The collective afterlife
Samuel Scheffler · Death and the Afterlife · 2013
Imagine that you will live a normal life until you die, but that thirty days later the Earth will be destroyed, and every human being with it. Or imagine that, overnight, no more children are born: humanity will die out with the last living generation. In both cases nothing changes for you personally: you will not suffer more, you will die on the expected date. Only one thing disappears: the assurance that others will live after you.
If humanity were to die out shortly after your death, would what you do keep the same value for you?
What it does in the debate
Raises the problem of Temporal orientation
If humanity died out after us, what would what we build and hand on still be worth?
Raises the problem of The meaning of life
Does the meaning of our activities depend on humanity's survival more than on our own?