Thursday, February 13, 2014

I am Immortal. And so are you

Or so we are quite likely hardwired to believe.
By examining children's ideas about "prelife," the time before conception, researchers found results which suggest that our bias toward immortality is a part of human intuition that naturally emerges early in life. And the part of us that is eternal, we believe, is not our skills or ability to reason, but rather our hopes, desires and emotions.
I find this reasonable. We are hardwired for immortality or a belief in something outside ourselves. Why? It is a survival mechanism. Just think, if one knows one is going to die for ever and ever, a sense of ennui might set in and debilitate one's contribution to food gathering and procreation. Immortality gives hope. Hence the stress on hope and such. In fact, it may be the case that those without the capacity to believe in something else have been weeded out over the millenia.

Or maybe not. Immortality: A clock that never ticks.

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