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December 16, 2019 - January 2, 2020
Human life is like walking into a movie halfway through, and having to walk out again two minutes later. You’ll have no idea what’s going on when you walk in. And chances are, just as you begin to get a clue, you’ll be kicked out. So unless you are lucky enough to walk in during a scene that is satisfying without any longer narrative context (think sex or violence), your ability to derive satisfaction from your two-minute glimpse will depend partly on your ability to construct meaning out of it.
There is a key distinction between pretend and literal immortality seekers. The former want to experience more in order to extract more meaning, which means vicarious, non-participatory experience is valuable on its own. Direct experience is just a bonus, except where it is necessary for extracting any meaning they decide is essential. The latter want to experience more because being alive itself is a valuable state to them. They prefer being alive to being dead, and being young to being old. They want to live a full, direct and pleasurable life rather than a ghostly, indirect and meaningful
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