If one was aware that one was re-living it then the continual sense of deja vu might be irritating. If, the question were simply if one would like exactly the same experience again then I'd have no objection, but, what would be the point? After all, I'd simply end up in exactly the same state I am in now. If the question is just the old one of 'would I wish to change anything' if I re-lived it, then, yes, as a Groundhog Day style experiment it might be fun to try out a few alternative universes, but, just for fun, I wouldn't wish to change the path that got me to here at all.
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The happiest people on earth are those few fortunates who seem to be in a state of mild, stable hypomania. - David Horrobin 'The Madness of Adam and Eve' (How schizophrenia shaped humanity)
Nietzsche seemed to think that one's willingness to undergo the eternal return was a good way of assessing the condition of one's soul, vis-a-vis happiness presumably.
ReplyDelete"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."
[The Gay Science, §341]
It's a good question - asked more entertainingly in Groundhod day.
ReplyDeleteSurely Epicurus' point about death applies. If you are going to live the same life multiple times, you'd have to be unaware of this (or it would, by simply this difference, not be the same life), if unaware, then it matters not whether it's the first or the millionth time through, they're the same. So it is neither a cause for delight, or disappointment.
Nietzsche was, as so often turns out to be the case, wrong. Wrong in an interesting way, of course, but that's him too.