Asklemmy

My friend invites me to her party.

I have two options. I can tell her no, because as fun as the party will be, I can't handle the fact that it's going to end a few hours after I get there. Or, I can go and have fun, despite knowing that it's going to end.

I can't help you, but I can tell you that if you hold out for a couple of decades, you'll eventually stop worrying about it.

One day, you'll realize that you wake up in pain and suffer through most of the day; that you are constantly annoyed that young people think they're the first and only people to discover or experience things that you've seen people discover and experience countless times - but you are also hopelessly jaded and desperately envious of their naivety and ability to be passionate about something other than injustice. That despite fighting for decades to improve the world, and believing in some cosmic karma, you see evil people succeed over, and over, and have a deep recognition that the world is fucked and getting more fucked with every dollar. When this time comes, the Void will become appealing: a rest and relief from pain and suffering. One day, you will realize that you no longer lay awake at night anxiously fretting about not being alive, but are rather looking forward to it.

Hang in there, man.

Radical acceptance. Do I want to cease to exist? Not particularly. Is it going to occur whether I want it or not? Yup. Is there some kind of afterlife? That's a boring question and I really don't care - there's no way that I can possibly know until I'm gone.

Thousands of years from now, someone is going to invent the chronovisor, a device with the ability to tap into the properties of light to look into the Earth's past in the same way people today can look out into the universe and see what it was like in the past. And they're going to see you. They're looking at you right now. Everything you do probably matters to them. Give them an eyecatching show.

Made a movie about it with a toy company's money.

Remember that the way you are right now doesn't have to be your ending, and you can grow beyond your roots and find your humanity again.

Postmodernist cynicism had it's time in the sun, but now it's time for a New Sincerity: So what if you live in a world where nothing matters, when you've always had the capability to choose what matters to you?

The greatest gift is that this life eventually ends.

Man, I can't wait until the day I don't exist anymore. My existential crisis is that I'm currently forced into existing.

Eventually you learn - not just rationally, but also behaviourally - that insignificance gives you a sort of freedom. Even if not solving the most important questions in the universe, you still got to live your life. Your pleasure might be meaningless, but so is your suffering - so you're free to choose one, another, both, or neither.

Kind of off-topic, but regarding QM: what you're saying is the Copenhagen interpretation. I tend to side more with Einstein in this, the moon doesn't "magically" stop existing once you stop looking at it; it's just that the difference between "it exists" and "it doesn't exist" becomes insignificant from your subjective PoV.

Having this conversation with a friend once, he told me what helped him.

Do you remember anything from before you were born? The hundreds of thousands of years before your existence? Did you spend it experiencing nothing all before you finally were born and began to experience something? Of course not.

You've already done a millennia of non-existence. It wasn't painful, it wasn't boring, and it wasn't scary. You're not something that started and will eventually cease to exist. You are something that didn't exist, and then eventually, you did. Sure, you'll go back there one day, but that's just it: you're not going to a new place. You've been there before, and it was fine, just as it will be when you're there again.

The thing that helped me was "let go or be dragged".

Death will happen whether I stress out about it or not. Stressing about it just contaminates the time you have. So I gradually learned to focus more on the "isn't existence weird?!" than "death is coming". And when you really get into the swing of it, your limited time becomes timeless.

You've already not existed before. And then you were born.

I think you will need to make the transition from negative nihilism to positive nihilism.

Aside from that I don't think I'm really convinced that interpreting the quantum wave function collapse when observed as the world not being loaded when you aren't looking at it is accurate. Even our best explanations could likely be a misinterpretation of what is really happening.

This channel is great by the way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FP6iyVJ70OU

That it is ultimately inconsequential is the reason for me to relax and enjoy what we have right now. Easier said than done, of course, but the way I think of it is this: if nothing I do matters, then it doesn't really matter what I do. And when I find myself taking things too seriously, it helps to be reminded of it. Life is absurd, but it doesn't matter, so why not have some silly fun in the meanwhile?

What the ultimate reality of things are doesn't really matter to us living in this reality. To whatever end this reality was created for, if, for example, we're just a simulation, we can't really know and at the end of the day, shouldn't really care about. It's literally (in both senses of the term) way beyond us.

heh I juet dont

Come to the conclusion that you already havent existed for the previous at least 13.7 million years. Now you exist and after that you won't exist again.

What's the point of worrying about it. It's inevitable, and when it happens you'll not care because you won't be able to. So what does it matter

I just avoid thinking about it. There's other stuff to do. Find a hobby.

How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?

I struggle with what happens before that. That's the only relief I have, knowing that this shit parade will one day end and not matter at all.

Rant:

I had a pretty intense acid trip once and came to the conclusion that nothing matters, there is no meaning to life, there is only an illusion of free will, and most likely our existence and personal experiences in life will be completely forgotten within 3 generations (almost like we never existed to begin with). I was super duper depressed after that for several months.

It eventually gave me a different outlook on life though. If it's only temporary and there is no meaning, I can create my own meaning and enjoyment in life. Live in the moment, do what you want, and create as much meaning and enjoyment for yourself as you can while you have the opportunity. Don't worry about what others might think because eventually their existence is going to be forgotten as well.

The act of dying might suck, but being dead and not existing seems very serene. Sometimes things just sort of end.

This feeling has been haunting my thoughts since my 20s and honestly it's just intensifying. The thought of it just sucks and puts me in a very nihilist mind state which sucks too. I don't know, I just can't accept that death is normal and everyone is ok with that, and we can't do anything about it, and one day, I'll be gone too. And I can't stop simulating those very last moments in my mind, and it too, sucks.

You just replace that anxiety with a different fear.

I don’t fear oblivion, I fear it will keep me waiting. Not existing is a silent matter, living past your due as a broken, diseased husk or a person is a torture to you and those you cherish.

Death is a promise of rest, there’s no need to fear it. I’m a bit sad that I won’t get to witness most of the things I want to witness, but so be it.

Most of what happens in the world would happen regardless of whether I existed or not, so even while I’m alive, the impact of my existence is negligible. I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I won’t know or care when I’m gone, either. It seems futile to waste any of my short life worrying about the inevitable.

How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?

I don't. I think it's fucking unfair and I would rather live for a much, much longer time. But I can't change anything about it, so I try not to think about it. Fortunately this world is full of wonders so there is a lot to distract me. Just looking at clouds - they`re fucking huge and diverse and constantly changing and have so many shades of different colors.

Have you tried therapy?

I just eventually decided there's nothing that can be done about it basically. Doesn't do any good worrying about an immutable fact of life.

Plus that's not what quantum mechanics says.

In order to measure a property of a particle something has to interact with it. When this happen it gets collapsed into a certain state. That's what they mean by observed.

I don't know if I ever came to terms with it, the thought of one day not existing has always brought me a level of deep comfort. Maybe try looking at it as a good thing instead of a bad thing.

I was in your shoes a few years ago. I barely ate and struggled sleeping for longer than was healthy. My therapist recommended me the book: "Sophie's World", which is a both a story and also a crash course in philosophy and its history at the same time. Reading that slowly and reflecting on each chapter has personally helped me a lot in being more okay with existing.

I don't really care, and I don't really enjoy existing

I sit inside a dark closet and listen to whale song. I also sometimes say that the awareness of our inevitable death is the only reason for why we enjoy life. While I'm still here, I want to leave my mark in this world, and that's why I make art. I can't avoid death, so I taught myself how to embrace it.

The point of existence is to be happy, not the existence itself. I've found what and who I love and I'm happy. Fretting over something so inevitable feels like a massive waste of time.

What works for me may not work for you. I've found comfort and freedom from my existential dread on Epicurus' Four Remedies (tetrapharmakos), especially the second one. These are:

Don't fear gods;
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get;
What is terrible is easy to endure.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus writes:

Get used to believing that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad consists in sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience. Hence, a correct knowledge of the fact that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life a matter for contentment, not by adding a limitless time [to life] but by removing the longing for immortality. For there is nothing fearful in life for one who has grasped that there is nothing fearful in the absence of life. Thus, he is a fool who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when present but because it is painful when it is still to come. For that which while present causes no distress causes unnecessary pain when merely anticipated. So death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore, it is relevant neither to the living nor to the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter do not exist.

The gist of this passage is that worrying about death is misguided. Death is not a state of being. As such, our sense of self only exists while we're alive. In this Principle Doctrines, Epicurus says:

Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved has no sense-experience, and what has no sense-experience is nothing to us.

To be you have to experience. And death marks when we no longer have any sense-experience. This understanding of death is like a dreamless night from which we never awake, says Socrates in Plato's Apology. Seen in this light, Epicurus is right that it is a bit foolish to suffer in life from fearing a state of being where there won't be anybody to suffer whatsoever. The existential dread is precisely this misguided fear.

Once you recognize the truth of this statement, just like magic, poof, that existential dread disappears. Of course, if you have a religious view that postulates life after death, with all the subsequent very human drama entailed by that belief, you're now dealing with a different kind of fear. And that fear is precisely what Epicurus addresses in his first remedy, Don't fear gods. His reasoning is also clear cut here.

By definition a God is perfect. It's immortal and has no needs. Because of this, any god has no worries. As such, gods, by definition, don't care about us. Caring about us implies they have some sort of need, thus rendering them less godlike.

This ties with the second remedy. The cherry on top is to simply remember this: just as we never worry with the time before we were born, it's also silly to worry about the time after we are gone.

The same nagging notion sometimes claws at my brain as well.

The notion of consciousness not existing is especially troublesome for me to wrap my mind around. Logic says that no consciousness means nothing to perceive said lack of consciousness, therefore no loss there (for the subject, of course). That somehow... does not make it any better.

First time I've been through general anaesthesia I was wondering what it'd be like and a bit fearful of it. Happened in an instant, and I woke up what felt like immediately. Afterwards my conscious mind fixed that with perhaps artificially introducing passage of time to make everything fit. If I think back now, I certainly know some time had passed. But had it? And how much? No idea. Clock said around 3 hours, so I'll go by that.

Shortly thereafter I had a massive bleed and lost about 1/3 of my blood (by looking at amount of hemoglobin before and after the event). The more I lost, the less coherent I was and the less anything mattered. By the time I got to the ER, I had tunnel vision and survival mode on. But I wasn't scared for some odd reason... nothing mattered much. Not sure how close I came to actual death then, but it felt pretty close.

What I can advise... enjoy what you can, and don't waste your hate on anything. It's pretty much not worth it. Unless your life or the life of loved ones is in immediate danger, screw it. Guy cut you off in traffic? Fuck'em. It's not worth shortening your life for some rando with not enough respect for himself or others as to break the social contract. Just choose your preferred intensity of sustainable (for you) hedonism and go from there.

I also hope it gets easier with age, but the prospect of becoming more jaded that I am now is not appealing. Though if it makes everything easier...

I will say this, though. Not existing was (probably?) fine. But being brought into existence just for it to be taken away after a blink of an eye (in terms of billions of years of non-existence vs the average lifespan) seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

I think of how small I am in the universe. We're all just memories at the end of the day, so try to leave nice ones.

I had an existential crisis when I was probably 11. It haunted me and I didn't sleep for days because I was contemplating, constantly.

My belief now, after many psychedelic trips is very akin to the short novel "The Egg" by Andy Weir. Even if I have no idea what the truth could be, I take comfort in that fun read. It seems right to me

I've always been a fan of, we're the universe experiencing itself.