Man, I completely missed the point of the thread in talking about Rei.
Random thoughts I have... let's see...
The technological singularity. Nanotechnology. Biotechnology. If I am teleported, am I the same person at the other end? If I am deconstructed and reconstructed, completely identical, have I died? The prospect of eternal life. How to reconcile being a member of the species which has committed the Holocaust, but has also created stuff like
this. Am I good? Am I evil? Are people? Can we be classed into that, or do we all have the capacity for all of it?
Look at
this. Ten thousand galaxies, estimated. Billions of stars in each, on average. Upwards of a trillion in some. A
trillion fracking stars. We've spent hundreds of thousands of years on one single planet orbiting one single star. We don't know everything about THIS place yet. This single planet. There are around two hundred billion stars in our galaxy. Two. Hundred. Billion. And there are a hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe. And people say existence could become boring? No. It might be right now for some, but that's because we're only just starting to open our eyes and seeing the most brilliant glorious light, and right now it's blinding. But I want to live forever. Forever. I want to visit every planet, every moon, around every star. I want to meet every species, hear all their music, read all their books, watch all their movies, experience the arts we didn't even create on Earth.
It's so big. It's
so big. It's beautiful beyond measure. I stare at that image of the Hubble Deep Field. A single pixel can be a whole galaxy. I can't begin to imagine how many lives I must be looking at in that picture. How impossibly many civilizations have risen and fallen, how much has been built and destroyed. How can I reconcile that I am part of a universe like this? Where atrocities must have been committed which make the Holocaust look inconsequential? Where creations so profound must exist that it would break my heart, literally change my life, just to know of them? And to know that I will play a part in this, I can create, I can destroy.
I exist. And I live every day, as much as I possibly can, overjoyed at the simple, ridiculous, impossible fact that a pattern of meat and energy
exists. That I feel. I think. I choose. I can reach out and touch the wall with my fingertip and I can feel it, I can feel all the weird little wallpaper bumps. I can interact with the entirity of this unimaginably, colossally huge universe.
And that's assuming that what we can see is all there is. What if there are other planes of reality? If this entire universe is just a bubble in an infinite froth? What if there is a stage above the universe as massive as a galaxy is to a star?
They looked around, in the midst of an undreamt splendour.