Do we keep our personalities in afterlife?

Great Debates
21

After reading a few Oliver Sacks books, it’s hard for me to believe that a personality that can disintegrate so easily due to a brain injury or chemical disorder can survive after total brain death. It raises so many questions, like:

A 6-month old dies - do they go to heaven with the mind & experiences of a 6-month old?

Someone suffers a brain injury and has total amnesia and can no longer function in the world. Do they get their pre-injury personality back?

An amnesiac recovers physically and starts a whole new life as a new and different person. Who are they after death and which personality survives?

What about an autistic person or person with an extreme genetic mental disorder? Do they get the personality they would have developed had they been genetically/chemically “normal”?

If there is an eternal part of us (as an agnostic, I consider the jury out on that until I cross the finish line), I can’t see needing to take anything along to the other side unless it is for learning purposes.

22

Excellent points, lucie. Of course, none of those tought questions can by themselves preclude the survival of personality beyond death.

I wonder if celestina has spoken to any deceased infants. Or persons whose demise was brought on by a catastrophic (and, for a moment, personality-altering) brain injury.

–Grump “I have a splitting head-- ugh!” y

23

Excellent points, lucie. Of course, none of those tought questions can by themselves preclude the survival of personality beyond death.

I wonder if celestina has spoken to any deceased infants. Or persons whose demise was brought on by a catastrophic (and, for a moment, personality-altering) brain injury. Like, say, from a falling piano or, if you will, anvil.

–Grump “I have a splitting head-- ugh!” y

24

If you only look at this issue from the reference that only personality and the mind exists and spirit does not, then, yes, it would raise tough questions.

My little 19 month old grandson, Dawson, crossed over three months ago. His body suffered from a very rare form of brain cancer called pineoblastoma. I can provide what my daughter relayed to me when Dawson visited her.

She felt his presence, not like she was once again holding him, but that he was holding her… every part of her was surrounded by him, comforting her, and he was completely at peace. He remained with her for about ten minutes.

We do believe that spirit exists and that that is the essence of each individual. Dawson affirmed this. What limitations may exists within an earthly body do not exist outside of it in regard to one’s spirit.

25

I should know better than to get into this.

Edlyn, I’m glad something happened to make you feel better. That’s not being facaetious. I personally feel that your daughter’s experience could have been brought on by what must have been very traumatic experience, as her psyche’s way of bandaging itself. No harm done, but no evidence either.

But to me this is all about answering the wrong question. We don’t know. We can’t know. And yet we continue to chase our tails trying to come up with something that will make us feel better, knowing all the while that it’s at best something we agree to tell each other in exchange for hearing it back again.

To me (and don’t take this as gospel - I am one of those who is willing to admit I’m not qualified to write one) the problem is not “what’s out there?” The real problem is “can I deal with not knowing?”

Certainly there are things I believe. I confess to an abiding faith in the First Law of Thermodynamics. I agree with lucie in that there just ain’t no reason to believe that you’ll retain a continuation of your current ego past the death of the body. I can see some fun in the idea, but sorry, no evidence. Of course the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, so it is possible that the ego could continue - just not through any means currently available to understanding.

My current reasoning leads me this far: my body is made up of matter, matter is made of energy, energy cannot be destroyed, my personality is an accrual of my experiences, my brain is equipped to look out - not in, as my cells cooperate for extended survival and gratification the result looks a lot like a personality.

But there is no reason to expect that I’ll hang with Cuba Gooding Jr. on the Other Side and splash paint on my clothes. I believe we do go on - but not as anything we are currently equipped to understand. Null data. No reason to worry.

The idea of one’s personality not surviving in a form understandable to the current ego is pretty terrifying. But since I couldn’t shake it, my answer to myself had to be, “Get over it.” For me, my personal answer was not to pick up more baggage - it was to drop the baggage I was already carrying. Lighten up.

We don’t know, we can’t know - but we can deal with not knowing. If there is anything past the flatline it could be great. But all we really have to go on leads back to this: focus on the real world, do what seems good, and quit eating the wrapper.

26

Thee Gumpy said:
“I wonder if celestina has spoken to any deceased infants. Or persons whose demise was brought on by a catastrophic (and, for a moment personality-altering) brain injury.”

No, I haven’t, but if I ever do, I’ll let you know what I find out. However, I suspect that the strongest part of the personality (the part we’ve had and developed the longest or that we identify the most with) especially in an infant or in someone who’s suffered from a personality-altering brain injury would survive. Why should what for a moment altered someone’s brain cancel out who they were for their entire lives? And when you think about it, babies do exhibit personalities from the moment they’re born. Some are quiet, some are fussy . . . Maybe this is what would survive, or maybe there are even more complex aspects to infant personalities that we can’t comprehend because they do not have the language we speak to express it to us.

I believe Edlyn’s story that his deceased grandson comforted his daughter. Unlike Screwtape, I don’t believe this was a product of her imagination, a hallucination, and therefore her way of coping with the loss. When I lost my father, I had a similar experience, just a sense of being wrapped in love and warmth. He knew that I was devastated by his death and wanted to reassure me that he was okay. I didn’t hallucinate his presence.

Screwtape, of course there’s no evidence for any of the experiences I related. At this point in human evolution, no psychologist could ever design an experiment to test visitations from the dead and get it past an ethics committee–correct me if I’m wrong if this has been the case–so I think you’re correct in asking can we live with the fact that at least by the scientific method we operate with now we’ll not be able to know about the afterlife. And I don’t mind if people discount what I say I’ve experienced since I can’t prove it scientifically. I’m cool with what I’ve experienced, and I personally can live without definitive statistical proof to validate it.

You make an excellent point that we should focus on developing ourselves into the best human beings we can in the here and now because that is something we can control. But I think that once you die, it’s just another level. You go on developing your personality on another plane of existence. At least that’s what I have surmised in my contact with the dead.

I think we all have the ability to communicate with the dead, if we want to. However, we should be cautious in our approach because there are evil personalities out there looking for prey. If you encounter them, you must have the strength of mind to tell them to go away. It has been my experience that they do.

27

Celestina, I think we may be miscommunicating on a couple points. As I read the OP, we are assuming some sort of existance after death and debating whether a distinct personality continues. I was approaching this from a position of , okay, assuming some part of us lives on after death, I do not see a reason to believe our discreet personalities live on due to the way our personalities develope. I know I my own personality has radically changed over the course of my life, so which one is really me? Which one do I get when I die?

Since our personalities are created largely by the sum of our experiences, the point I was making in my earlier post was what happens when a personality has not had time to develope (as in the case of an infant) or has entirely disintegrated due to an injury or chemical disorder). In the latter case I am speaking not of a fatal incident but one which can leave a person alive for decades but with a severly altered personality.

For instance, a young woman lives a pretty normal, average life for 17 years and has an outgoing, pleasant personality, a wide variety of interests, and a generally sanguine outlook on life. At 18, some genetic trigger goes off, altering the chemistry of her brain and suddenly turning her into a violent, paranoid, withdrawn person for the next 40 years. Which personality survives death?

Whether there is anything after this life is a whole different debate, and not one I would get into because there is nothing you can say about it other than “I believe”, “I do not believe”, or “It doesn’t matter whether I believe or not until I get there”.

28

lucie, I was just responding to thee gumpy and screwtape. If I got off-track with them, sorry. I get sidetracked easily. :slight_smile:

To respond to you, I think that we take whatever we need of our personalities to the next level to continue the learning process there. In your example of the 18 year old who suddenly becomes a paranoid for the rest of her life, she could take both, or she could take whichever personality she identifies strongest with. It could well be that she would identify strongest with the personality she had for the first 18 years of her life because she wants to develop it more. It could well be she identifies more with the paranoid personality she had because she wants to understand it/control it more. With the infant, I’d imagine it would take whatever personality it has at the moment of death to develop it more on the next level. It’s up to the individual to decide what s/he needs to learn on the next level. Of course, I can’t prove this, but it makes the most sense to me.

29

Actually, I was arguing against the continuation of any kind of consciousness after death. I’m not so sure I’m willing, for purposes of this thread, to limit myself to granting an afterlife and simply question whether there is a continuity of personality from one “form” to the next.

I’m surprised this hasn’t been stated yet: “The odds of personality surviving death are about the same as the odds of 60 m.p.h. surviving a car crash.” (Not sure about the attribution.)

Screwtape mentioned the First Law of Thermodynamics – I once heard G. Gordon Liddy use that as an argument for an afterlife. “The life-force can’t just disappear,” sayeth the Convicted One, “the energy must be conserved.” Uh, 'fraid not, G. Consciousness is sustained (and as lucie points out, shaped) by the body & brain. Without a body, there is no reason to think that any consciousness (or “spirit”) remains.

–Grump “just a bit of underdone potato” y

P.S. Sorry about the multi-posting.

30

I hope you weren’t under the impression that Mr. Liddy and myself were saying the same thing. I do not argue for the presevation of the individual identity. I do not argue against it. I argue against assumptions based upon no evidence.

31

Of course we keep our personalities. Otherwise we’d all be alike, and there would be no need for separate personalities in our earthly life.

32

Um… for the record, Edlyn is a woman. I should know. I married her. (smile)

33

Didn’t mean to imply any linkage between yourself and G. Gordon. Your reference to thermodynamics simply reminded me of his specious argument on this topic.

Ma Parrot…

Good point, unless there is no afterlife, of course. Your observation that unique personalities in this life indicate uniqueness “beyond” begs the question of whether there is a “beyond.”

Unless everyone but me has already agreed to concede this point for the sake of argument. Carry on.

–Grump “concession stance” y

34

Kyomara wrote:

WHAT?!?!

This flies in the face of all established doctrine in every Christian church I’d ever heard of. Only people who commit NO sins get into heaven?! Whatever happened to Jesus “washing all your sins away”? Whatever happened to “forgiveness”?

Or in the sense that retarded people and people with frontal lobotomies are happier. Bleah.

35

Well, first off, I’m not at all sure I kept my personality after I graduated from High School. Got drafted, got married, had kids, lost it all. I’m fairly sure no one who knew me before that would be all that familiar with who I was when I was locked up in the nut house. After I left there, my personality changed a fair bit, as well.

So, on the whole, I imagine Death, Resurection, the Divine Presence of the God of all the Universe, and the Hosts of Heaven, along with the endless expanses of Eternity could very well have some small effect on my personality.

It could happen.

36

Grumpy - the first sentence of the OP states that the question is for all those who believe in an afterlife, so I am assuming that that is understood for the sake of this discussion. I mean, if you don’t at least accept is as the necessary part of the “If…then…” pemise, then the entire subject becomes moot. As I state before, I am an agnostic, but for the sake of this debate I’ll go along with the assumption of some sort of an afterlife.

Tris - that was one of the points I was trying to make earlier. Which personality? The one I had at 17 (shudder), the one I have now, or the one I may have after 25 years of galloping senility? Do I get to choose?

I’ll concede the possibility of an afterlife, but in lieu of a more convincing argument for maintaining your personality than a vague “because I believe it”, there’s nothing to talk about.

Regarding baseball, I’m afraid there won’t be any organized sports in my heaven, due to the lack of corporate sponsorship.

37

Do you accept the premise that you chose the one you have now? I think you did choose your personality. I think you were heavily influenced by other people, and events, and environment. I cannot think why that same set of conditions does not describe the afterlife.

Of course death, resurrection, and eternity are a fairly big set of circumstance compared to, getting a driver’s license, not getting a Prom date, and graduation. The influence of those things could be a bit stronger than the “real” world. I also happen to think God will probably have some influence on us as well. I can’t offer anything in the way of evidence, but simply what I believe.

38

Lucie,
No corporate sponsorship in Heaven?! I think you underestimate Bill Gates’ pull with The Big Guy. All the philanthropy has to be for some reason.

39

This is just bad logic. Your conclusion does not truly derive from your premises. Sin may be a potential consequence of Free Will, but it is not an inevitable consequence; only if it were inevitable would the logic of your sylogism hold up.

Looking at this from another angle, you make the mistake of think of Heaven as some kind of place or location, where sin and free will either do or do not exist. Please keep in mind Mephistopheles’ reply when asked how he could leave Hell to visit Earth at the summons of Dr. Faustus: “This is Hell, nor am I out of it.”

The point is that Heaven and Hell are not places, as such; they are states of being. To “be in Heaven” is to be in a state of grace; to be in Hell is to be cut off from the grace of God. To sin is to choose to make that transition from grace to damnation. (The whole myth of Lucifer’s fall is based around this notion.) So someone in Heaven does have the Free Will to choose to sin, but when he does, he (or she – if we assume angels have sexes) is no longer in Heaven. So in that sense, there is no sin in Heaven.

40

The following dialogue has already taken place:

I’m going to be really picky (that’ll make a change) and define some terms. In fact I don’t even have to… guys, you agree, on this point at least. Jesus washes your sins away. You are forgiven. You are sinless. Voila.

It is not impossible to argue that you are sinless, but Neil Anderson does it much better than I. I am sinless here and now, even though I may continue to - ahem - look, feel and act like a sinner. I have in fact become a new creation, and am liberated from my old ‘sin nature’. How far I choose to move in that liberation is up to me - the idea is that I now have to work on not believing the lies. And so on.

Ah, phooey. I promise this makes sense. I have enough trouble getting myself to hang onto it. When you catch it, though, it feels great.

Which brings me to my second annoying point: it’s about revelation, really, innit? I mean, any proper experience of afterlife is a mystical one, and you just can’t properly discuss the guts of mystical experiences unless you’ve had them. Sure, you can explore them as an intellectual exercise, which is what I do in my theology course, but in reality, our ideas of logic really don’t get much of a look-in - they are considered throughout to be, and indeed call themselves, MYSTERIES.