[user104658]

Originally Posted by Livia

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.” Albert Einstein.

Energy. It's what makes you LT and me Livia. What happens to it when we die? Einstein says energy cannot be created or destroyed, so what happens to it?

If you're buried it's worm food if you're cremated it's kindling.

My pondering is stuck on a central point when it comes to the idea that we can meaningfully exist as anything resembling the same "person" after the death of our physical body; we know (for a fact) that brain injury (trauma, tumors) or chemicals (drugs) can completely change a personality (temperament etc.), remove memories, or both... and what are we as a person if not a combination of our personality and our memories? And if something as simple as a head injury can fundamentally alter those things... hothw can it make sense that anything resembling "the person" can exist when the physical body is completely gone. Even if "some form of energy" remains, a "soul" I suppose you could call it, such a huge part of who a person is is bound to the physical structure of their brain, the balance of hormones from one moment to the next that it couldn't possibly be a "personality" resembling the human being that once existed. And if that entity is nothing like them as they were as a person then is it "them" at all?

I guess in short, traumatic brain injury, strokes, personality-altering drugs, lobotomy... these things make me strongly doubt that there is a "fundamental self" that's separate to our physical bodies. Those things wouldn't be able to change that. But they do.