"...it is wise to forget about our inevitable collective obliteration precisely because of its capacity to uselessly demoralize us."

Is Life a Ponzi Scheme?

Mark Johnston

January 02, 2014

Death and the Afterlife

Samuel Scheffler, Niko Kolodny (Ed.)

Oxford University Press, $29.95 (cloth)

 

Here ignorance is not exactly bliss, but it is helpful. Unless you are professionally involved in existential risk assessment or in one of those fields, such as bio-warfare, where the resultant blowback could indeed wipe us out, it is wise to forget about our inevitable collective obliteration precisely because of its capacity to uselessly demoralize us. When it comes to the end of humanity, Spinoza’s advice to individuals concerning their own deaths seems even more pertinent: “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not on death, but on life.”