Attending a philosopher's lecture at Studium Generale @ Maastricht.
Humanity is caught between longing for eternity and the reality of our fragile, fleeting existence. In his acclaimed book "Oneindigheid: een filosofische gids", Leiden philosopher Victor Gijsbers explores if the universe is infinite and how we should live within it. He questions whether endless space holds copies of us and if immortality would truly improve our lives—or prove far more agonizing than our finite mortality. Gijsbers suggests endless time might strip our choices of consequence and become a psychological burden.
Pushing this further, 19th-century thinker Louis-Auguste Blanqui argued in L'éternité par les astres that finite elements in an infinite cosmos mean every life, and every form of immortality, repeats itself identically across the stars. Does this infinite loop rob us of unique meaning, or does it give our finite moments ultimate weight?
At the end of the lecture, reference was made to mathematics and infinitity and what this tells us about reality.
True to tradition, I naturally had to snap a selfie at the lecture to document my own tiny, fleeting moment against this vast cosmic backdrop! Some thinking...would I want to live forever, or does my mortality define my value?
