For instance was I dead in the year 1000, as dead as I will be in the year 3000? What is the difference between the two states, if any? One could say I suppose that there’s a difference in potentiality, that I had the potential for life in 1000. But doesn’t that potentiality also apply in 3000 as it’s within the realm of possibility that my atoms may come together again at some point and I would be me once more, however unlikely that is? Or again some advanced civilization in the future might somehow for their own reasons may recreate my generation. Again unlikely, but possible.
What I’m trying to get at, albeit clumsily, is whether my conditions in 1000 and 2000 will be in every way identical from the point of view of the universe. Somehow as each day in common with us all I approach nearer to death (I’m fine but I’m almost 69) it would be kind of comforting to know that I’m only going somewhere I’ve been before. Almost like going home.
Answers from the religious are welcome too but may of course be inapplicable to the question which is couched in non-religious terms.
After your death, you have a legacy. Maybe you have children, which would be the most obvious legacy. But even if you don’t, you’ve doubtless affected the lives of many others in some way or another.
Now, a thousand years from now, that legacy might (probably) be extremely diluted, to the point that it can no longer be identified, but it’ll still be there, and in fact there’s some sense in which it can never truly diminish. The people you influenced will in turn have influenced others, and in ways subtly different than they would have without your influence, and so on.
On the other hand, the atoms that existed before you were here will not be changed any by the fact of your existence, and will be the same after your death.
To you as an individual, no, there is no difference.
And that’s the main thing to remember, because you can only perceive reality as an individual.
Somehow, I always found that thought comforting when pondering my own mortality; that the years I will miss after I am dead are no more a pity to lose than the years I missed before I was born.
You synthesized a whole bunch of useful proteins and other chemicals, and the worms thank you.
But, yeah, after 1,000 years, you’re pretty much reduced to the most elementary molecules.
But Chronos has a lovely point: in addition to making proteins, you’ve made a lot of information. You posted on SDMB, and that alone differentiates your distant past from your distant future. (And…he’s also right that this information degrades over time. Who, today, reads the letters of George Washington’s shoemaker?)
98% of the atoms in your body will be replaced in one year and that suggests we are totally replaced many times over, and any atoms we have now that were in our body on the day we were born are almost certainly back for their second or third appearance.
