What Happens When You Die?
I'm not talking about any kind of religious outcome of your soul, or the biological outcome of your carcass. I mean your consciousness.
Allow me to set aside the religious constructs of heaven and hell, reincarnation, and who goes where and for what. I'm considering how I'll perceive the afterlife, if there is one.
The way I see it, there's three possible outcomes: there is no perceivable afterlife, my consciousness remains in tact, or my consciousness is altered. Each has some plusses and some minuses.
The easy one is if there is no perceivable afterlife; then the contemplation doesn't really matter. In this I consider the "no afterlife at all" argument; if it's over, then it's over. I know physics has the law of the conservation of energy that says that nothing truly disappears, so the energy involved in maintaining my consciousness must go somewhere, but consider a failure of cohesion that spreads that energy into patterns that are useless for helping me maintain my memories and thought processes; if what makes me "me" just dissipates into space, would I care?
I also consider the argument that there's a separation of our present and future consciousness as we pass through our planes of existence--if one believed in reincarnation, as many do, but acknowledged that those who have reincarnated can't remember their previous incarnation, then that, too would fall in this category; if I can't remember, would it bother me?
If life ends, and I suddenly stop knowing about it, I think I'll be OK with it.
What if there is perception after death?
