OK, clarification needed. When you say that we have unlimited time to spend but we can only spend it doing one thing, do you mean that we have to do only this one thing for the rest of eternity? Because that sounds like a pretty good definition of hell.
Take care of my garden, or to paraphrase WS, live.
Suho is right in that the question needs clarification, but I would choose one option
I can enjoy fully - because my passage time here is temporary.
One option can be : code, or software design. It can be : travel. It can be : hacky sack or yoyo.
It can be : whatever makes you feel GOOD - and if feeling good requires some professional accomplishment
for you, then by all means do it. It if it is about seduction, go ahead.
If it doesn't impact the freedom and rights of your peers in a negative way, go ahead :
"living purposefully, respecting reality" - that is part of the psychological definition
of self esteem, found also in buddhic texts, and completely tied to the notion of happiness.
"Life is pain" and the only area in which you can really change something is yourself, thus,
a purposeful life is one made of improvements - not the socially shiney ones, no notion of ego here.
"Improvements" as whatever makes you feel full, for yourself, as opposed to full "of" yourself.
...And of course, had I won a couple of millions at a lottery, I'd feel incredibly
good about rewarding argo's tips.
I'm still waiting for clarification, but in the absence of that and assuming the worst (i.e., we can only do one thing for the rest of eternity), I have to say that I think WS has given the best answer so far.
I have given it some thought, though, and I think my answer would be very similar to WS's answer. In fact, it differs by only one letter: love.
OK, clarification needed. When you say that we have unlimited time to spend but we can only spend it doing one thing, do you mean that we have to do only this one thing for the rest of eternity?
Okay, clarification seems necessary. I mean that you get either:
1. Unlimited time between a moment and the next to do something (as much time as you wish/require/need to do that single thing), while no real time passes and you are not aging.
2. Unlimited clock-time where you will not age, or have to be interrupted for reasons such as money, to do some specific thing. Once you are finished, life will go on as if from this moment on.
This does not extend to people around you - if you choose the in-between-moments path, then you can consider people frozen in time for the duration. If you chose the clock-time path, then everybody around you will go about their business as usual, with aging and all.
quote: liorean said:
Okay, clarification seems necessary. I mean that you get either:
1. Unlimited time between a moment and the next to do something (as much time as you wish/require/need to do that single thing), while no real time passes and you are not aging.
2. Unlimited clock-time where you will not age, or have to be interrupted for reasons such as money, to do some specific thing. Once you are finished, life will go on as if from this moment on.
This does not extend to people around you - if you choose the in-between-moments path, then you can consider people frozen in time for the duration. If you chose the clock-time path, then everybody around you will go about their business as usual, with aging and all.
Eh, this is a far less interesting philosophical question, in my opinion. Since we have the option of stopping at any time, and we are not forced to do this thing, basically it boils down to asking "What is your favorite thing to do?" It's just dressed up in a weird construct, that's all.
I think it would be far more interesting to contemplate what it would be like to live in either of these time spaces. If time has literally stopped (as in the first option), and we are somehow outside of it, then technically we should not be able to interact with anything around us--since interaction happens in time (sorry Petskull, no cheerleaders for you). I'm not really sure that I get the second option, but apparently we can stop the aging process for ourselves while everyone else goes on aging. I'm trying to wrap my brain around this, and the only analogue I can come up with is faster-than-light travel. Far more interesting than what we would do with this time, I think, is how we would react to the consequences of the flow of time being changed in these ways.
Actually, sleeping isn't a bad idea, if time were to work the way liorean describes in his first option. Basically this would mean that you could stay awake as long as you wanted and then go to sleep for as long as you wanted without missing anything. To everyone else around you, it would appear as if you never slept. And since you wouldn't be able to interact with anyone or anything during the "frozen time," you might as well use it to do something that doesn't require any interaction whatsoever.
Hmm... I just thought of a problem, though. If everything and everyone around you is frozen (as they would be if time stopped), then wouldn't you die? Even the air would be frozen, and we wouldn't be able to move oxygen into our lungs. If you're going to extend this bubble of "time immunity" to the air around us, then wouldn't you have to include whatever is in that air, like people? There are just too many logical problems with this.
(Yes, I realize that it's a philosophical question and not a logical one--but I still think puzzling out the ramifications of such time warping is far more interesting than figuring out what to do with it. So I'm a nutter. Sue me.)
[Edit: Not that I have any objection to this thread being in the main forum, but this sort of thing is pretty much what the Philosophy and Other Silliness forum was made for. If anyone disagrees, feel free to move it back.]
Since I am a believer in Christ and the message of living in a heaven state forever unending. I would have to say that is where I would want to be. Though my limited mind cannot fathom what my heaven will be like since nothing on earth will resemble it, I am hoping with great interest to be there. Since time as I know it will have no affect on me, I would think it would be living in an instant never ceasing being totally love euphoric. Like when I have been so happy it makes me teary eyed; to stay in this state or when I first experienced romantic love and couldn't get off my cloud and never wanted to get off.
This would be a great state to be in where everything looked wonderful. For me, these are peeks of heaven when I have felt these emotions.
However, in my confined way of existing where time has an effect on me, my wish would be to be in a state where I could do and be anything I wanted. Travel all over the world and beyond to breathtaking galaxies, to civilizations past and future. For instance I wish I could of been at the foot of the cross, on the ship to the new World, at the shoot out at the OK corral, to live with the Native american indian tribes of history in a teepee with braids. Maybe for many years I could be a great dancer, singer, or painter or an infant all over again to start a new life but as a queen. Or as an eagle, to fly over many sites and wonders. I don't think I would ever be bored of what next to try since I will be all over the universe.
I hereby file a lawsuit against Suho for... One billion dollars [insert slimy with pinky finger raised to mouth like Dr. Evil], payable in black pills, for poo-pooing on liorean's thread and being a general stick in the mud. Nevermind the fact that he has a good point and I agree... After he makes payment, I'll sue myself and we'll be square.
--
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
My longer answer comes from reading all of the clarifications and discussion. I have to second jade's answer on this. When I first read this question the first thing that came to my mind was the times I've tried to wrap my brain around what heaven will be like. I don't believe there's any way for our human minds to fully comprehend true and eternal bliss but this question pokes at it.
If one of the options is to be caught in a moment of time here on earth I think it would be cool to be caught right at the peak of a climax... yes, that kind
The "highlander" option of living on as everything else ages actually sounds like a definition of hell to me. I believe C.S. Lewis suggested this as a possibility of what hell actually is in his book the Great Divorce.
posted 11-28-2007 03:13
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