ideal version of what happens after death

i can’t decide between these options without more detail. what kind of reincarnation, random or based on my karma or do i get to pick? if ghost, am i a self-aware ghost who can just float around doing whatever or am i bound to reenact my earthly traumas? which heaven, which hell, which moral system determines where i go? if i can just pick heaven that would be nice. i would like 1 ultra-hedonistic heaven, please, with music and flying and people i love and exquisite beauty all around me forever, etc.

the "what dreams may come" heaven is pretty neat, but the fact that people who commit suicide go to hell in that cosmology (because they don't realize they're dead, which makes no sense) is a bit fucked, to put it lightly

I see a lot of people watched the finale of The Good Place.

my thought as well

Do you merge back into the universe or into nothingness?

Since energy and matter are conserved, I project that whatever it is that my heavenly existence was grounded in would be conserved, too, just on the basis of analogical thinking, but if I no longer have have any consciousness of an individuality that seems like a kind of nothingness on a personal level. Since nothing of this sort is observable, it makes sense that one's language about it is imprecise.

You learn where you “fit into the universe” after you’ve lived your life (when it’s too late to change your life)?

I don't envision this as a report card or a chance for a do-over, more like a culmination. As a species we seem to have a strong desire to answer these questions about our place and purpose. We have imagined a large set of possible answers, but certainty escapes us. It would be nice to be able to ask questions of this sort in an afterlife and be provided with definitive answers.

Hope this helps you in your struggle to parse.

“nothing/you’re just gone” is the logical choice but it is also the root of my lifelong fear of dying

i’ve got it managed to the point where i dont have anxiety attacks that wake me up from my sleep anymore but there’s still a part of me that cant deal with the heaviness of non-existence

so i might have to be a cornball & vote heaven/hell purely for comfort reasons rather than practicality

Me too Veg. I can't face 'nothing, you're gone' but everything else is awful too I guess except an actual heaven that's actually awesome and then you can choose to switch off when you want.

heaven obviously, wtf at having to choose hell as well

The only reason I don't want to die is because I don't want to miss what happens next. So, I picked ghost.

I think reincarnation might be the best pick, actually. In some versions of Buddhism, you can be "re-born" as a ghost, or a god or demon in various heavens and hells. It covers most of the bases.

I want the ability to go anywhere at any time period and just follow anything that interests me. Go forward and see what happens to the people I leave behind. Bounce around the next American century and see if we fuck it up or not. Rubberneck on the outskirts of some major catastrophes. Go forward a million years and see if we evolve into giant pulsing brain creatures. Dive through Jupiter's atmosphere. Find out if Milton Berle's dick is as big as they say it was.

Then, when I run out of ideas, off to the eternal nothing.

Also, it might be nice to find out if I mattered at all.

in buddhism i like the bardo part more than the reincarnation part.

Yes, it must be a bit of a bring down after seeing the clear shining light of a thousand suns, only to be told "Join the queue for uterine re-entry, on your left mate".

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

All of the animals can talk and are dressed up for the occasion of my arrival in the afterlife.

you become Dominic Toretto

Makes sense. That franchise has already lasted an eternity.

i went with reincarnation. that's my ideal version.

heaven/hell - no. those are both game over in different ways 5)
reincarnation. play again. 1)
ghost. i guess you're just observing. i don't know what else i would do. hang out at ghostville. 2)
nothing/you're just gone 4) game over
other 2) newgame+ play the life you just had, with everything you learned along the way, starting at the beginning

play again, except as a different character

could be like playing as Luigi

or as the Start Menu, and you wait for eternity for a player to start the game

play again, but you jump twice as high and your legs spin wildly

lol if you wake up from death to a card that says "Congratulations! You unlocked Luigi!"

or as the Start Menu, and you wait for eternity for a player to start the game

oof that's brutal
the eternal spinny wheel

if I got reincarnated, I'd wanna be a tree or something.

not an animal, and def not a human being.

cos I"m afraid I'd come back as some fuckin' Toby Keith assed flag-waving motherfucker.

or maybe as Toby Keith.

what if you came back as a tree with a really bad itch

does the itch get relieved if someone carves their name in me

i think i'd be happy to be human, again. so many different ways to be human!

xp the itch never gets relieved

trees just learn to deal with it :(

my 6 year old boy is starting to become really sentient, he's so much like me and is at the age where he's starting to form life-defining memories, it's kind of fucking with my whole perception of the **gestures wildly** whole deal

are you going to share with him your ilxor username, so he can see what daddy hasbeen up to all this time

of course, it's how he refers to me

I went with reincarnation. that's my ideal version.

I was initially drawn to it, but if it’s infinite reincarnation that sounds overwhelming. My logic may be faulty, but if it’s infinite, ‘you’ will experience every possible experience it’s possible to have - which sounds too overwhelming.

So prefer “game over” on balance I think.

As long as I receive total consciousness on my deathbed, I'm good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X48G7Y0VWW4

There's this super-fun Japanese arcade game where you physically flip a table across a multitude of different on-screen scenarios in an attempt to wreak as much havoc as possible, and in one of these scenarios you are a ghost attending your own funeral and hurling the coffin at your bereaved and now utterly traumatized loved ones.

So that.

xps reincarnation doesn't seem overwhelming to me, even if it's endless, since you don't remember your previous lives. It's effectively the same thing as oblivion (though a hardline Buddhist might argue otherwise). Eternal bliss, damnation, or purgatory is a *much* more overwhelming prospect for me. Though being a ghost might be cool if I can travel freely to other planets and such...a "space ghost," if you will.

After many failed attempts to post something coherent itt - the incremental afterlife depicted in the final season of The Good Place as in the 'get it out of your system' hedonistic part upfront (regardless of any metaphysical paradox) before becoming beyond whatever defined you on the material plane has an obvious appeal.

As does being able to 'witness' anything that ever happened anywhere even just as a 'ghost'...both effectively some form of both heaven and hell in itself in addition to 'becoming God' by gaining all that knowledge.

Reincarnation effectively the same thing as oblivion? This is why you need to check the T&Cs carefully.

Nothing but endless, infinite polls for all your favourite topics

Wonder how people (not specifically ilxors) that sincerely believe in reincarnation as new humans, are reconciling that with a probable overlapping belief that humanity as a whole could be near its end. Do they even think that one through? Or is the idea that souls will leap to any point through time? What about the timeline bits where there are no humans - does consciousness just recycle in a certain time pocket while the rest is….? Consciousness as a singular phenomenon that becomes then un-becomes feels right to me - just wish we had maybe 50% more time.

I just don't wanna come back as an incel edgelord and not have my previous memories to tell me NO DON'T BE THAT GUY

I just generally assume that the energy that has currently coalesced into this thing called ME will dissipate at death and reapportion itself into a variety of new forms. Like a little bit of me will eventually become a little bit of a squirrel and a little bit of a ficus and a little bit of a shoe salesman, etc.

is it possible to be reincarnated as a fart.

if so, how long do you exist as a fart? do you stop existing a minute or two afterwards, or are you molecules that are part of the sky and just don't smell?

If you were reincarnated as a fart and no one smelt it, did anyone dealt it?

I'd quite like to be zapped back to the start of the same life with full knowledge of where I went wrong to rectify many many wasted opportunities. The beginning bit might be a bit dull though.

can you still post 👍🏽

I'd spend years 0-2 screaming DON'T SHIT YOUR PANTS, DON'T SHIT YOUR ah well maybe next time

Wonder how people (not specifically ilxors) that sincerely believe in reincarnation as new humans, are reconciling that with a probable overlapping belief that humanity as a whole could be near its end. Do they even think that one through? Or is the idea that souls will leap to any point through time? What about the timeline bits where there are no humans - does consciousness just recycle in a certain time pocket while the rest is….? Consciousness as a singular phenomenon that becomes then un-becomes feels right to me - just wish we had maybe 50% more time.

well see the universe collapses and explodes again and then you get another planet Earth and suddenly there you are again but half an inch taller

Frognis Antetokoumpo

...I remember that afternoon, not as so many minutes spent in my drawing room interrupted by these strange excursions in time, but as years and years of heavenly bliss interrupted by short periods in my drawing room

i'm getting to thinking that genuine belief in heaven/hell is psychotic and drives a lot of evil behaviors

Well yeah tbh

absolutely it does

if you think that heaven is real, that hell is real, that they're both eternal, and that there is a god that decides, then you will do whatever it takes to get there.

above family

i really, REALLY wish that the protestant movement had developed some sort of Purgatory-like belief, just to provide some sort of option between absolute bliss and absolute torture. it really is just the biggest extremes they could possibly go with. you can so clearly envision the Great Awakening preachers just scaring the absolute crap out of ignorant people, realizing that the control they could gain by doing so

I remember the first newspaper article I saw that explained Parallel Universe Theory had it “in a parallel universe, you could be Cliff Richard”.I decided that was dumb, because either way it would not be me *or* Cliff over there.

i think foucault's analysis of knowledge-as-power has deeply affected my worldview on everything, including this. heaven/hell and similar kinds of beliefs, quite obviously, to me anyway, constitute institutional power structures. religion was at the forefront of figuring out how to tap into all the worst aspects of human behavior and psychology vis a vis these hard definitions of total fantasy, while feeding on the human spirit, in order to accumulate power. i think purgatory may have been the result of some kind of compromise that religion had to make with the state?

I hope its just this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsS_VMzY10I

Not exactly ideal. But at my dentist's earlier today, I imagined Hell as an exponentially prolonged dental procedure, in which the painkillers didn't quite take and the dentist's tools keep scraping your gums and tongue.