spartasman wrote:I would like to know what the advent of the "second life" means in relation to morality. Earlier in the story, the commander of the Isreali sub was given condolences for the death of his family, but I do not see why you would need that when not only you are dead yourself, but your family is essentially alive there with you in Hell. I can't see murder becoming anything more than like robbery, with courts determining that you are simply robbing someone of their first life. Also, do people with mental handicaps become normal when they die, considering that anything that is wrong with people is automatically fixed in hell? If so, would it not be considered the moral thing to do to euthanize the mentally handicapped? What about people who have undergone plastic surgery or sex-change operations, would they simply revert to their natural born anatomy?
This is part of a
huge question the premise of this story raises. Deeper than all of these issues is the question of how people will deal with the world now that death is a mere inconvenience. Will huge portions of the population now be raised to consider this life just a preparatory stage for "real" life, the way some theists consider it nowadays? What will happen to birth rates, etc. when people realize that raising a family isn't necessary either to propagate the species or to achieve a fraction of personal immortality? Millenia of literature and philosophy treating the cessation of existence as an inescapable part of the human condition is now utterly obsolete. Will Earth ultimately (in hundreds or thousands of years) be relegated to the status of little more than a nursery, or even a burden on a second-life population that basically never stops growing at an absurd rate? Or will the First Life remain the center of "real" civilization, since that is where basic driving instincts and needs still have some power? How will the basic differences between the two lives, one short-lived and demanding but set in an infinitely vast and yawning chasm of a universe, the other eternal and confined to a series of shrinking bubbles the size of single planets, affect relationships between nations, families, and individuals? Will our wondrous universe of stars and galaxies remain forever dark and unexplored, or will first-lifers, anxious to escape the burden of living in the shadows of their ever-growing living ancestry, spread out from this planet? Will first-lifers in general ultimately be regarded as simple children compared to more sophisticated and experienced second-life society, or will the subtle differences in 1L and 2L human brains result in a different dynamic? If you die on Mars, do you still go to Hell?
It's a
very formidable premise to explore, and I can't fault Stuart for the way he has approached some of these issues: people don't stop and reconsider their whole approach to existence, they just adapt to accommodate each new development in increments, without really considering the long-term ramifications of what they're doing. It's very realistic, I think.
On a totally different subject: where did all of the heavy elements in Hell come from? Were they extruded as-is from universe1, or is fusion easier to achieve in Hell and Heaven? I think I sort of understand why the "planets" have gravity, but is the Klein bottle as deep "through the planet" and "through the atmosphere" as it is "around"? If so, is the atmosphere much thinner at the "highest" point in the atmosphere (i.e. as high as you can climb before you start falling again)? Have all these questions been addressed before, when I wasn't paying attention? A lot of these probably don't have answers, but it's fun to explore.
The Republican party may also be a lot less, um well, crazy-religious in a post Message world than otherwise. (What did happen to Sarah Palin?) On issues like gays serving in the military for example. Again, with a military draft, issues like this will very probably come up at some point. On some issues, President Obama might find he's facing less opposition that he thinks.
