This is will have nothing to do directly with the concept of the thread. It will start as a fairly boring blog post and then transition into a weird metaphysical philosophical pseudoscience place.
Tired today. In a funk. Decided I needed to go for a hike to get some sun and fresh air and exercise. I'm about 45 minutes by a trail to the Ohio River. Been trying to make it there and back in an hour. Failing. Today I decided to just go the whole way to see how long it took (45 minutes each was as it happens).
Thing is, Saturday afternoons are when I go for a long hike in through the woods with The Dog. And it turns out 8 months isn't long enough for me to have gotten that out of me yet, so I was feeling a bit down instead of invigorated.
Lately I've been reevaluating my real estate plan. Another viable option would be "slow flips." I can sell my old home as soon as I can get my dum-dum renter out of it. Sell it for a nice profit, even if it needs to be fixed up after my renter, and because I lived there for 3 years, I don't pay capital gains tax on it. I can sell my first rental. Since I owned it for over 2 years, it is treated as capital gains instead of as wages (just doing flips, you're treated like self employed income for tax purposes, if you hold a property for awhile it is taxed as capital gains). Then in a year (less, depending on who you talk to) I can sell this place which, in a year, is worth twice what I paid for it.
True, I like my neighbors, but I've always liked my neighbors. But when I had to move because it was the smart thing to do, I moved. The problem is, now my dog is buried here. The cat too, but while I feel a little bad to say it, the bond I had with The Cat just wasn't the same as the one with The Dog. Anyhow, I mulled this for a few weeks and realized something: Only my dog's *body* is buried here. I take my dog with me in my heart and in my mind.
So as I was walking and thinking about missing her, I realized if this was true, then she was actually with me on the walk. It was interesting, processing that as I walked along, rolling it around in my head.
So here's where we veer off. I've presented some of these thoughts before. I expanded on them during this walk. There's so much ground to cover that I miss parts of it but we'll see.
I was brought up Catholic. And I do believe there is *something* out there that we call "God." I don't think for a second it is a giant old guy in the clouds with a white beard and robes. It's something too complex for our relatively simple human brains to grasp. Like how an ant can't begin to understand us. Even moreso because we didn't make ants. So like little kids, playing "grown-up" we try to understand God as well as we can. What about all the different religions? I'm glad you asked. You know how a big company like M&M Mars or Unilever or General Electric will sell the same thing in slightly different configurations with different packaging to appeal to different demographics? God is the same way. The different religions are the different "branding" God uses to try to help us understand His message in the way most likely to resonate with us. And I think part of that message is trying to get us to move to our next major evolutionary step.
I argue that our bodies are simply biochemical machines to carry our brains around and give them input and output and a way for the brain to interact with its surroundings. The next step is that the brain is simply a biochemical machine to hold the sum total of your experiences and this is what theologians call your "soul." Now from a strictly practical standpoint, our bodies wear out. Eventually our brains do too. One could argue convincingly that, when that happens, the pattern of experiences that is held in your brain--what I'm calling the soul--is lost. Christianity says that the soul (which it doesn't go as far to define as I do) goes to God to be judged and either sent to Heaven or Hell (or spend time in Purgatory to be admitted to Heaven after atonement). And Catholicism teaches that humans can, through prayer, influence other humans and to a limited degree interact with souls in Heaven. Meanwhile souls in Heaven can interact with each other and influence living humans. Souls in Hell can't be helped and can't help anyone. There's Satan and demonic possession, but I'm going to put that off to one side for a bit because I haven't really thought about that.
Now we have phenomenon like ghosts, which appear to be souls that, for whatever reason, haven't left the physical world to go wherever they're supposed to go. If ghosts are real, then maybe they are in what Catholics call Purgatory--they are formed enough to exist without a brain to house them, but haven't figured out how to move on to wherever they're supposed to go next. So they just hang around, working on what they know until (hopefully) they work through it and get to move on. The "souls" that go to "Hell," well they're just souls that didn't develop enough to be able to exist after the brain died. So no lake of fire or eternal torture, but they're lost. Now, before the brain dies, all the other souls--ones in humans and ones that are already outside of bodies--can work to try and save those endangered souls, but once the brain dies, if that hasn't happened, the pattern is lost and no one--not even "God" can do anything to get it back. Still following?
Well the problem I've been mulling since my dog died is that dog brains are very different from human brains. Their memory works a lot differently too. And since the Bible doesn't say anything about dogs being able to go to heaven (1980s cartoon movie notwithstanding) it makes me worry that maybe their brain isn't developed in a away that their soul can hold a pattern after the brain dies. That said, I most definitely believe dogs have souls (or at least what I call a soul). And I say this because suppose I was able to clone my dead dog and raise her from a puppy. Genetically she would be identical to my dog. But she wouldn't be my dog because her soul would be different. She'd have had different experiences and memories that would cause her to develop differently than my dog did.
So, knowing all this, for the past few months, I've been hoping and trying to bring my dog along to "heaven" with me by keeping her in my mind and hoping that when I die I can reconstruct her soul alongside my own. But I haven't been very optimistic about that. Even if my brain is advanced enough, all I can bring along is a facet of my dog; a reflection. I can bring along what I remember of my dog, but I can never bring along what was going on in her mind because I just don't know it and could never know it because my brain is built so differently from a dog brain. BUT!...
I realized that if you go along with everything I've posited above, I don't have to do it all myself. Because my Dad and my favorite Aunt died long before I ever got my dog. My Mom died the same year I got her. So if these people have been watching over me, they've also been watching over my dog. And I've carried a little piece of each of them in my heart and my mind. And for all I know, a disembodied soul CAN understand a dog brain. I dunno, maybe there are rules I don't know about. Maybe I'm just crazy and completely wrong about all this. But it really gives me some comfort to think my parents and my Aunt are taking care of my dog for me so when I eventually get to join them they'll be able to reunite her with me.
All that said, after my Dad died, I always liked to think of him coming back to help and advise me in glow-y Jedi robes, and as far as I know the fucker has not done this ONCE, so maybe I'm just crazy.
And I'm thinking that's part of why Ghostbusters: Afterlife resonated so powerfully with me [SPOILER?]--everyone thought Egon was crazy--until his granddaughter realized he was not.
