The Right Thing
I'm a great fan of the British actor, writer, comedian and just generally tweedy person Stephen Fry. I recently came across a quite an interesting interview with Fry at Big Think, a web site I might want to have a closer look at. One part I find particularly worth underlining is the following:
The most important philosophy, I think, is that, even if it isn't true, you must absolutely assume there is no afterlife. You cannot for one second, I think, abrogate the responsibility of believing that this is it. Because if you think you're going to have an eternity in which you can talk to Mozart and Schopenhauer on a cloud and learn stuff and, you know, really get to grips with knowledge and understanding, and say you won't bother now — it's a terrible, terrible mistake. May be that there is an afterlife and that I'll look incredibly stupid, but at least I'm going to have had a crammed pre-afterlife, a crammed life. So, to me, the most important thing is, as Kipling to it, to (…) fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds' worth of distant run. So, that's all I'm saying, I suppose, it's that there's no point wasting time … being lazy