Choices

The other day I asked a friend a hypothetical question.

If you had the opportunity to plug into a machine that would generate a virtual world of your desiring (in this case I presented the fictional world of Pandora from the movie Avatar), but by doing so you would only live to the age of 50, what would you do? Any choice would be permanent.
a. Live your own life.
b. Live your own life in the machine.
c. Accept, taking with you the knowledge that your perceived world was false.
d. Accept, oblivious to the fact your perceived world was false.
e. None of the above.

He chose D immediately. I agreed. I find it interesting we both decided that knowing our worlds were false would be less desirable than not knowing. I'm not entirely sure why this is the case. I suppose the perception that said world was not "real" would dampen the experience, but why should we care? What is real? Is reality a finite thing, or is it subject to what we perceive. Is a dream fake and real life real, or vice versa? Or can we know? Does it matter?

What I found most interesting about this little experiment was the conversation afterward, concerning religion. In his religious belief we all go to heaven when we die, and essentially live out our lives in paradise. I asked him why he didn't kill himself and go to heaven. He replied that doing so was a sin that would keep him out. I responded by asking him that if persons of religion truly believed in heaven, why is death mourned and not celebrated. Why does a religious person look at death with fear and not anticipation? My answer is that they don't truly believe. They spend their entire lives living according to some set of divine rules, but can never find any true proof that their devotion is to a real thing. How can someone trust in something that has no form save word of mouth. Is this not the same sustenance of myth? On the other hand, one could argue that for millions of years life has been fine tuned to evade death, and that this phenomenon is simply a byproduct of evolution. It makes sense. But does that mean evolution overrules religion? Does our sympathetic nervous system have more pull than a sympathy to god? Should it? And aren't religion and evolution mutually exclusive ideas?

This idea brought me to another point that I have spent much time thinking about. If our own bodies play such a role in our actions and perceptions, what is man in absence of their effects. Truly, hormones and chemicals rule our lives from behind the scenes. If chemical X or hormone Y varies from its reference range, we cannot help but experience some change in how we operate. A cocktail of all the modulators of human mood exists in perfect balance to maintain us as we are. In reality, they define us. But do they keep us normal, or do they force us to a point where we are more capable of survival. What would man be without these influences? We consider persons suffering from depression the victims of disease because they have a deficiency in some molecule. But aren't they simply less effected by the pull of biology? Do they lack some essential part, or are they less effected by some modulator? Perhaps they see things clearer than we do? What would thought look like in a biological vacuum? I suppose in a vacuum man would think in terms of pure rational and calculated thought. Would he have emotion, or is emotion a result of chemical modulators? I think he would resemble very much a biological computer. His methods would be cold and calculated. They would be devoid of bias or irrational thought. Perhaps he would see religion , with its complete lack of rational evidence, and discard it completely. How would he view existence then? If there is no heaven, would we simply disappear when we die? There is no better evidenced explanation. And finally, which answer to my initial question would a computer choose? I can't help but think he would view life as pointless, irregardless of its appearance. I think he would see existence, as we live it, to be a chore. For this reason I say he picks e and shuts himself down. Is it any wonder then, that many depressed persons choose the same?