Up@dawn 2.0

Thursday, February 13, 2020

Hitchens on the cost of immortality

Anticipating Heather's report...

Time is Still a Mystery to ‘Einstein’s Dreams’ Author
“Einstein’s Dreams,” now translated into 30 languages, has become a pop-science landmark. The book was at the bedside of the writer Christopher Hitchens when he died 2012. He quoted from it at the end of his final book — “Mortality,” a memoir — in a chapter describing a version of time in which n.obody dies. As a result, the generations pile up, carping, criticizing and advising, and no one ever comes into their own. “Such is the cost of immortality,” Mr. Hitchens wrote. “No person is whole. No person is free.” nyt

(Alan Lightman is a physicist-cum-humanist literateur, and a native Tennessean.)
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Hitch on meaning
"A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so." Christopher Hitchens

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