Sanctuary

October 24, 2024

There is no afterlife. You are but an amalgamation of cells and microbes; neurons firing, synapses blinking, thoughts dictated by hormonal juices. Some carbon and some hydrogen arranged in some manner that results in your every emotion. Your every perception prescribed by some electric signal. Once you die, none of it is here for you.

To me, consciousness is to be cognizant of time’s passage. This is an inherent weakness in our perceptive capabilities but one we—at least many of us—cannot overcome, for we consume entropy in existing. And thus, death is sleep forever, with no consciousness, not aware of time, unaware of self, not even that you are in slumber. The notion of an afterlife is as old as stick and stone, so why should it still exist other than being a falsified consolation, or a foolish sanctuary for those who fear death? (granted, sticks and stones are still very useful.)

To disparage the afterlife as an old-fashioned masturbatory indulgence, however, is not what I wish say; because when we sleep, we dream. When we dream, it’s the most marvelous thing. Better than any drug is the collective screaming of a hundred million neurons, each fighting for its life, viscerally sending any and every signal it can, begging for oxygen as it twists from living cell to protein matter. There is no self-regulation. No concern for permanent damage. In your frontal lobe, critical thinking debauches into an enigmatic hash the best cryptographers could not solve. Homeostatic mechanisms resort to despotic control, every single receptor overflowing with every single chemical. And your memories — as the biological archive fails to sustain itself, every page becomes unwound, each fighting to be read at once, chronology made irrelevant. Is this not God?