Or does it?
I know we were once nothing, but it is still terrifying and depressing to me to think about returning to this. In fact, as of late, I’ve been unable to not think about it: the loss of all experience and all memories of everything, forever. All the good times we had, and will have, with anyone or anything ever will totally annihilate into nothingness. All our efforts will amount to nothing because the thoughtless void is ultimately what awaits everything in the end.
The only argument against this would have to be supernatural, like another cause of the Big Bang or somehow proof of reincarnation, but if my consciousness won’t exist for me to experience it, then what does it matter either way?
There is no comfort in Hell, either. The anvil of death weighing down, infinitely, on all values and passions is becoming unbearable for me, so I could really use any potentially helpful thoughts about this matter.
There’s no use in fearing the inevitable. It will come, whether you like it or not, and no amount of fighting can stop it. Fearing it only makes you focus on some indeterminate time in the future and lose sight of the now.
Do you fear the void before birth you emerged from?
Same shit.
That’s a different situation because we hadn’t experienced life beforehand. Do you not value the memories of your own life experiences? It’s that loss that sucks.
Yeah, but by the same uncertainty, maybe you gain all dead people’s memories when you are submerged in the void? We all just go back into the pot, so to speak.
Not having to pay rent will feel pretty great too.
Embrace the void, like the womb it is. Safe, tranquil, forever at peace. Closest thing to a real heaven
There is a difference between knowing and feeling. Rest in the feeling of your life before birth. What do you feel?
Practice radical acceptance
There is no benefit in attaching ourselves to the suffering and rumination of that which cannot be changed. We practice radical acceptance in this instance because it, more than any other instance, is unchangeable. Allow yourself to feel the frustration, sadness, grief, anger, etc that you feel when you think about death but allow yourself to let the thoughts pass by rather than attaching to them. If you struggle with it (which of course you will, you’re only human) reflect any analyze your resistance to being able to accept.
It takes practice. There’s a lot more to it, I’m paraphrasing a lot. It’s worth reading about if you’re really struggling
From an uncertain genesis to a certain end. You do not remember being born, but you know someday that you will die. This is awareness. And there is some comfort in this.
In the past you have remembrance or memory. The things that you were or the things that happened to you. In the future you anticipate what could come, or what your hopes are. You make plans. And that’s fine. It’s part of the human condition. But the now is the only thing that is actually happening.
Seize this moment. This moment is where you are. This moment is where you live. Being kind to yourself, being kind to others, being a person that others would wish to be, if they were examining your present person.
To build the world, or at least your small part of it, in the way that you see fit is all that our tiny hands can do. And there is a certain satisfaction in that. To live moment to moment. And to build your station. And to build others stations around you. To empower yourself and others. These are the things that build satisfaction. Gratification. These things are real. And these things do not require anything of the past or future.
Eventually you can stretch this now into the whole of your life. And it will provide wholeness that is not dictated by any sort of belief. For belief is not necessary. Let me repeat. You do not need to believe in anything to have wholeness and fulfillment in your life. But it certainly helps to be kind to others for its own sake. For that is the rule that others will measure you on as well.
I hope that helps.
PS. If you dig on this kind of thing, look into stoicism.
These are the things that build satisfaction. Gratification. These things are real.
But gratification is ultimately just a series of chemical reactions. So you’re saying to merely dig into the chemicals? To be clear, I don’t fault you if your answer is “Yes” and even think that that’s the inevitable answer; it just seems less… valuable to me, if I couldn’t find a more accurate adjective.
I don’t think I’m looking for any particular belief but I guess I just wish that being kind to others (which, to clarify, I will almost certainly not just stop doing) mattered on a level more than just us wanting to do it for the chemicals, now that I’ve totally sunk into science’s observations of the material world being all that there is. Since I no longer believe that there is a higher power, I’ve concluded that we just do things for the feels, good or bad. And that seems… lame(? Or something) to me, but it appears like there is no other way to go about it. Morals don’t independently exist (there is no such objective thing as “justice,” etc.) and are just guided by hormones and chemicals evoking sympathy based on our experiences and subjective thoughts of what justice, happiness, peace, etc. even mean.
And then our memories of it all will end anyway. What a waste and tragedy.
Sorry for being such a sour worm. I do appreciate your response but all this thought is leading me to “seize the moment” and therefore procrastinate on doing my taxes versus playing games, etc.
But gratification is ultimately just a series of chemical reactions. So you’re saying to merely dig into the chemicals?
No. I mean I guess you could see it that way, and you could even do that, whether those chemicals be internal or external. But I think that’s oversimplifying. The satisfaction and gratification come from knowing. Knowing that what you are doing right now is something that you want to be doing. Not want in the I want a sandwich sort of way. Want in the I want what I’m doing now to be the thing that gives my experience a more complete and deep meaning sort of way.
I would quote here but it seems pedantic.
You speak of chemicals and hormones evoking emotions (sympathy was your word) based on some arbitrary morals that don’t exist. And I don’t think you’re wrong. But I think in this case you’re not oversimplifying you’re overcomplicating. Erm. Let me see if I can elucidate. I’m thinking this through right now so let me see if I can get it right…
Think of yourself as an ant. On a very big round hill with a whole bunch of other ants. You are Flagstaff the ant. You are part of a colony. I am monocle the ant. And we are discussing this in some sort of bizarre moderated telepathy that we call words. I think some things, you think some things, and these things that we think of are all controlled by our hormones and chemicals. Pathways of how we think are familiar routes for those neurons that fire. That’s how we have been conditioned to be who we are.
We make decisions based on that. Our identities are based on that. What make us up are our experiences. And what we decide to do with those experiences. Just like every previous experience from every entity that we have ever come in contact with. So it’s like we couldn’t have ended up anywhere else because that’s what we have decided to do. This conversation is what we’ve decided to do. This is the question of free will.
So if you zoom way out, I mean like way way out, all you see is the colony. Like Flagstaff and monocle don’t really exist, except that we do. You don’t give names to ants. It’s just ants. You look at an ant colony, and you think there’s ants. Yet all the ants are communicating in a somewhat similar fashion as to what we are.
Is it pointless? What the ants do? What we do? Maybe. But there is some amount of meaning in the question that you asked. Or at least we hope there is. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here answering it, and you wouldn’t be replying to my answer, and I wouldn’t be replying to your counterpoint.
Being good to yourself and others. Whatever that is and whatever chemicals that it produces, cause and effect and all that. We don’t need a higher power for that. We are the higher power, we are the colony.
Well that sounds really hokey and like a bunch of metaphysical horse crap. But I’ve re-edited this thing like 10 times and I have work in the morning at my factory job. So I have to let it go for now. Hope that helps.
Oh, what you typed isn’t crap, haha, and dang, you don’t have to prioritize this before some tough upcoming work! I’m not suddenly going to off myself upon having these thoughts (rather, I want to keep positive experiences going), so I’ll still be here to read—but I appreciate the care nonetheless.
Like Flagstaff and monocle don’t really exist, except that we do. You don’t give names to ants. It’s just ants.
I’d rebut that by saying that’s only because they all look identical to us, and their more basic form of organism limits them from exhibiting drastically different behavior as people can way more observably demonstrate. I don’t know if scientists have studied whether bugs can identify each other; perhaps they can. Perhaps even their sense of the passage of time is different from ours.
We don’t need a higher power for that.
This isn’t a matter of “need,” though; we basically can’t turn back to thoughts of a deity because of the massive logic defiance alone anyway, among other things. Rather, I would also raise uncertainty over this:
we are the colony.
I just don’t know about that. Sure, society makes us relatively much safer off than we otherwise probably would be without it, but we still very much have our own individual independence or else there wouldn’t be anywhere near as much social rebellion and harm done to others, from Luigi’s shooting to the auto-denied claims equally. We are a part of society and can either continue supporting it, trying to change it, or actively leaving it or even antagonizing it.
I just don’t see any overarching reasons to prioritize one or the other beyond:
- evolutionary altruism
- fear of discomfort
- feelings
In light of the eventual death of even society (that’s an assumption I’m making, I’ll concede, sure), one can’t claim to take any particular one-of-the-above-actions versus anything else… beyond merely wanting to do it or not. Anything else is a false sense of nonexistent moral superiority over the other possible actions/reactions. One only helps the colony/society because it makes one feel good, but death still ultimately obliterates all—and all values with it. I guess that is where the crux of my developing, reluctant philosophy lies.
So it’s like we couldn’t have ended up anywhere else because that’s what we have decided to do. This conversation is what we’ve decided to do. This is the question of free will.
The indeterminability posed by quantum physics—specifically quasars—would like to have a word with you. There is some interesting stuff here to suggest that bugs aren’t all instinct, either: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_Cognition
We all have a fundamental drive to avoid dying. Our awareness of this inevitability is in direct conflict with this. The solution is often a change in how you think about things and yourself.
My personal view is that I have something analogous to a soul. It is the ‘me’ of me. It is also fundamentally tied to the structure of my brain (and body). When that structure changes, I change, when it goes, my ‘soul’ is destroyed with it. Critically however is that it is not alone. I can imagine what friends and relatives would say or do. In some ways, I have a weaker copy of their ‘soul’ within mine.
I also imprint part of my soul onto others in other ways. I create ripples in the world. Changes that wouldn’t happen, were I not alive. Those ripples propagate through others, changing them. Some of those ripples are weak, only affecting 1 person. Others are stronger, affecting several people. A few are strong, able to spread, grow, and change the world (if only slightly). While those ripples, or their echoes exist, part of me does too.
My goal in life is 2-fold. Maximise my happiness and maximise the positive ripples I can create.
A quote by Terry Pratchett put it more poetically.
“No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence.”
All the good times we had, and will have, with anyone or anything ever will totally annihilate into nothingness.
No. They will still have happened. You will still have experienced them. You can only really ever experience whatever is happening to you now. If there is only nothingness after death, then you will not experience it.
Make the most of your life in the way it make sense to you. That could be having more shared laughs with loved ones or dedicate it to saving the critically endangered purple-spotted pygmy shrew.
In short: You will experience your life, you will not experience “the great void of death”.
We were never nothing. Matter cannot be created nor destroyed.
I’m talking about our consciousness, though. It doesn’t matter what the individual atoms do if we individually end up losing our own capacity to experience the best that our lives have to offer (unless you’re beset by some major chronic illness, of course, but that’s not what I’m talking about here).
However, if you believe death isn’t the end, I’d love to read your thoughts because I’d love for it to not be true. All the evidence suggests that it I’d, though…
The counterargument that works for me is - why must it be terrifying to return to nothing? It’s something immutable. We weren’t owed anything by the universe - why bemoan what we don’t have, when we could enjoy that which we do?
Take a walk outside. Read a book. Snuggle something furry. It’s perfectly natural to fear death, but if it stops you from enjoying your life, isn’t that a little self defeating?
I used to be scared of death, too, then I realised how terrible life was. Now I look forward to it so there will be no more suffering. Oblivion is better than pain. I’m still scared of the pain of dying, just not of what may lie beyond.
For all we know it’s an eternity of being frozen in whatever instant you were in at the moment of death. The people who die in their sleep literally get eternal slumber but the people who get chainsaw accidents get a moment of limb tearing pain stretched to eternity
Probably not though, probably your thing
Without trying to sound too metaphysical. I look at it this way. The atoms that make up my body were forged in the hearts of stars. These atoms have existed in some form across the universe for billions of years.
I don’t remember what patterns my atoms were before they became this one, and I don’t know what pattern these atoms will take once I am done with them, but these atoms will remain.
This consciousness that has arisen from this pattern of atoms may give way to a different consciousness in a different pattern of atoms in some untold amount of time. While this consciousness may not know of that one, and that one may not remember this, it eases my mind to know that the stardust that originated these atoms will still exist.
It eases my mind to know that in the infinite void of nothingness, this pattern of atoms and this consciousness have impacted those around me. The short period of time that this consciousness is around gives me the opportunity to experience the wonderful breadth of the human condition, because this will be the only time these atoms are in this exact pattern. Every moment of my existence I am unique.
I am of the universe, I have experienced the universe, and others have experienced the universe through me.
For me, it’s easy to not fear it when I’m healthy, but as soon as I have health problems, I get this strong fear of mortality. It’s a visceral thing though. In my mind, I know it’s fine, it’s inevitable, and there has never been a better time in history for medical treatment. But the fear I feel is separate from that rational knowledge. That is what’s hard for me to harmonize. There is an anxiety underneath it all. And the funny thing is I never used to get that either, but after my brother committed suicide, I have had this visceral, mortal fear.
Daily meditation has helped me identify the feelings, but has not helped much in overcoming them. It has helped me find peace among them, which is a decent middle ground.
The mortal fear also helps me clearly prioritize things in my life, so it does have its benefits.
Another answer to persistent impact is communality. Your actions echo in the people and places you’ve shared with others.
The laws, traditions, buildings, sentiments, norms, societal wounds, environment, relationships, etc. all come from people doing things during their lifetime. You can be one of those people, and choose what your contribution and legacy could be.
What will you leave for the next generation?
You can’t affect if your consciousness will live on or not, but you can affect your conscience. Maybe start there?
Yeah, everything you listed as a negative to fear I take a different positive spin on.
I will lose all sense of regret, loss, pain, fear, and guilt instantly.
The good times are still there in the memories of the living, where they belong.
The universe being a huge uncaring void means it doesn’t matter that the world is… infected with humans. That, too, one day, will pass.
Nothing matters. Be free.I will lose all sense of regret, loss, pain, fear, and guilt instantly.
Well, sure, if you’re endlessly haunted by that stuff, yeah, but thankfully, I’m not, at least for now, so the ending of everything else would feel like a net loss to me. My view really only applies to people who like, not dislike, their life situation.
infected with humans.
You sound like a prime candidate to join the VHEM.
You don’t think if you lived FOREVER you would come to regret?
It’s your choice to let your past decisions haunt you, though. You can either focus on the pain or on the lessons learned. The past can’t be changed either way, right? It’s a matter of perspective.
I’m generally grateful for my current life situation, even if it could be better in certain ways and even though I could have certainly made better decisions in my past; the results of my choices, optimal and suboptimal, have still shaped my thinking and current day-to-day life into what it currently is. So that combined with the crumbling of my conviction of the existence of souls is what has driven me into this existential crisis, I suppose.
And how many eons could you last with an intact mind and nothing to do but to think about your past?
Also, would you have perfect recall of your entire life? Memory is a flaw of the flesh. Would you perfectly remember every moment? See the well hidden disappointment in your mom’s face you never noticed?
Well, the hope/fantasy would be that humanity would survive and figure out the universe’s heat death problem, and that we’d carry forward together. There is no point to just surviving alone, true.
Memory is a flaw of the flesh.
Memory is flawed but is not a flaw; it’s perhaps the single greatest thing we’ve (all of us organisms, human or not, have) got of life experience. If I knew I was gonna succumb to dementia and it was deemed irreversible then kill me now lol. But since we don’t know that… it’d sure be nice to retain, and have the opportunity to form new, memories and not just see all our joys or the fruit of our labor come to an end.
Yeah, I meant to say “memory is only flawed because of the flesh”
It sounds like you had an imagining of an afterlife where people were alive and living together in some form. How would that work? Sounds like a huge hassle to me personally.
had an imagining
You do know which community we’re commenting in, right? It’s not like everyone can just immediately slice off decades-long-held beliefs right away…
