What would the implications be if humans embraced the notion of existential passage?

[Avalon]

What if the notion of existential passage came to be a common belief amongst us? Might it one day happen?

This is purely speculation, but given that the majority of people on earth today believe in some form of afterlife and given the growing trends of people giving up their supernatural and religious beliefs I think existential passage could well be a commonplace belief among future generations.

The implications of such a world could be both positive and negative, depending on our confidence in the notion of Existential Passage.
With the following possible implications I will assume that we are almost 100% confident in our belief about EP:

The positive implications:

- We would have a self-interest in ensuring the safety and well being of all future conscious life forms.

- The world may become a more productive place as we may be less afraid of death and therefore less prone to wasting our time with irrational beliefs that play upon our fears of death ie. Religion.

- We may wear our personalities more lightly, realizing that it was just pure chance that we ended up with our particular bodies, characteristics etc. We may feel less hatred to people who are harming us in some way.

- We may feel more connected with each other and be less harsh/cruel to others.

- We may live happier lives coming to a fuller understanding of our place in nature.


The negative implications:

- Whilst we may have a self-interest in ensuring the safety of future conscious life forms we may still cause pain to present day conscious life forms since EP gives us no self-interest in ensuring their well-being. So a strong belief in EP still may not change our current ethical motivation to help others in the present.

- EP is a complete lottery as to who we end up existing as/"passing" to after we die. Given that the majority of conscious beings here on earth suffer painful existences, or at least painful deaths, EP does not sound a very comforting notion. Death may depress many people even more than it currently does.

- Life may be treasured less. People who are tired of their lives may be more willing to suicide in order to play their luck on the EP lottery in the hope that they pass to some being with a pleasurable life. The suicide rate might skyrocket.

- People hoping for peace when they die may be depressed that they must continue living as some other conscious being.

- People may try and kill off certain other species to ensure they don't pass to them.


I don't believe many of the above would actually play out but those are just some possible implications of a world that embraces the notion of existential passage.

Feel free to post your thoughts.

[essay author ws]

(05-30-2009 07:41 PM)Avalon Wrote:  What if the notion of existential passage came to be a common belief...? The implications... could be both positive and negative...

Thank you, Avalon. Your list of possible positive and negative implications is food for thought. Hard food for hard thought, surely.

Of course this is all rather new, which is why it's hard. The argument for existential passage is a new perspective: a new crow's nest vantage above our metaphysical sea, as it were. I think it will take some time to survey the sea from this new vantage; some time to evaluate implications before we can mark down any agreed interpretation. At present the map of implications is still lightly penciled, with more unknown dragons than I'd like.

In Avalon's list of potentially positive implications, there are some which derive from the essay text. For readers who may be unfamiliar with the chapter in question: Chapter 18 - Potential Benefits presents interpretations or applications of existential passage which I felt sufficiently straightforward as to seem plausible. Briefly listed, I argued for the following potential benefits:

1. one answer to the reciprocating ethicist, who asks, "Why should I do anything for posterity?"
2. a clear meaning for the previously nebulous phrase, "common destiny"
3. establishment of CNS as common criterion, both for existential passage and also for Singer's natural rights / ethical treatment
4. a motive of self-interest, to stimulate Taylor's "moral concern" for other species
   

Even those four straightforward benefits are not entirely certain. Have I penciled coastline where in truth there is only cloudbank, or leviathan? I'd be grateful if forum participants were to take turns at the spyglass, reporting frankly what they see.

[essay author ws]

(05-30-2009 07:41 PM)Avalon Wrote:  [ws - noting one of Avalon's speculative possibilities] The negative implications:
- EP is a complete lottery as to who we end up existing as / "passing" to after we die. Given that the majority of conscious beings here on earth suffer painful existences, or at least painful deaths, EP does not sound a very comforting notion. Death may depress many people even more than it currently does.

My ear is sensitive to the word Avalon used: lottery.

You know, Plato's poetic Myth of Er does itself employ a lottery. After a rest of seven days in the meadow, Everyman Er and those awaiting their fate visit Lachesis the daughter of Necessity, to choose their random lots:

Quote:When Er and the spirits arrived, their duty was to go at once to Lachesis; but first of all there came a prophet who arranged them in order; then he took from the knees of Lachesis lots and samples of lives, and having mounted a high pulpit, spoke as follows: 'Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honours or dishonours her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser --God is justified.' When the Interpreter had thus spoken he scattered lots indifferently among them all, and each of them took up the lot which fell near him, all but Er himself (he was not allowed), and each as he took his lot perceived the number which he had obtained. Then the Interpreter placed on the ground before them the samples of lives; and there were many more lives than the souls present, and they were of all sorts. There were lives of every animal and of man in every condition. And there were tyrannies among them, some lasting out the tyrant's life, others which broke off in the middle and came to an end in poverty and exile and beggary; and there were lives of famous men, some who were famous for their form and beauty as well as for their strength and success in games, or, again, for their birth and the qualities of their ancestors; and some who were the reverse of famous for the opposite qualities. And of women likewise; there was not, however, any definite character them, because the soul, when choosing a new life, must of necessity become different. But there was every other quality, and the all mingled with one another, and also with elements of wealth and poverty, and disease and health; and there were mean states also. And here, my dear Glaucon, is the supreme peril of our human state; and therefore the utmost care should be taken. Let each one of us leave every other kind of knowledge and seek and follow one thing only, if peradventure he may be able to learn and may find some one who will make him able to learn and discern between good and evil, and so to choose always and everywhere the better life as he has opportunity... For this is the way of happiness.

...this was what the prophet said at the time: 'Even for the last comer, if he chooses wisely and will live diligently, there is appointed a happy and not undesirable existence. Let not him who chooses first be careless, and let not the last despair.'

In the myth, who was the very last man to choose? Who got the final lot -- and the poorest choice of potential lives? And what was the outcome?

The myth is of course only a poem (written by a man who discouraged poetics). The myth encourages good choices and philosophical life, while making no particular promise for the Great Hereafter. Please note that in the Myth of Er:

1. Randomness in the allotment of lives is a given.
2. More specifically, reward and punishment are not determining factors in men's conditions of birth.
3. It is instead men's conscious choices which shape their lives.
   

Keeping these points in mind, please do read Plato's myth. Having read all, do you yourselves then find that you feel more "depressed" or "lacking in comfort" (using Avalon's terms) than before? What actual effect does Plato's myth have upon you, if any?

My Aegean idyll does also employ a random lottery (Nature's own), and so I find myself wondering what effect or effects these lotteries might have upon contemporary readers. If the Myth of Er's lottery has one consistent effect, perhaps the Aegean idyll's lottery will have the same.

If I might rephrase in the nautical terms I used previously in essay: The lottery of the Myth of Er is a landmark of a certain known height, let's say. The lottery's randomness sets that psychological height. When we note our reaction to the Myth of Er's lottery we are measuring our psychological "distance" from that famous landmark, as with a sextant. And we see that the Aegean idyll's lottery is just as random, and therefore of the same height, and same observed psychological distance. Paired measurements show the equal distances. In that spirit, a side-by-side evaluation of the modern and Classical texts -- each premised on equally random lotteries -- may ultimately produce similar reactions among readers.

Well, you can say.