Most people fear death, "...that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns...." But we rarely experience a comparable horror when contemplating the time before our conception and birth. Why not? For ages past, we all were nothing, nil, zip, nada; we had no existence, no consciousness, no fame or notoriety. And we all will be that way again, some sooner, some later. What's the difference?
Many religious theories (of reincarnation or rebirth or other forms of spiritual continuation) attempt to respond to our fear of death, but few religions seem to worry about or struggle with the symmetrical side of pre-existence. It's not a question that we tend to fret about. Perhaps we should. Perhaps thinking about the universe before our personally patterned piece came into being can help counterbalance the naive, natural tendency to flinch from the thought of our demise.
Tuesday, April 27, 1999 at 16:55:03 (EDT) = 1999-04-27
(correlates: Zhurnal Three, ConstantCrisis, PersonalPositivism, ...)