Roundabout

That's a photo of my Mom in May, 1966. I was born on 2 January, 1967, and I'm told I was a few days late, so I'm in this photo as well. I just didn't know it at the time.

Which makes me wonder - what will I be doing a second after I die? 

I think it will be the same thing I was doing a second before I was born.

I just have no idea what that was / will be... which is what makes it all so interesting.

Paul Kimball

The Art of Dying

Paul McCartney is my favourite Beatle, but when it comes to my more existential side, it's George Harrison to whom I usually turn. This week I'm going to post a Harrison song every day, starting with one of my favourites - "The Art of Dying".

I've always had a fascination with death, and what may or may not come afterwards. I think anyone who tells you that they don't think of it is lying. We all do, even if we won't admit it. The central question of human existence is whether this life is "it", and what that means for us, one way or another. For the longest time, the idea that death might really be the end frightened me, but then one day my father said something to me, with his usual blunt common sense, that started me on the path of being free from that fear. "Paul" he said, "it's nothing to worry about, because if there's nothing after this, then you'll never know, will you?" Without knowing it, my Dad was all zen with me at that moment, and it resonated in a way that no sermon about the certainty of a life eternal, ever could. The truth is that we don't know, and we can never know... until we get there. And then, if there is something else, we'll know, and if there isn't... well, we'll still never know. So why be afraid?

Being freed from the fear of death opened the door to an actual consideration of what might lie beyond. I accept that oblivion is certainly a possible outcome, and that's a sobering thought (particularly when the left arm starts to tingle). But I also think that there might be other outcomes. As there's nothing I can do about the prospect of oblivion other than to try to live my life to the fullest, which I do anyway, it's those other possibilities that interest me, and that I explore, because perhaps there are clues in our lives, and the world around us, that might just indicate that there is indeed, as the pop poet Bryan Ferry famously wrote, "more than this".

"It is not more surprising to be born twice than once." - Voltaire

The truth is that we're all dying, each and every day. What lies beyond is unknowable... but it is not unimaginable, and that is a critical difference, because in the imagination lies the true "art of dying"... and the art of living.

Indeed, the two might just be the same thing.

Paul Kimball

David Eagleman, Possibilianism, and Transcending the Boundaries of Belief and Disbelief

Rich Reynolds at the UFO Iconoclasts has written a short post encouraging people to take a look at the work of neuroscientist / author David Eagleman, in particular with respect to his ideas about memory, and his philosophy of Possibilianism, and I couldn't agree with Rich more. Eagleman is one of the most interesting thinkers of our time. His book Sum: forty tales from the afterlives, is one of my favourite novels (although to call it a novel, i.e. a work of complete fiction, isn't quite accurate).

The podcast above contains an excerpt from Sum, read by the actor Jeffrey Tambor. It also has biologist Lee Silver telling the story of a physician’s ambitious 1907 experiment to discover the weight of the soul, a discussion of when people actually die with author and researcher Gary Greenberg and John Troyer, and a conversation with neuroscientist Adrian Owen about whether or not the dead can play tennis?

Consider it an Easter gift, from me to you!

As for Possibilianism, here is Eagleman explaining it in twenty minutes:

Three quotes from Eagleman in his lecture that pretty much sum up the way I look at both science, religion, and all things about the paranormal.

After you walk the pier of everything we know in science, at some point you reach the end of the pier. And beyond the pier is everything that we don't know; it's all of the uncharted waters, the deep mysteries that we don't have insight into yet. That's the real lesson that you get from science - it's about the vastness of our ignorance.

And...

Science is really about the creativity of making up new hypotheses. Part of the scientific temperment is the tolerance for holding multiple hypotheses in mind at the same time. Now, what we actually do is we make up new stories in the laboratory every day, and then we go and we seek evidence. We gather evidence to weigh in favour of some stories over others. But it's often the case that some questions are too far out right now. They're beyond the toolbox of science, and as a result we're unable to gather evidence for them. And in that situation it's okay. Science is comfortable holding multiple hypotheses on the table. That ambiguity is accepted as part of the relationship we have with Mother Nature. It's part of the vast mysteries around us. We have to have that ambiguity.

And finally:

This is not just a plea for simple-openmindedness, but for an active exploration of new ideas... Look around the strange world you're in, and see if you can live a life that is free from dogma, and full of awe and wonder, and see if you can celebrate possibility, and praise uncertainty.

Fascinating and thought-provoking stuff, and an example of the kind of thinking that transcends the boundaries imposed by those who insist we should simply believe or disbelieve in something.

Possibilianism is exactly the approach that I'll be taking with Beyond Best Evidence, the UFO-related documentary for which we're currently trying to raise the financing, because it's the only reasonable way of looking at the UFO enigma.

Paul Kimball