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.
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Do you fear the void before birth you emerged from?
Same shit.
The 70s happened before I was born, so yes.
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.
Fair, we cannot truly know what happens after… but at this point in my life, I’d be glad to keep paying for everything else I’m getting, so perhaps that’s partly where this struggle comes from: net enjoyment > suffering at the moment, which I don’t want to see vanish.
thats debatable. There is a fair amount of evidence that the flow of time is an artifact of our perception and that nothing is really beforehand and your death is nor more in the future than your birth.
Really? Do you have any reading that you’d like to link to about this?
most of them have been videos. things like pbs space time. I will see if I can track any down but its come up haphazardly with science shows talking about relativity.
so here is one from a quick search but its a subject that comes up again and again the series. Its really nice to actually watch the series from the start as episodes will reference discussions from other episodes. The channels purpose is to explain big things as simply as possible so not exactly for the average person but someone who understands algebra and equivalent level science. From my experience finishing high school should be enough although I think most people who retain that stuff likely went to college. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkWT-xMTm1M
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.
But we plan for the future and take action accordingly. How many of your actions are rooted in just fighting boredom versus addressing future matters, after all? This does influence everything. It’s sort of leading me to live more in the moment to the point of procrastinating on issues that I’d normally probably try to address more promptly…
Planning for the future has nothing to do with whether or not one fears death. And it’s perfectly okay to live more in the moment, because the moment is all we have. The past is gone, the future is yet to come, you exist in the now. So go ahead, procrastinate a little! The vast majority of our problems are not so time-critical that an hour long walk is going to ruin your future. Treating yourself to a coffee and a donut every now and then doesn’t leave you fated to be destitute in 5 years.
The past is gone, the future is yet to come, you exist in the now.
Sounds like you’ve read The Power of Now. I never did finish that book… Thanks for the reminder. Now… *continues to procrastinate on taxes*
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
I had forgotten about this phrase, thanks. I had thought “radical acceptance” was just about one’s individual, undesirable personality traits or physical appearance, but I apparently haven’t read much into this topic! I’d appreciate any resources.
https://hopeway.org/blog/radical-acceptance
I don’t endorse this website necessarily but skimming the content this page seems like a solid overview
The classic therapy book is “Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha” by Tara brach
But that hints at what it really is: radical acceptance is really co-opting the Buddhist concept of equanimity (upekkha), one of the four sublime states. We have co-opted mindfulness from this as well and made it something a bit removed from its original form
https://www.buddhanet.net/ss06/
“But the kind of equanimity required has to be based on vigilant presence of mind, not on indifferent dullness. It has to be the result of hard, deliberate training, not the casual outcome of a passing mood”
Yet many mindfulness “apps” are the opposite of this, promoting indifference. They miss the point. A takeaway from my post, if nothing else, is that this takes effort and diligence
A similar concept is 不動心 or fudoshin, the “immovable mind” from Japanese martial arts
https://www.amardeep.co/blog/how-to-use-fudoshin-the-right-way-to-be-unstoppable
Although a lot of the writings on this are like this, about endless achievement and goal orientation. This is not without merit of course but because of the association with martial arts you get a lot of “dojo people” writing on how to get to the next level, instead of a focus on inner peace. That may align with your goals though and it certainly has its applications
There is a difference between knowing and feeling. Rest in the feeling of your life before birth. What do you feel?
Nothingness is not peacefulness, though. Peacefulness is an active emotional state that I would much prefer.
If you don’t mind, I would like to ask again: what do you feel?
I hadn’t answered because I didn’t know what you had meant: what do I feel when thinking about that, or right at this moment, or about this topic in general, or something else?
I mean thinking about that, the time before your birth.
It means nothing; don’t you cherish your experiences over the course of your life in comparison? I feel like people who don’t care must have had bad histories or something.
It’s all probably true. Yet:
What do you feel?
Well, I answered that: I feel nothing. It doesn’t seem to be nor evoke any particular time or sense of peace. I would rather generally have knowledge than not, so it’s not something I’d look forward to returning to, at least given how I have no chronic ailments so far.
Embrace the void, like the womb it is. Safe, tranquil, forever at peace. Closest thing to a real heaven
The loss of my memories is not something I look forward to (again, presuming that’s what would actually happen).
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”.
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
Nothing can stop the good times we’ve had from having happened.
Sure, the events are locked into the frozen river of the past, but they only matter if we can remember them. At least, that’s how I can’t seem to not see it as…
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.
this will be the only time these atoms are in this exact pattern. Every moment of my existence I am unique.
True, very interesting thought!
As someone who is very depressed, the idea of heaven and hell kind of disturb me. I’m so very, very tired, and I just want it all to stop. I want to stop experiencing, I want to stop doing, it doesn’t matter how nice. Suicide is so appealing because I could just turn it all off.
I talk about this because I think an eternity in conventional heaven would eventually depress you. I think that faced with eternity, true infinity, eventually you’ll have wringed out every last drop of happiness you can from existence and you’d long for rest just as much as I do.
Sorry, I want to be comforting to you and to me this is but I doubt it is to you. I’ll leave you with this thought–because I don’t believe there’s an afterlife punishment or reward, it makes being the best person I can be all the more important. My actions are driven from me wanting the world to be a better place, not from me trying to earn a reward.
Oh, I’d already long shut out the concepts of H&H from my expectations, and I was previously Protestant and did not derive faith from works so I wasn’t/haven’t been doing good deeds for the sake of a personal reward anyway. That’s why this:
because I don’t believe there’s an afterlife punishment or reward, it makes being the best person I can be all the more important.
… seems contradictory because the ultimate death of everything seems to reduce the importance of anything we do, which is what bugs me.
Anyway, my perspective doesn’t really apply to people whose life situations have involved more suffering than enjoyment, like it sounds yours unfortunately has; I rather generally like my current life situation. I hope things improve for you, given how this seems like it’s all we’ve got.
Maybe a simpler way to put it
You find a lost crying child in a mall. Do you help them find their parents, do you ignore them, or do you kick them over? In 100 years, it won’t matter. No one’s going to punish you for ignoring them. But, the choice you make matters a lot to the kid.
Sure, that’s fair. Call me brutal or cruel, though, but this whole existential crisis had me stepping back even further in scope than yours to: do the kid’s feelings matter? Does the kid even matter in the first place?
Beyond evolutionary altruism and social norms, I can regrettably no longer seem to see anything other than just brain chemicals/feelings and anyone merely wanting or choosing to say “yes” to those, which is not wrong or bad, but the loss of the framework of any post-death existence to further support just treatment of others has just been unnerving to me.
Is there anything beyond these seemingly rudimentary drivers of motivation to support the stance of helping others or, to go even further out in scope, doing anything in particular at all, like even surviving? It doesn’t seem like it. I continue to live because I currently want to play Slice & Dice, help others make friends in my neighborhood with events I offer to the public, etc., but that’s it—there’s no further basis. I just want to do it. I guess I feel like without an afterlife, we effectively plunge into our own hedonism, buttressed by personal morals—that still bow ultimately to each individual’s sense of pleasure.
And I don’t like that.
There were a lot of good ideas here, though, which have been helping. I’m not suicidal in any way—just rethinking the entire framework of motivation for why we bother to do what/anything that we do. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
It’s interesting, because I see it as like
The world shapes us heavily, and we shape the world slightly. If I do my best to be kind and helpful, at least a very small amount of the time, those actions will lead to someone else doing the same. My individual actions might have a small impact relative to the world, but I’ll leave it a little bit better than I found it. Or at least, a little bit better than if I hadn’t existed at all.
To my mind, this is different than a legacy. No one, not even me, will ever truly know the effect I’ve had on the world. My actions aren’t going down in history books. No one will remember me in 50 years. However, it doesn’t matter. My positive effect on the world, however small, remains.
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.
Well, life for me currently is not terrible, so while oblivion is certainly better than pain, satisfaction and fulfillment are better than either. If my life situation changes, though, I may join your ranks.
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
It might be anything, we have no way of knowing. Hopefully it’s not reincarnation, as most lives on this planet are worse than mine.
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?
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…
It doesn’t matter to our current consciousness as it can’t perceive anything outside of that. We do not know what is beyond our rudimentary understanding of what makes us who we are.
Something like this seems far more likely to me than consciousness being finite.
Keyword being like this, as in whatever is actually going on is far beyond our comprehension, but it’s a nice palatable story that gives it shape. Consciousness might exist beyond death as part of a universal ‘field of awareness’ and reality could be a holographic projection from a deeper non local field of information. Upon death the quantum information could “return” to the universe (orchestrated objective reduction), Monadism, fractal consciousness, pantheism, etc.
I read that short story years back, yeah. I am also aware of the possibility that we could be in a lifelong simulation, which actually sort of falls back in line with Christian thought about this life just being a prelude to the real one.
I guess I just wish we had to go off more than merely hypothesizing…
I’ve had an overall decent life. I still have a lot of time to live with my friends and family. But I take solace in the fact that I will just cease to exist when I die. Or obviously, that’s my opinion anyways.
I don’t want to argue my beliefs, but that’s how I feel about it.
It seems like a just end. Literally nothing. A final sleep.
Yeah, I suppose I’m being too greedy or something. Thanks for sharing.
I’m sorry.
I did not want to imply anything on your view(s) with my post. I just wanted to say my personal feelings.
You shouldn’t feel guilty or anything based on what I said.
But I’m here if you want to chat.
Again, don’t feel bad about what you feel based on my post.
Oh, no, I had no issue with your thoughts! I literally meant what I said and that perhaps I should just learn to cherish the time in our lives more and not try to struggle for something that’s effectively, most likely unattainable. I don’t know; I’m still thinking about it, but no, you said nothing wrong or problematic. It’s a difficult topic no matter how you slice it…
