Organ Donor

xkcd hits it hard, again.

Awhile back I had a friendly online debate about the important parts of human experience that are difficult to rationalize. At one point I said:

"I guess what I really believe is that "shoulds" are real, and that internal experience (unreliable as it is) is all we have to work with if we want to get to the "shoulds". I realize that many people won't see it this way, and I realize how many pitfalls there are on the path I've chosen (there's a long history of murder and evil justified by "shoulds"), but it's the best I can do. I'm willing to hear arguments for another way, but it will be hard for me to accept anything as sterile as: Just do what's in your own best interest, everything else is nonesense."


To be perfectly honest, that discussion and some since then has eroded my faith in the 'shoulds', and even made me question the belief most central to my philosophy of life - that humans possess divine identity. (Please don't understand that too quickly. Just because I said 'divine', it doesn't necessarily follow that I'm talking about a relationship with God, Christian or otherwise.) This is demoralizing to me. I don't want it to be true that people disappear when they die.


The poet said, "We live as dream - alone."