The lie of an afterlife

From a Twitter thread by George Monbiot

Of all the lies we tell ourselves, the most comforting and damaging is the lie of an afterlife. There is no means by which our minds, that emerge from the interaction of several complex systems (brain, body, physical world, social world), could persist after death.

Yet this lie persuades millions to wait for something better. To be meek, to conform, to accept the hand powerful people have dealt them, because life will be better after death. Yes, it can also encourage us to do good things. But so can philosophies not based on self-deception.

When our lives on Earth come to an end, so do the astonishing, improbable material conjunctions that permit the essence of us - the thing that makes me me and you you – to persist. There is no chance of an afterlife for any entity resembling our current selves.

The closest thing we know to immortality is the continuity of life on Earth. But this is threatened, among other causes, by the *substance dualism* embedded in Western religious and philosophical thought.

What is substance dualism? The idea that our minds or souls can and should be detached from the material world. The world is dross, and we should seek to escape or transcend it. It’s a long tradition in Indo-European thought, that pre-dates Decartes by millennia.

See @JeremyRLent’s The Patterning Instinct for a brilliant exposition of this history and how to escape it.

We disregard the living world, even treat it with contempt, because we believe we are better than it: our souls/minds/spirits are made of something higher and purer. But whatever you call the essence of you, it is an emergent property of material systems.

This might seem depressing to some people, but I find it liberating. I see it as one aspect of the beauty and wonder of the world. The very contingency of our existence is something to treasure.

This knowledge tells us to live and live well: to resist those who harm the lives of humans and non-humans, to cherish and protect planet Earth, to invest our lives with meaning and purpose, to work together for the good of all.

We don’t have to curry favour with imaginary beings. We needn't fear being sent to hell, as there is no entity that can be sent there. There are no angels, no devils, no ghosts. We are free from all that haunts us. Let’s live as if this is the only chance we have. Because it is.

Source:  Native ghosts and the supernatural