Eternal life through others' thoughts


Eternal life through others' memories of you.

A lot of people seem to believe that after you die, you live on in other people's thoughts and memories of you. When they think of you, you are alive for the duration, until they forget again. You live in their heads, in their minds.

This idea is completely incoherent and absurd.

This means that, while alive, you should try to infect as many people with you as possible. But even so, everyone will eventually forget you given enough time.

Also, if this were true, I should feel more alive when other people think about me; there should be a correlation. But there is none. Also, it would be jarring after death to keep becoming alive (resurrection?) every time someone thinks of me, and then die again when they stop thinking of me. And surely I would notice that I am alive less and less often; this would be terrifying not knowing if this time was to be the last time that anyone ever thinks of me again.

And if there is a global civilizational collapse with massive loss of life, this means there would be fewer people to think of me. (Unless somehow, people after death can still think of others, making them alive again. But then why can't I think of myself after death to make myself alive again?)

So even when my dogs think about me, I should feel more alive.

In other words, this idea is false. When other people think of or remember me, that is them, not me. No matter how dead I am.