Monthly Connections March, The Value of the Soul

I thought that one of the more interestings we discussed in class this month was whether or not there is anything that any of us would give our souls for. Like everyone else said, I've always thought that I should hope that one day there would be someone that I would give my soul for. For instance, I should hope that if I were to become a mother one day, I'd willingly give my soul for the well-being of my children. However, like someone also pointed out in class, it doesn't really make sense to do that if I'm subjecting myself to eternal damnation for people who will eventually die.

So after much thought, the only thing that I see worth giving my soul for would be to ensure that not everyone would die in some kind of horrific catastrophic event. But I only thought of one situation where this would be relevant and it isn't that feasible. But if something was going to happen to make the world end and the only way to stop it would be for me to give my soul up, I would do it, because I believe living is the greatest gift anyone could ever get and I should think that everyone would do the same thing if they were in the same situation.

I can't think of a material thing that I would give my soul for, or even a thing that would only benefit me. Like in Faust or Dorian Gray, I don't think that I would be willing to give my soul for some kind of demon servant or eternal youth. But eternal youth is kind of a romanticized idea, there are many books with that underlying theme such as Tuck Everlasting, The Twilight Series, and The Named Series. Would I be willing to live forever with Edward Cullen? Yes, of course. But I think that this whole concept has something that Faust and Dorian Gray didn't have. In each of the other books, the idea is to live with someone forever. And on top of that the main characters in two of the three do decide to live for forever with their beloved. So maybe I would give my soul if the person that I loved would give his as well and we could be together forever. Fortunately no one would ever have to make a decision like that. Also, immortality isn't the only thing there is to giving one's soul.

However, going along with that idea, I once remember having a conversation with some girl about heaven. She was really religious, and I'm not all that religious so it was a new idea that was coming to my attention. Anyway, she told me that when we die and go to heaven, we spend eternity there. The next thing that I said was that I couldn't imagine being in some place forever even if it was heaven. So if Heaven and Hell really do exist, everyone is going to spend eternity somewhere anyway unless we get reincarnated.

So, stepping away from the whole living forever idea, I don't really believe that any person's soul is truly worth any material thing. Now, you said that you would be (or might be) willing to give your soul for total knowledge or complete knowledge well basically to be all-knowing. And this made me think of an article I read about the lady who went and killed professors at the University of Alabama-Huntsville. It talked about how she was Harvard educated and a genius. Then it said that she was so smart that she had trouble relating to other people. Also the book Flowers for Algernon. Charly becomes so smart that he has a hard time relating to people as well. So I think that it's kind of tough to want to know absolutely everything because if you did, you would be hanging out with members of MENSA and still having a hard time trying to dumb it down. It would be like constantly socializing with disabled people or babies.

Also what if you truly did know everything? Could you stand to live here on Earth where there are so many people who screw things up and do things the wrong way? There are things that even an all-knowing person wouldn't be able to fix. But if you could fix them by becoming president or some sort of emperor of the world, is that truly what you would want to do and if it was, do you think you could ever actually accomplish that? The solution may be something so far fetched that many people would think that you are insane and if it is still a democratic place, you wouldn't win. But if you could turn the world into one entire dictatorship would you do that? Would it be worth taking away the power of the people in order to accomplish making the world a better place? Or would you instead give up on society altogether with the realization that no matter how hard you try, the world is not going to change for the better or that it isn't worth fighting for and instead isolate yourself or make your own smaller society with like-minded people or atleast the people who trust that you are indeed all-knowing? And if you were to decide that none of it was worth it and you wanted to committ suicide could you do that knowing that you have no soul? That if Heaven and Hell do exist, a soul-less person probably isn't going to Heaven. Or you would prbably be more interested in the education of the world. But what is it that you teach your students? All the faults of this imperfect world? All of the faults of every single person to ever write anything that was ever published? Or some sort of essential question that you would know the exact answer to. You would know the exact answer, you could tell us, or you could read our papers and find all of the false conclusions led to by misinformation. Maybe this would grow to be so boring for you that you instead decide to write a book and lecture part time to college students who aren't able to comprehend a single idea that you have.

So anyway, there isn't really anything real that I could imagine giving my soul for.