Do you believe in love and the afterlife?

I believe in love. I've seen it. I've felt it and I've lived it. Is it only a neurochemical reaction? Could be, I don't fucking know. I'm prepared to accept that explanation. Whatever love is, whatever the root cause, it's real.

The afterlife, not so much. I mean, I have mixed feelings, diverging ideas. I've never been a religious man. I certainly don't buy the proposed Christian afterlife—if for no other reason that if that's a thing, I'm definitely going to the bad one. I've made peace with not knowing, and with the fact that I'm not meant to know.

P. S. I love you too, I guess. Because I believe in that shit.

I have reached the point at which I believe what I believe is irrelevant to what is or will be.

Who you calling old?

Just kidding. I just always have this image of arriving at the afterlife, whatever it is and presuming I am sentient, and saying, "but I didn't expect this," and the universe saying, "so what?"

No, and no. Hell is here and now.

-Your friendly neighborhood nihilist.

Foxx, I can't agree with your statement. Yours and mine is first-world version of hell (lowercase) perhaps, but as long as you have reasonable health, shelter, and food, it's a stretch to use the big H version. For people in the shantytowns of the world, you might be right. But you're not there.

Hell has infinite combinations of shapes and sizes. I do not scoff at or dismiss the rich person in their Hell, and I'm not going to sit here and appoint myself as the judge of who's suffering is worse. You could bring out a measuring stick and I could bring out a scale but it doesn't matter and completely misses the true point.

If they are suffering, they are suffering as a human being, and could use guidance. Suffering because of a lack of material goods is one form of Hell to be sure, but far from the only. In the same way, "solid" is not the only phase of matter; to suggest that air isn't matter because you can't see it would be quite ridiculous. To suggest that air *doesn't* matter in the existential sense because it's lighter than rock would be equally ridiculous.

To be quite honest with you, I share the belief of Kierkegaard that the ease of the modern world, with all of its luxuries and amenities, has done a significant amount of harm to mental health and the spirit, to say nothing of the physical pain. Perhaps I'm biased.

But just because some of the happiest people I've ever seen are materially poor people, does not mean that poor people do not suffer. I cannot pretend to know their suffering, but I try to empathize.

To be quite honest with you and @Madman, one man's Heaven is another man's Hell. Heaven seems like a painfully boring fucking place, and the thought that I'd have to stay there forever would be a punishment.

Ironically it reminds me of what C.S. Lewis said about robber barons and omnipotent moral busybodies. Just maybe the latter are worse. And I might spend an eternity under the thumb of one called God?

As they say on Shark Tank: and for that reason, I'm out.

@Madman

I agree with your assessment about lacking a sense of community. There's a lot of reasons why that happened, but it's a rabbit hole that would deserve a separate space to discuss.

If I'm honest with myself, I do believe in love. I have other beliefs that I don't deserve it, or that I won't find it, or that I'm incapable of it. *That's* my problem. Saying that "I don't believe in love" is an imperfect short-hand for issues that are a little more complex, and admittedly ones that I'm too scared to address.

A paradise of my own making? Can't say I've thought about it. To be honest, it'd probably be where we are now. Isn't there a saying, maybe in the Bible, about how Heaven is already here for those who can see it? I remember reading something to that effect somewhere. Can't remember unfortunately.

One of the most beautiful ways to look at this world and existence in general was brought to my attention by Alan Watts. Paraphrasing, you are "God" - whatever that means - and to have a bit of fun, you've decided to give yourself some amnesia. Playing hide-and-go-seek with yourself is one way he described it. Another way to imagine it, is that you could decide whatever it is that you want to dream before you fell asleep, and you've decided to have a dream where you don't know what's going to happen. Because always knowing the outcome would be just a little bit tiresome after a while.

He explains it far more eloquently than me.