Could a “collective afterlife” through the lives of others be more important than the “personal afterlife” we're often preoccupied with?
Imagine that the world will end in thirty days. Would your life have meaning anymore? Would anyone’s? It seems that there would no longer be any point to making technological or medical advances, developing new forms of art, or even taking good care of ourselves. Imagining the doomsday scenario shows that there is something particularly disturbing about the prospect that not only we, but also everyone else, will die. Why is this? Could a “collective afterlife” through the lives of others actually be more important than the “personal afterlife” with which we are so often preoccupied? John and Ken live on through Samuel Scheffler from NYU, author of Death & the Afterlife. Tuesday 11/03 at 12 noon.