About 40,000 years ago, during what is called the human 'Upper Palaeolithic Revolution', our predictive capacities developed to the point where we saw our inevitable death. A tiger jumping at us out of the bushes was not necessary to scare the hell out of us. Our minds did it, and we mobilized to act. The result - 40 millenium of social fantasies. Religions, spirits, tribal customs, afterworlds and legends, taboos, good and evils, social mores of conduct, superstitions. Delightful fantasies, stimulating mind chatter, lots of low-level entertainment, lifetimes of social worries and bickering. In the last two millenium we have become more organized, more global, more cluttered in our social fantasies. Nations, bibles, "history", "knowledge", universities, literature, science, ideologies, abstract big religions. It's time to realize the silliness of these fake worlds of "making believe you continue after death". We don't live on in heaven or hell or in God's lap or in a new body. We don't live on in our good works or our reputations or "making the world a little better". We don't live on in the memories of those who knew us or in an invention or idea named after us or a book we wrote.
We are not different from animals, only they're more awake while we spend most of our time head-dancing in our big frontal lobes.
The thought of eternal recurrence is a means for us to wake up.
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