Immortal?

Having a belief in the immortality of one's soul or the immortality of the DNA of humans (that your seed can live forever through your children and theirs and theirs and theirs) is very powerful in every person's life.

A belief in immortality as a soul and/or one's DNA is necessary for a people to really flourish here on earth and beyond in the future. Otherwise, mortality kicks in and one can become very cynical even to the point of committing suicide.

So, expansiveness needs to be cultivated to even wish to live another day. Having a cause of something to believe in, something to look forward to, something to live for gives hope when there might be none otherwise.

For example, here in the U.S. people tend to be much more materialistic than people in the rest of the world. I think it is because we have always been a "Can Do" nation. Everyone else who came here either was 'can do' or they just died. There wasn't the support that Europe could bring 100 or more years ago. So people here only had the pioneer spirit to keep on going. I met people like this a lot in the 1950s when I was a child who remembered still living and growing up in the 1800s still.

But, somewhere between the 1950s and 2007 we all sort of became a lot more fat and lazy as a nation and so "The Great Recession" was unbearable hard for many and has created the highest rates of suicide (especially for men over 50) (48% above anytime since I was born). Even though the 1930s were about 10 or more times more difficult than 2007 until the present.

I think we just got too used to having easy lives that my parents and grandparents never saw until the 1950s and 1960s and often told us growing up then how spoiled and ungrateful we all were and how easy and good we had it then.

If you can contemplate 25% unemployment for a moment like Greece has where Government is faltering and social systems have completely collapsed, that was what it was like here in the U.S. during the 1930s. At it's worst national unemployment around 2008 or 2009 was 10% which is less than half of what it was in the 1930s. So, what we just went through (and are still going through job wise) is nothing compared to what my parents and grandparents saw in the 1930s.

So, do you believe your souls are immortal or do you believe your DNA is immortal? Doing so might just keep you alive for your kids sake if nothing else.