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Existence: What the fuck is going on?
#11
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
The OP and the Kurt Vonnegut poem took me back to a few silly memories. What follows is the first time I pondered my existence. I've hidden it because it doesn't add much to the conversation and it's pretty fucking silly.


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#12
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 4:31 pm)Exian Wrote: The OP and the Kurt Vonnegut poem took me back to a few silly memories. What follows is the first time I pondered my existence. I've hidden it because it doesn't add much to the conversation and it's pretty fucking silly.


Thanks Exian. I don't think it's borderline woo, I think coming to terms with identity and what it means to be "you" versus, say, a chimpanzee or a cat (I often wonder what it must be like to be them), and speculating if they have any notion of "this is MY life, MY sensations," leads to some very peculiar, sad, yet even ecstatic thoughts. I've worked with the mentally and physically handicapped for about 8 years, and I often wonder the same things about them (the severe cases of mental impairment).
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#13
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
Yeah, I don't think it's woo either, but it was thoughts like these that led me to connect with some of the ideas of Deepak Chopra in my early 20's. Haha ahhh that's hard to admit. Namely the ideas of differentiating the "I" from.. anything else.
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#14
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 3:53 pm)Nestor Wrote: ...
(March 27, 2015 at 1:19 pm)Pyrrho Wrote:
  • Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.[/list]
    http://www.epicurus.net/en/menoeceus.html

    As for your future nonexistence, you should consider how things were for you in the year 1800. Was 1800 a bad year for you in any way at all? That will be how your years will be once you are dead. Nothing bad can happen to you when you cease to exist. Not even boredom.
That Epicurus quote (specifically the part I placed in bold) has been of much comfort, and I'm inclined to view it that way... sure, the idea that my stream of consciousness is flowing towards the complete annihilation of my sense of being, and this can only be synonymous to the lack of experience we conceptualize as our state prior to birth, does, on the one hand, rid me of fear over the thought of actually being dead...yet it is also, on the other hand, aside from being utterly and frighteningly inconceivable,


How is it inconceivable? Can you not conceive of the fact that you did not exist in 1800? Do you not understand what that year was like for you? It was nothing to you, and that is what every year will be like after you are dead. Those years will be nothing to you.


(March 27, 2015 at 3:53 pm)Nestor Wrote: kind of depressing to me, in a way similar but far worse to reminiscences over the joy and innocence of childhood and the fact that I will never again experience those days of youth in which I could take the world for granted.


You won't be feeling nostalgic for bygone days when you are dead. Your problems are only with your attitude before you die, not after.


(March 27, 2015 at 3:53 pm)Nestor Wrote: It's as though everything I strive for is but an hallucination, and the reality as it is for all time, apart from this spec of existence I cling to as all there is, has been, and will be, is literally nothing.


It isn't nothing. It is just that everything in your life is finite.

Think about a woman smiling sweetly at you. It is just for a moment. But it isn't nothing.


(March 27, 2015 at 3:53 pm)Nestor Wrote: It takes the wind out of my sails sometimes. It spurs on a primal fear because I see infinities all around me, and I must surrender my complete self to it, and eventually let go of the pleasures and pains of life, even life itself, and bid it farewell...forever. And how DOES eternity, whether past or future, come to find itself defined at this moment, preceding the next, proceeding the last, as if additional events were added to something that has no numerical value?


Infinity isn't defined by what happens now. Your life is defined by what happens now, and some of the time near now.

You make me think of how some have reacted to the fact that, eventually, our sun will burn out. Some people have been upset by that idea. But the reality is, it is completely irrelevant to the lives of every person who has ever lived. They are really being upset over nothing that matters in their lives when such a thing upsets them. You may as well be upset that some other star will also burn out in a few billion years. That, too, is irrelevant to your life.


(March 27, 2015 at 3:53 pm)Nestor Wrote: Anyway, those are just some of the ideas I feel literally plagued with at any given instant (much to my girlfriend's dismay, who complains I don't listen enough...).

...


You should listen to your girlfriend more.

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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#15
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
The hardest thing to get my brain around is what "I" am. Scientifically, I'm my body, my brain and the emergent qualia and stuff. Intuitively, I'm somehow different from my brain, I attempt to utilise it but ultimately I'm at its mercy; I'm a hapless observer.

I doubt I'll ever be able to marry the two.

It did occur to me that it would be entirely consistent that "I" am everyone, I'm the observer of all the qualia of every brain. I simultaneously experience them all, or perhaps rapidly in sequence, but independently so I'm not aware of any other brains while in a particular one. I'm all you guys. But I'm an observer only.

More likely, I am nothing more than emergent properties somehow reflecting upon themselves.

It's a damn fine illusion though. Bastards.
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#16
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
Nestor, a couple more things.

First, a bit of stoic wisdom for you. You have a choice. You can spend your life worrying about death, and then die. Or, you can spend your life not worrying about death, and then die. What you can't choose is to not die. Which of the choices available to you is the better choice?

Remind yourself of that as often as needed.

Now, go and do something that might get your girlfriend to smile sweetly at you.

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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#17
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: How is it inconceivable? Can you not conceive of the fact that you did not exist in 1800? Do you not understand what that year was like for you? It was nothing to you, and that is what every year will be like after you are dead. Those years will be nothing to you.
Sure, I can conceive of the fact that I did not exist in 1800, just as I can conceive of the fact that there was, indeed, an 1800, and a very different world, though it also contained much of the same, and was populated by many people, though far less than today, the brightest of whom felt the same problems and tried their best to develop better solutions than their predecessors. And though we can reap the benefits of their efforts, most of them are forgotten bits of dust blowing in the wind, or rather they have been sucked right back into the black hole of "the past," a Singularity of sorts, the dissolution of any sensible framework for existence we greet both (conceptually) at the beginning and (perceptively) at the end of our lives, as well as in the bottomless pit of logic itself. It is inconceivable because I have tasted experience... and the idea of going to sleep, but the deepest sleep imaginable, without the recollection that follows upon awakening, and knowing that this is not an idea but a reality---one almost more concrete than my finite, fluctuating stream of consciousness---what, or how, can I truly conceive that to be, as complete and absolute nothingness?
(March 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Think about a woman smiling sweetly at you. It is just for a moment. But it isn't nothing.
But a moment later, it is. Yes, I have the image to enjoy, the memory to relive, but even that over time dissolves with the rest...

Sorry, I don't mean to sound like a drag, I'm just trying to capture the almost neurotic feeling I get at moments (usually after I've smoked weed), because (full disclosure), the fact that humans have proven themselves immensely innovative explorers, I have always felt (over-confidently perhaps) that our deepest problems, including death itself, may lie within the grasp of solution, and yet so much potential is squandered by easy and dull and unfruitful (in the long run) stop-gaps for such thoughts, such as those religion provides. That may be my biggest reason, apart from many others, for my anti-theism. Even so, does the idea of immortality seem that much more of a comfort? No! I am frightened by that concept as well. So, that also plays into my "What the fuck?" feeling about existence and the cruel joke I perceive beneath the veneer of security, freedom, and happiness that I strive so hard to sustain.
(March 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Infinity isn't defined by what happens now. Your life is defined by what happens now, and some of the time near now.

You make me think of how some have reacted to the fact that, eventually, our sun will burn out. Some people have been upset by that idea. But the reality is, it is completely irrelevant to the lives of every person who has ever lived. They are really being upset over nothing that matters in their lives when such a thing upsets them. You may as well be upset that some other star will also burn out in a few billion years. That, too, is irrelevant to your life.
I agree that it is in that sense a superficial fear, but I think it must only be natural to be upset when an organism discovers that the very basis of existence---a struggle to survive and thrive---is predicated on guaranteed failure.
(March 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: You should listen to your girlfriend more.
Well, she's away until Sunday...so it looks like you guys are stuck with me until then. Wink

(March 27, 2015 at 6:07 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: First, a bit of stoic wisdom for you. You have a choice. You can spend your life worrying about death, and then die. Or, you can spend your life not worrying about death, and then die. What you can't choose is to not die. Which of the choices available to you is the better choice?
(Bold mine)
Do I? I'm not so sure. I feel diseased with thoughts such as those I've expressed. I mean, I'm not saying I don't enjoy life, or that I'm depressed, just that there is an underlying anxiety about it all that I sense will unfortunately grow with time... best case scenario is that I get to the age where I revert to a child's mentality and have someone wipe my ass while I play Bingo.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#18
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 6:48 pm)Nestor Wrote: ...
Sorry, I don't mean to sound like a drag, I'm just trying to capture the almost neurotic feeling I get at moments (usually after I've smoked weed), because (full disclosure), the fact that humans have proven themselves immensely innovative explorers, I have always felt (over-confidently perhaps) that our deepest problems, including death itself, may lie within the grasp of solution, and yet so much potential is squandered by easy and dull and unfruitful (in the long run) stop-gaps for such thoughts, such as those religion provides.


If that is the effect of marijuana on you, you should never smoke it again. I mean that seriously.


(March 27, 2015 at 6:48 pm)Nestor Wrote: ...
(March 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Infinity isn't defined by what happens now. Your life is defined by what happens now, and some of the time near now.

You make me think of how some have reacted to the fact that, eventually, our sun will burn out. Some people have been upset by that idea. But the reality is, it is completely irrelevant to the lives of every person who has ever lived. They are really being upset over nothing that matters in their lives when such a thing upsets them. You may as well be upset that some other star will also burn out in a few billion years. That, too, is irrelevant to your life.
I agree that it is in that sense a superficial fear, but I think it must only be natural to be upset when an organism discovers that the very basis of existence---a struggle to survive and thrive---is predicated on guaranteed failure.


It is a failure of instinct. It need not be a failure of you. I have no wish to live forever, and am ready to die whenever.

My goal is to live as pleasantly as I can while I am alive. I have, thus far in my adult life, been rather successful. I am happily married to my best friend, and have been for over 20 years. I do not wish for a long life. I wish for a good one. Nothing more.


(March 27, 2015 at 6:48 pm)Nestor Wrote:
(March 27, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: You should listen to your girlfriend more.
Well, she's away until Sunday...so it looks like you guys are stuck with me until then. Wink


Okay. When she gets back.


(March 27, 2015 at 6:48 pm)Nestor Wrote:
(March 27, 2015 at 6:07 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: First, a bit of stoic wisdom for you. You have a choice. You can spend your life worrying about death, and then die. Or, you can spend your life not worrying about death, and then die. What you can't choose is to not die. Which of the choices available to you is the better choice?
(Bold mine)
Do I? I'm not so sure. I feel diseased with thoughts such as those I've expressed. I mean, I'm not saying I don't enjoy life, or that I'm depressed, just that there is an underlying anxiety about it all that I sense will unfortunately grow with time... best case scenario is that I get to the age where I revert to a child's mentality and have someone wipe my ass while I play Bingo.


Are you saying you cannot decide whether to dwell on things or not? That you have no control over what you do? That you cannot decide to read and think about one thing, rather than read something else and think about other things instead?

Also, I think you have the "best scenario" wrong. It is better to die before one gets to that point. That is my hope and expectation. But I am not the sort to "do anything" to get a little bit more life.

You might enjoy Seneca's letters 70 and 77 for more on that. If you need links for them, just ask, though wikipedia has them.

"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
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#19
RE: Existence: What the fuck is going on?
(March 27, 2015 at 7:06 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: If that is the effect of marijuana on you, you should never smoke it again. I mean that seriously.
I've thought about quitting but I also enjoy it quite a bit. True, there's a fine line between "I'm not high enough" and "Shit, my heart feels like its pounding out of my chest," but then after the peak the next one or two hours of calm makes everything in the world, but especially my thoughts, feel more in sync.
(March 27, 2015 at 7:06 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Are you saying you cannot decide whether to dwell on things or not? That you have no control over what you do? That you cannot decide to read and think about one thing, rather than read something else and think about other things instead?
To some extent, yes. I can choose not to think about it, but it still confronts me, like an accident I can't turn away from trying to catch a glimpse of the horror, or however you might describe it. I kind of blame my harsh evangelical upbringing on soaking my mind inside and out with existential concerns...after all, I admitted that I was a sinner and needed Jesus' redemption with the aid of this when I was five, at the guidance of an adult. No doubt whatever distresses I felt growing up in that highly repressive environment plays into my subconscious and probably always will. I remember as a child, probably not even ten, thinking and sobbing over the idea that my parents would die. I think it's something I will always obsess over to some degree.
(March 27, 2015 at 7:06 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: Also, I think you have the "best scenario" wrong. It is better to die before one gets to that point. That is my hope and expectation. But I am not the sort to "do anything" to get a little bit more life.
I'm not sure if would I do anything, but I sure as hell ain't stubborn enough to protest if I were offered a way to prolong it some..
(March 27, 2015 at 7:06 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: You might enjoy Seneca's letters 70 and 77 for more on that. If you need links for them, just ask, though wikipedia has them.
Right on. Once I get through Aristotle and the schools that dominated at the dusk of Greek dominance, I'll move into the Roman poets and philosophers.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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#20
Existence: What the fuck is going on?
The answer to what we are is not as simple as pointing to the atoms that make us up. Our bodies are recyclers that take in new atoms and discard others. What used to be us 5 years ago is not us now as every atom has been replaced.

So what are we? We are a pattern of thoughts that make up our consciousness. When we die we no longer have a vessel to house our consciousness so it is extinguished.

One day technology will be able to make possible the downloading of our consciousness. People can live eternally in a virtual reality or in a manufactured body.

The problem with this is we will most likely be dead before this immortalizing technology is invented.
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