Analysis of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives - Book Report/Review Example

Teacher Analysis Essay of Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives The book is a good read and sometimes it could be amazing to realize the different ways the author has concocted the manners on what our heaven would be. In immersing in the book, religion’s idea of what the afterlife is virtually faded as we as our concept of heaven is not imposed on us by institutions, religions, societies, families, or any other forces that condition our mind to believe. In Eagleman’s afterlife, our lives are played before us and disproved our centric perception that we are the center of the universe. Eagleman surmised that God did not create the cosmos to serve us nor hears our grievances about how awful things are because we are just a byproduct of creation. Eagleman also corrected the notion of God’s gender and this translates to the ambivalence of the universe. Eagleman however is optimistic that the afterlife will be generous because we will be given a choice of who we would like to be. The book begun with the phrase “In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments share a quality are grouped together (3)”. This is a sort of cataloguing our life and to make us realize how we lived our life. This is an intriguing opening for a book that talked about after life because it makes the reader think and examined their own lives. It is like telling the living that someday how we should live our life today because it will be played before you us when we die so we better make it a good thing to watch. This opening also opens a lot of possibilities of how the afterlife should be. Of course Eagleman’s book are only analysis and wanderings and we will never know its validity until we go to the afterlife. It may be just an existential “what if” or an excursion of how will it be like in the afterlife. And if there is any consolation to David Eagleman’s dissertation in his work “Sum: forty tales from the afterlives”, is that it affirms that there is life after our existence here on earth removing the fearful idea that everything ceases when we die. Thus this begs the questions of what are going to do with our lives having known that indeed after life exists. One of these existential excursion of Eagleman’s work is the negation of what we are thinking along – that we are the center of the universe and that all creation revolves around us. Eagleman however did not think so. We are in fact just a byproduct of the bigger scheme of things and not even at the center of it. Our reaction may vary but this idea is of Eagleman that man (or woman) is not an intended creation but rather is just a byproduct (or perhaps even an accident) of creation. Eagleman surmised that God did not create the cosmos to serve us nor hears our grievances about how awful things are. To quote Eagleman, “In point of fact, He unintentionally knocked over the first domino by creating a palette of atoms with different shapes. Electron clouds bonded, molecules bloomed, proteins embraced, and eventually cells formed and learned how to hang on to one another like lovebirds” (92). We are all left to choose of what we will make out of this life and it would serve us well to leave God out of it who is not concerned with our everyday problems. The closest we are to becoming an intended creation of God "Unlike the other animals, who experienced each day like the one before, Man cared, sought, yearned, erred, coveted, and ached - just like God Himself." (18). Also to correct the notion of God, God as described by Eagleman does not have to be a he but can also be a she as narrated in the section Egalitaire. God reflects the creation of being ambivalent such as good and evil, he and she. Part of this ambivalence is creation which includes man and a woman who are also ambivalent. Meaning, that we are all capable of doing good and bad. Now comes the tough part of which almost all religion tries to answer is who could go to heaven who would not. To come up with the decision, multitude of factors had to be considered in the decision making. So God in Eagleman’s narration automated the eternal decisions he or she had to make and only realized the complexity of such undertaking and eventually removed the plug in rage. No answers were posed no answer only sharing their misery and only to treat the creation which includes us with equality. Eagleman however is not that pessimistic in concocting his idea about afterlife he may be a negativist in saying that we are a mere byproduct of the cosmos but he compensated by being generous in the section of Descent of Species where Eagleman proposed that the afterlife will be kinder to us compared to this life. The afterlife will in fact be generous to us because we will be given the choice to be whoever we wanted to me. This reminds of Buddhist Karma except that in Eagleman’s Descent of Species there are no rules that one has to improve his or her karma in the next life bur rather we are left to choose whatever we would like in the afterlife. We can be who would like to be either to be a philosopher, celebrity, rock star or even a royalty. This section of Eagleman’s work must be understood beyond the text because is written in the allegory. It is written to realize that we always have choices of who we would like to be and that we do not have to wait for a next life, we can do it now in our present lifetime and make good choices to better our life. Eagleman himself proposed that life is just a byproduct of decisions and probably one does not need an afterlife to realize that. This is evident in this passage that “When you die, you feel as though there were some subtle change, but everything looks approximately the same” (8). It meant that we do not have to wait to die to avail of the choice that will be available to us. We can exercise that choice now in this lifetime because “everything looks approximately the same” anyway. Work Cited Eagleman, David. Sum: forty tales from the afterlives. New York: Pantheon Books, 2009. Print. Read More