I wasn’t burdened by the curse that is awareness before I was born, and hence now as a result of this awareness, I am scared.
We are not cursed to know, we are blessed! We are a fantastic arrangement of atoms that so happen to be arranged into people instead of rocks!
We are, at the end of the day, infinitely small chunks of the Universe able to see, experince, know, and look back into ourselves!
I may be hammered, and the world is in an especially frightening place at the moment, but damn is it good to have my atoms arranged into a person instead of a tree
I did not choose to be here and I resent that there are expectations put upon me when I wasn’t the reason I am here now.
I also resent that I was born just to die one day.
It is also fundamentally horrifying that so many people are born into painful awful experiences and then die, with that being more or less mostly all they knew while alive. And that some people live happy lives on its own doesn’t justify the horror in my eyes at all.
That said, I wish I could be drunk right now but I’m at work.
I’m not afraid, I’m annoyed. I’ll never get to finish my unfinished books. >:(
Or my Steam library.
I had nothing to lose before I was born. There is the difference.
And there’s nothing that you can do to keep from losing what you have.
Acceptance is the way to a happy life.
I’m happy. I’m just pointing out that there is a difference.
Because it was terrifying to be in a state of nonexistence. Thinking about not having what i currently have or even the fact that I’m very much likely not even going to have a state of being where i can even remember the things i had done in my life is truly fucking terrifying to me.
I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of the part before that.
Same, let’s try and make that bit before that less shit, hey?
Because I forgot what it was like
This strangely made me feel a better about the concept of death.
Sometimes I think about it and fall in a few seconds of existential dread. But this kinda…makes it make sense?
It brought me some comfort too.
The previous billions of years of void was a grandiose buildup to the world’s largest nothing-burger, followed by an eternity of void again.
I’m looking forward to the nothingness, the first 14billion years was nice enough. It’s the time between everyday life and nothingness that worries me.
Just had a friend die of a heart attack while working in construction with his friends. Didn’t make it to the hospital.
That’s how I want to go. Just times up one day.
So sorry for your loss. You’re right - your friend is “fine” now. It’s the people we leave behind that can have a hard time with it.
Thanks
I have never experienced unending nothingness, only noted the nothingness after it was over
That’s a good point, though I think it’s also fair to say that you won’t experience unending nothingness after death from that perspective, either. I can see how coming to accept that the world existed before our experience began could help one confront the world will continue to exist after our experience has ended.
Because, now that i aquired conciusness, i dont want to lose it. i dont want to re experience nothingness. ffs id rather suffer for eternity than not live at all.
if religion wasnt so unbelievable id probably be religious. but alas i just have to hope that i am wrong in my understanding that there is no afterlife
You didn’t acquire consciousness, you acquired a human life.
ngl i plan to be a digital being by 2060
Art become reality, ye are the 21st century digital boy
Nothingless void is as believable as afterlife. From scientific point of view neither make sense, it’s like we’re giving ourseleves some metaphysical distinctiveness from the rest of universe but are merely physical bodies inside of it according to our scientific knowledge. And according to that we precisely know what’s after death: we rot in grave, and that’s it. But that answer is not satisfying for us, because what we call our consciousness will stop existing at some point, and we try to find logical state of us, when there is no longer us. I don’t really think it’s possible to describe how’s that like at all.
What I really don’t understand is bringing more people into temporarily existing without the ability to get their consent and calling it a “gift” that now they get to face the lovecraftian horror of future non-existence.
Pre-birth is not like post death. The arrow of time doesn’t reverse.
I dont get it either. Guess we are wired different.
Unless the universe is truly infinite, then from the point of view of your continuity of consciousness, you will never die, because they will always be somewhere in infinity where you’re exact current consciousness picks right up after you die without a blip.
I don’t think that’s how infinity works
Edit: thinking about it some more, there’s nothing to say that’s how consciousness works either lol
Something about “there’s an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1, but none of them is 2” idk
In an infinite universe every configuration of matter that can possibly exist will just due to the laws of statistics. Meaning in an infinite universe there’s are infinite identical copies of this solar system exactly as it is, isn’t, and everything in-between. Since you obviously can’t observe your life if you’re dead, in such a universe you will always experience your point of view from the position of a living copy somewhere else that was identical up until that point. Now of course its not the other you physically. But if the mind is exactly the same it is you mentally.
Its more or less the star trek transporter problem taken to a logical extreme. If you step into a star trek transpoter and are reassembled with identical memories elsewhere, are you still you? If its yes, it must also be yes for the universal thought experiment.
In an infinite universe every configuration of matter that can possibly exist will just due to the laws of statistics
Not necessarily. There is an infinite set of numbers containing the positive integers, but it still excludes the negative integers. Why should an infinite universe be any different?
We already have 1 example of earth existing, so we know its part of the set.
Neurodegenarative disorders poke holes in the infinite consciousness idea. Each day the brain slowly wears away, the consciousness of self is never the same.
Not to mention that the universe itself is pretty certain to end eventually. If there isn’t a big crunch, then every single atomic partlcle has a half life, one day there will be near 0 protons left.
My take on consciousness is that you essentially ‘die’ each time you go into a deep sleep. When you wake, a new stream of consciousness starts in a brain ever so slightly different from the one that fell asleep the night before. Your new consciousness remembers everything you once did and is in a brain that handles stimuli and emotions almost exactly as the day before. But it isn’t the same, it cant be as cells have died or been replaced during the down time that was a deep sleep.
Better to think there is an end after death, infinite consciousness would be terrible as you would eventually just be utterly sick of existence after a googleplex of years has passed by. I don’t understand the concept of heaven, as good as it would be at first, it would eventually become torture of non stop existence.
I mean yeah, sure, maybe. You’re making some pretty lofty claims based on a philosophical thought experiment about a phenomenon we still don’t really understand though.
