Terthna
Professional Lurker
In my opinion, the only verifiable truth regarding death is that we all leave a corpse behind. What this means is that, if there is an afterlife (and I have seen no evidence to suggest that there isn't one), our continued sense of self is going to rely on us being able to function without all the precious organs we've all been relying on throughout our mortal existence. Imagine being able to perceive without any of our physical senses; what would that mean for us?
Take your eyes for example; as useful as they are, they are also sorely limited. But imagine being able to see without them, without those limits; from every perspective and in every direction simultaneously, to an infinite distance and magnification, across the entire light spectrum and beyond. It's enough to drive one mad trying to comprehend it, and that's just one of our mortal senses. These's also the fact that all of them are merely sending electrical signals to our brains, which then interprets it into something that makes sense to us. This is important because we won't have a brain either; so how exactly is thinking going to work?
Without our physical limitations, bare minimum we won't have to deal with our hormones influencing us anymore; but are we looking as having perfect recall of all our memories? Total control over our thoughts? Perhaps we'll even be able to force ourselves to perceive things that aren't actually there, or ignore things that are; which may actually end up being the defense mechanism that prevents us from immediately going mad, the instant we perceive what it means to exist as souls freed from the constraints of our decaying bodies, but it also means we'd have the ability to live out each and every fantasy we could ever wish to. That might be what everyone does at first, to work out all of their baggage from their mortal lives, until they become comfortable with their immortal one and decide to exit their thought cocoons so that they may experience it more fully.
So yeah; this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.
Take your eyes for example; as useful as they are, they are also sorely limited. But imagine being able to see without them, without those limits; from every perspective and in every direction simultaneously, to an infinite distance and magnification, across the entire light spectrum and beyond. It's enough to drive one mad trying to comprehend it, and that's just one of our mortal senses. These's also the fact that all of them are merely sending electrical signals to our brains, which then interprets it into something that makes sense to us. This is important because we won't have a brain either; so how exactly is thinking going to work?
Without our physical limitations, bare minimum we won't have to deal with our hormones influencing us anymore; but are we looking as having perfect recall of all our memories? Total control over our thoughts? Perhaps we'll even be able to force ourselves to perceive things that aren't actually there, or ignore things that are; which may actually end up being the defense mechanism that prevents us from immediately going mad, the instant we perceive what it means to exist as souls freed from the constraints of our decaying bodies, but it also means we'd have the ability to live out each and every fantasy we could ever wish to. That might be what everyone does at first, to work out all of their baggage from their mortal lives, until they become comfortable with their immortal one and decide to exit their thought cocoons so that they may experience it more fully.
So yeah; this is the kind of stuff that keeps me up at night.