabula rasa.

One of my more vivid, early memories was from a lesson in mathematics from third grade. At the time, I was attending a private Christian school. The teacher was introducing concepts of 1-dimensional geometry: lines, basically. He drew a line on the board with arrowheads on each end and said that was called a line. It goes on forever in both directions, but you can’t draw that because you’d run out of chalkboard, so you put little arrows on the ends. Then he drew two dots and connected them with a line segment—a line with definite start and end points. A few moments later, another kid in my class asked what it would be called if you had a point on one end and an arrow on the other. This, the teacher said, was called a ray. Shortly after that (I couldn’t remember if it was during the same lesson, or after class or when), I made the following connection: in terms of time, God is a line, we are rays, and animals are probably line segments.

That’s the second version of the afterlife I need to mention. It suggests that we started at some definite point, but won’t ever really die. Our physical bodies will die but the soul escapes that inconvenience.

The other way to consider an afterlife is that there isn’t one, or that there is one but it’s only for select people. This doesn’t really help the discussion any; like I said at the beginning, for this article we must suppose one.

Taking these together, the most appealing version would appear to be any where we continue our existence and remember this life. (I don’t have the space to go into detail about this, but even if your life completely sucks, I don’t think you’d want to forget all about it when you moved on to the afterlife. Then again, never is everyone going to agree on anything.) If this is the afterlife we suppose, it turns out there is something we can take with us: knowledge.

I can immediately think of two criticisms to this conclusion, so I’ll address them both.

First, even if we could take knowledge or information with us, it would probably be useless. The afterlife would—almost by definition—be a place where Earthly knowledge would just be moot. We’d see just how wrong we were, which means anything we “knew” that turned out to be incorrect would be worthless. Even if what we “knew” was right, it would still, in a sense, be worthless, except it would now be confirmed. I’ve heard the speculation that in the afterlife we’re granted with all knowledge of everything. Disregarding that this is against the laws of physics, it would also make the afterlife itself basically moot as there would be, quite literally, nothing left to do. You wouldn’t even be able to create everything, because you’d have some knowledge of every possible variation to every possible form of art, ever.

There’s also the idea that basically we just wouldn’t care. This is primarily a Christian point of view which assumes if you’re in Heaven, you’re having a great time chillin’ with God, and if you’re in Hell, you’re most decidedly not chillin’ with Satan (unless, of course, you were a treacherous soul). In any case, the knowledge would not be at the forefront of your mind because you’re either having a good time and therefore not needing to think, having a horrible time and therefore not being able to think. In neither case is the thinking happening, and so, neither are all those precious facts you spent your life learning doing any sort of good. I don’t really have anything to say to counter this except that you’re probably still going to be learning something. There’s only so much church some of us can take.

I’m going to be so presumptuous as to coin a “most appealing afterlife” scenario. This is most decidedly not the most appealing to everyone; there’s simply no such thing. But from my general sensing of the zeitgeist, I think this is probably the version of the afterlife that most people who believe in such things believe in.

The ideal afterlife has the following:

• It allows you to remember your life—and, by extension, other stuff.
• It is highly appealing, or at least not boring.
• You won’t end up knowing everything when you get there.

We can also toss in the assumption that the afterlife is eternal. Given these things, it almost goes without saying that people are going to be learning things in the afterlife. The most appealing version of the afterlife (to me), is one where I could essentially keep learning new things forever. It would almost be a requirement, because what else are you going to do for eternity? Sure, you have all eternity to learn things, but who doesn’t like to benefit with a head start? It makes sense, then, to learn stuff now.

There was a guy a long time ago who came up with a thing, which eventually ended up being called a “wager”, and it’s got his name, Blaise Pascal, attached to it. You may have heard of it. It goes like this: There’s either a God, or there’s not. If there’s not, no problem. You don’t get anything regardless of whether or not you believe in one. But if you don’t believe and there is a God, then you get eternal damnation or something else horrible. However, if you do believe in God and He does exist, you get eternal reward. Well, duh! The choice is clear: believe in God. Get Heaven.

Obviously Mr. Pascal’s wager doesn’t tell you in which god one is to believe, which is something of a snag, but beside my point. My point is that I can do this. Based on his principle and my ideal version of an afterlife, here’s my wager.

Stoltz’s Wager

“There either is an ideal afterlife (consisting of 1. allowing you to remember information, 2. not being boring, 3. you don’t know everything), or there’s not. If there is not an ideal afterlife, it doesn’t matter how much you know because you’ll either be totally dead, or the info will be pointless. But if this ideal afterlife does exist, then you benefit from knowing more when you get there. Furthermore, the more you know while on this Earth, the more it helps you here, as well. In sum: knowing more is always helpful, whether or not there’s an afterlife at all. Therefore, learn.”

-Ted