10 Things the dead might be doing.

Lets assume for a moment, like many of us do, that there is in fact an afterlife.  This afterlife has been explained to us by various religions and beliefs, and each religions version of the afterlife have 2 things in common.  1.  You are alive after you die, just somewhere else.  2.  The afterlife has only ever been verified by people that haven't died yet and are telling you about it.  Now the 2nd one seems a bit snarky, but that's not my intent.  My intent is to say that my ideas about what's going on in the next life is every bit as valid as anyone else's.  If you want to call me on it, you'll have to do it on the other side where you can say 'See Mark I KNEW you were wrong'.  But until then, these ideas all have different takes on what it means to exist in a next life and may have some basis in other belief systems.  In your mind preface each one with a 'Maybe'

- Swapping dead stories - There you are.  Dead.  Along with all the other dead people.  There are lots of them.  I mean really lots of them.  So what do people do?  Talk about common experiences.  The only common experience you will likely have on the other side is the fact that you died before you got there.  Most people will have cancer.  There might be some confusion when some mention consumption and others feel tuberculosis is a more apt description.  Choking and starving alternatively will have pretty high populations.  The really unique deaths will involve plane crashes, electrocutions, nearly perfect sky diving and a little too thrilling thrill rides.

- Trying to remember what it was like to be hungry - Lots of belief systems have you living in an immortal state in the next life.  If you are immortal, it means you aren't going to die naturally.  Pretty simple.  But if we look at a lot of the things in life that affect us, they affect us BECAUSE we are mortal.  We get hungry because our brain tells us that we need energy in order to survive and the only way we get that energy is through consumption of calories.  If you don't you will die.  Well If you are not going to die.  Eventually your brain will skip the whole hunger thing since it doesn't serve much of a purpose.  Once you don't have hunger, you don't really have a reason to like food.  So maybe that's how you can tell the freshly dead on the other side is by the fact that they are eating and they crave food.  The long timers like Winston Churchill and Socrates just chuckle and say 'I can't even remember what it was like to want food'.

- Waiting in line for the next ride - What is reincarnation?  Well it's your consciousness coming back to occupy a new shell.  Every one is a specific life and when you are done, you are judged on what you did and you either go up or down on your next roll, but you do get a next roll.  Well you are going to have to wait for your next best incarnation so you sit around and talk about your last life in your non corporeal form waiting for your next host to become available.  I'm kind of hoping for a house-cat on the next round, they seem to have it made.

- Singing in a vacuum - At one point the thought of the next life was to praise a supreme being.  The only thing you knew about the next life was the visitors that came from there to here.  Well they were singing angels accompanied by a band of angels.  We assume they are immortal.  As I mentioned before, if you are immortal you don't need a lot of things that you would need otherwise.  Like air.  What's the point?  You don't breathe it's ok.  you just don't breathe.  But if you don't breathe you can't sing?  So maybe there is air in the next life so you can sing.  Alternatively you are singing in a vacuum and the supreme being just appreciates the effort.  After having heard several less than heavenly choruses it strikes me that airless is probably the safer option.

- Watching us - There is precious little description about the day to day activities of the deceased.  So little in fact that it makes me wonder if there is anything to do there at all.  Surely you would like entertainment like we like it here within our mortal coil.  Well, maybe there just isn't much to do.  When you are immortal, concepts like DEAD LINES are laughable if not ironic.  So maybe it's more entertaining to watch us struggle through the throes of mortality.  Our petty arguments, our silly grabs for temporary power.  We really are quite a show.

- Living their own lives - alternatively, maybe there is just a life very similar to ours.  So similar in fact that they are too busy living it to spend a lot of time ruminating about the prior one.  They are just caught up in the day to day existence of wherever they are.  They have next world things to worry about.  Probably exploration of some sort.

- Trying to figure out how to keep things private - a common description of the afterlife is a time when 'all truth shall be made evident'  evident or obvious.  no secrets.  at all.  so your brain and your thoughts are instantly open for everyone to see or hear.  That's got to be particularly annoying.  It would probably be a lot like everyone running for president at the same time.  Everyone being simultaneously ashamed and offended.

- Wondering about THEIR next life - Ok, so what if the next life is exactly that.  A next life.  Different planet, different format, maybe everyone is cat people because that's how it shook out.  You die, you get there and you realize that everyone there is consumed with what happens in THEIR afterlife.  Nothing at all has changed, except you traded one existence for another, but you have many of the same worries because you are very mortal again, just different.

- Hoping they got a high score - So in some versions of theology we are in our own discreet existences.  That really follows nicely to the thought that we are just in an elaborate video game.  It's so advanced that it has granular detail for anything you look at.  You live your life and then you die and that's when you see a score.  You never really died because you were never really alive, you were just the avatar for your controller.  It does explain why you do things you never thought you would do.  It's because the person controlling you is searching for hidden power ups.

- Looking forward to Dead holidays - Maybe the dead are hanging around doing whatever they do and they see that memorial day is coming around.  They debate with each other about if anyone will be visiting their grave and should they go check.  it's kind of a drag but they figure if you've gone to the effort they should probably show up.  But then things get kind of hectic and there are plenty of projects to work on so who really needs to visit the last place you left your body?  Well, they can't HEAR you anyway no matter how much you yell, so really why bother.  Besides, you can visit ANY time you like, you don't have to fight through the crowds of the other dead that are there.  Once you have been dead long enough you don't have to worry about it.  That's a relief.  On the other hand, Mexico is doing that day of the dead thing, that seems like a LOT more fun.

There it is.  and I'm publishing this one early because I've been late plenty lately.

10 things that might happen in the afterlife.

Heaven and Hell.  These are the original black and white of life.  One is the ultimate reward and the other is the ultimate punishment.  Has anyone ever been there?  Not as far as we know.  There are of course no end of people that are willing to tell us what it is like, so I figure what the hell...umm, I mean heck, I'll try to divine the nature of both areas.  Better yet, I'll just tell you some of the possibilities that may await us on the other side.

10.  A LOT of surprised people - Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and all of their sister cities are places for people that are mostly good or mostly bad, or mostly undecided.  Assuming you go to Heaven, there will be a lot of people there that you were certain would not belong there.  Conversely Hell will have a lot of inhabitants that are surprised that they are there.  The difference is of course the realizations of Heaven are usually extrospective and realizations in Hell are mostly introspective.

9.  Nothing - Sure you believe in an afterlife full of one thing or another, but there IS the possibility that once the lights go out, that's it, nothing else.  Yes, I know, there are lots of near death experiences and ghostly EVP's that would point to our spirit going on to ethereal greatness after we shuffle off this mortal coil, but how about the big void.  You won't be there to be bored so it won't be THAT big a deal.








8.  Haunting something - So instead of an ACTUAL afterlife, maybe there is just a bunch of ghost friendly haunting sites.  Possible haunting areas do NOT include rickety old homes, abandoned schools, or defunct mental institutions.  Who wants to hang around there forever?  How about the Haunted house at Disneyland?  They would LOVE to see some actual haunting mixed into those 999 happy haunts.  How about an airport frequent fliers club?  That would be pretty swank.  You could mess with their free wireless internet access.

7.  Field Trips! - In order to make heaven and hell what they are supposed to be; supremely enjoyable and supremely miserable.  You really have to have a break from your misery or your rapture in order to fully appreciate the state you are in.  So every so often the people from heaven have an exchange program with the people from hell so they can experience each others state of being.  After a while they return to their regularly scheduled afterlife and they can think alternatively 'Wow, this heavenly stuff is gosh darn great!'  or 'Crap I hate this place.  I forgot how much I hated it here.'.  Of course this may not be true at all if dying changes our basic nature such that we can only feel misery or joy.  If that's the case then we can all live through eternity right next to each other.

6.  Compare ends - Assuming you get to talk to other people that have passed on, I imagine the conversation at the post life cafeteria would sound something like this:
Dead guy 1: 'So how did you end up...you know...'.
Dead guy 2: 'Dying?  Oh, I died of consumption.  Long and slow, but it got the job done'
Dead guy 1: 'Oh, Tuberculosis?  Yeah, they all but wiped that out later'
Dead guy 2: 'Yeah, I know, but if it isn't one thing...'
Dead guy 1: 'Sure'
Dead guy 2: 'So how was yours?'
Dead guy 1: 'Oh, I was stung to death by giant Japanese wasps'
Dead guy 2: 'WHAT?!?  Really?  That's horrible'
Dead guy 1: 'Tell me about it...Anyway, pretty glad that's over with.'

5.  No pain mostly - Since the mortal human body is designed to feel pain as a protective measure against self destruction, I'm not sure what reason an immortal body would have to feel pain, other than punitive punishment.  I assume there would be no pain like we know it.   Since Hell is a pretty varied place depending on what you believe I couldn't say if you feel pain or not.  Most religions seem to think it's either a place where you will suffer the punishment which I assume means pain.  But will your back keep bothering you?  How about that bad knee?  That one tooth that never really felt right?  I guess if you are continually being consumed in a lake of brimstone you won't have to worry about those things anymore either.   Heaven of course converts the pain of those suffering in hell to pleasant mists and refreshing beverages for you to consume in your righteousness.  I just made that part up.  But I think it sounds good.

4.  No Church! - One way or another, Hell or Heaven.  You are already there so no more church!  No more listening to someone drone on about something they really don't know any more than you do because now you all know the same thing!  Doesn't matter how it ends.  Of course that's one less thing for the pious to look down their noses at you for, but that's ok, they'll have lots of other stuff.



3.  No food - Depending on the state of the afterlife, it seems that we won't be taking our mortal baggage along with us.  Assuming that is the case, It seems that there won't be any food because you won't be hungry.  Kind of a disappointment really because I really like food.  Of course the only reason I like food is because I'm mortal and my body employs mechanisms that make me hungry and then enjoy food so I will stay alive.  Once I'm dead.  I suspect that food will just look disgusting to me.



2.  No Holidays - I assume that since Heaven doesn't revolve around anything and nothing revolves around it, I suspect that there will be no holidays in the afterlife.  Unless of course we end up on Planet Heaven and Planet Hell.  Some theologies suggest that heaven is actually right here on earth.  In which case, there will be holidays.  But instead you will probably celebrate your death day.  Happy Death Day!  How long have you been dead?  Who cares, because that number can get really high.


1.  Everyone is roughly the same age - Let's assume for a moment that when you die, you maintain some kind of human form.  Ok.  Well if you are going to heaven, or you are arriving there in the same state that you left earth?  Not bloody likely.  You'll probably arrive somewhere in your late 20's.  That means everyone that gets there is there in their late 20's.  You will NEVER recognize your grandma and a lot of other people you left back on earth.  It will be a lot like a high school reunion in reverse.



Just some thoughts.  of course they aren't verifiable.  But I've never claimed this to be a 100% factual blog.  For that you need to go to Wikipedia...wait a minute...

See you in 15 days.