I can see how what I wrote might read like I was saying it doesn’t matter if I become free now, in 5 minutes, tomorrow or next year with the semantic trick that “It is always just now anyway”.
That is of course false – although time is still, things do happen and this organism is alive and its life-span is finite. And with that in mind yes, of course, the sooner the better!
But I was writing it more like – ok the “later” might be something like, say, a year from now. That is too far ‘into the future’ – one might say better to do it “sooner”, like, say, tomorrow.
But putting it off until ‘tomorrow’ is the same as putting it off until next year – it’s not ‘tomorrow’ now, and in fact it will never be ‘tomorrow’ since when tomorrow comes it will actually be today still .
Ok and if ‘tomorrow’ is too far away then what about ‘later today’? Well it’s the same thing… or even ‘in five minutes’. These are all in the future which is not actual now. So in that sense the ‘sooner’ of “in five minutes” is equal in a way to the ‘later’ of “in a year” – because neither are actual.
Maybe if I put it like this. If I always aim to self-immolate “soon” then it seems it will never happen, because ‘soon’ is always in the future. Rather than that, it seems more that it’s a matter of always aiming to do it “right now” whenever I can, whenever I have the opportunity, and this is what will deliver the goods – rather than always aiming to do it “soon”. Aiming to always do it “right now” is what will actually allow it to happen sooner (as in with fewer rotations of the Earth happening), while aiming to always do it “soon” will postpone it further.
Thank you, the point is well-taken . Especially the note that there is no standing still here, just forward or backward. Forward is clearly the preferable option
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. Especially the note that there is no standing still here, just forward or backward. Forward is clearly the preferable option 