Will covid 19 change our societies?

[Haicoway]

Greta, I am 76 and I work daily on finding the psychological trigger to end my life. Up until my wife died, I had a reason to live. Now I have none, and powerful reasons to be dead. I will qualify, though, that almost everyone who knows me puts me in the top probably 1/10th of 1% of fortunate people with regard to wealth, property, appearance (for my age), girls at my disposal, etcetera. But with my wife gone, nothing means anything, and I live in constant severe psychic pain of grief. (BTW, I don't want counseling or to feel any better because I believe that would disrespect my wife.) Also, when I die, girls (not mine, I have no kids, thank God) will get a lot of money for their continuing education, and I'm leaving a lot to charity.

I posted something about this before, but for almost all of my life I have been agnostic, exercising no religion or even spirituality. But I am scared to take my life and I think it's because of fear of a possible hell. So what I have lately learned is that while I claimed for all of those years that I didn't believe anything, I obviously do, somewhere unconsciously in my right brain. And there is no rational way to address it. I would love any advice from this forum.

[Sy Borg]

Haicoway, to say I am unqualified to give advice to you is an understatement! Not only have I never had a lifelong relationship to lose, I have no relevant qualifications, and so on. As a forum mod, I am surely legally bound to tell you to speak to a professional. So this is my official advice to you.

Another slice of the obvious before delving further, your deceased wife would want you to get on with life rather than cling to grief. So, if you are talking about honouring her memory and how you felt about her, then you need to consider that aspect too. Honouring is not necessarily about time, but about the mode of its expression.

Maintaining motivation when one is past one's prime and racked with pain ... it's a riddle. Personally, I am lost without a project. You are clearly smart, so I would at least recommend that you assess what you have in your head that might be useful to others, and put your thoughts down in an easy-t-access format before that hard-won wisdom disappears into ...

What? Heaven or hell? Nothing? Another dimension? A spark in Minkowski space?

You believed yourself to be agnostic and now you have confirmed it. You don't know, one way or another, hence the concern. I am also open to the idea of other dimensions or realms of existence because we humans largely only tend to see that which historically aided survival and reproduction. Who knows what we have been missing? One does have the impression that reality is rather more extraordinary than just the fluke of life emerging from dead and mindless galactic, stellar, geological and biological machines, simply chugging away until they stop.

Still, we have to entertain the thought that, when we go, it's simply game over. Interestingly, it can go either way when people are dying. Most people brought back of near-death report a complete blank. A loss of time altogether. So that has to be the most likely outcome. Others, however, report a range of experiences, either neutral or positive.

I can personally only provide the spurious "evidence" of a peak experience I enjoyed some years ago. If what I experienced at the time was God/Universe/Gaia, then that entity is about as interested in judging us for our "sins" as we are in judging the efforts of our individual cells. Hey you! Cell #2,347,990,243,641 in the tip of my left toe! Yeah, you! Better lift your game or you are going to Cell Hell! If God exists, then it will have nothing but unconditional love for everyone and everything. Its attitude towards us would more like David Attenborough's and less like that of the ancients.

The idea of a greater entity sending one of its poor, clueless little constituents to torture for all eternity for breaking some human-made code of conduct is simply demented. At worst, anomalies will be deleted from the system, so to speak. The ancients, like their successors, were devious and manipulative. They were also trying to govern some wild characters, like trying to tame a society consisting largely of wild Trump fanatics. So they invented a realm of punishment, based on volcanoes and hot underground environments. For whatever reason, they saw the Earth's insides as inherently evil. So they looked to the peaceful clouds and stars and saw Heaven. They were not to know that the heavens are also hellish - endless, airless, freezing cold gravity wells, cosmic radiation, with occasional cataclysmic collisions and explosions.

So I would take first-hand accounts of near-death experiences, especially those of other agnostics, more seriously than the ideas of ancient people.

Jill Bolte-Taylor's NDE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyyjU8fzEYU

Good luck with whatever you do. As I say, I would definitely recommend a project.

[ian37]

I think this is too big of a widespread thing not to have a lasting effect. Even though there is the tendency at times to move on quickly after an intense moment. First, I think that it will bring us closer together inwardly while maybe there are more precautions outwardly. I also strongly think that it will fast-forward technology and how it's taking over more each and every day. More may work at home or in certain shifts that did not used to exist. There may be more skepticism of those and what we do not know and further appreciation toward those closest within our lives.

[Haicoway]

Greta, thank you. Yours is the most helpful encouragement regarding hell of anyone to whom I have mentioned my fear: The near death experience argument, and the man-made aspect.

BTW, my wife asked me to take my life at her moment of death, so she didn’t have to die alone. She had seen me fight heroically with my fists, but the look in her eyes when I asked for an extension conveyed her recognition of my true cowardice, and of a man who didn’t love her as much as she had thought.

For a service to others using my brain, as I alluded to, and admitting a concomitant beguilement, but without improper intent, I plucked a beautiful girl of color (I’m white) from a broken home in a black NYC ghetto, with Cinderella dreams, who with huge debt fought her way into, and then demonstrated genius, in university, and I am helping with her debts and creating a Fair Lady out of her. She never read a classic or held a fork properly, but she’s reading Henry James, dining at Daniel, and she’s quit all solecisms such as “Me and my friends” did this or that. Lastly I’m financing her graduate school, in finance. I helped another girl similarly last year.

I need to rejoin my wife, whether in Heaven or nothingness (not forgetting about the third tormenting possibility). The question only is when, and in my mind soon is best, because of the intense psychic pain and abdominal anxiety I am suffering daily. Drugs haven’t helped. But your words are comforting.

[fionaimmodest]

There is a reason for everything and there is always sunshine after the rain.