Many different cultures have their own ideas about the afterlife. Some believe that there is both a heaven and a hell, and other's believe that once you stop breathing in this world, your soul disappears. At any rate the beliefs of a culture can and will ultimately effect not only you thinking, but your way of life. In Antonio T. de Nicolas' book Habits of Mind, there are two different beliefs about the afterlife. One is Plato's the Myth of Er and the other is Cicero's Scripio's Dream.
             The Myth of Er is Plato's ideal of "rebuilding the present through the technologies of bringing the dead back to life and keeping memory alive" (Nicolas 119). The belief about the afterlife in this story is that every man is punished or rewarded according to what the did on earth. Er said while his soul was "detached" from his body he came to a mysterious place with "two openings in the earth; they were near together and over against them were two other opening in the heaven above" (Plato, Nicolas 127). He saw people entering and leaving both heaven and the earth below. Once descended, they gathered in a meadow where they embraced and conversed with past loved ones. Er reported that for every wrong one does, they suffer tenfold. As for the people who have done immense wrong doing, they are cast into hell forever.
             If I lived during a time where the beliefs about the afterlife were the same as in Plato's Myth of Er, my life would be very different. I think that it is somewhat comforting to know that your memories are saved and that you will get to see your loved ones again, after you do your time that is. In this belief, it is said that you are cast into the earth to suffer for you wrong doings, but once you have done your "time" you leave the earth below. I think that I would try to do less wrong and more good, more than now of course, if I knew I was going to journey thro...