Existence: What the fuck is going on?

[Mudhammam]

It seems as though the more time that slips from under my feet, the more fragile I feel, everything saturated by the realization that I am either incredibly blessed or lucky---to no credit of my own---and that this blessed luck is bound to eventually burn out. My life is consumed by the thought of tomorrow, for at the moment I decide to reflect on today, all I can see is yesterday. What am I? Who am I? Where am I? Why do I find my feet on this dirt at this precise time in the history of the world? I look at my cats, the other organisms around me: what do they perceive? What do they think? I read the ancient poets and philosophers, and each, from the Sumerians to the Greeks, from the Persians to the Europeans of the enlightenment, has its distinctive voices that sing one harmony: the comical and tragic cruelty of man's plight, his futile search to find solid ground upon which to lay his head. True, many find the semblance of it in one form or another, be it wine, philosophy, science, philanthropy, and a million other tasks that humans set themselves upon in the name of higher purpose, whether that be identified as sensual pleasure, reclusive retreat, a life of virtue, or any other manner of living a person finds suitable. For myself though, I feel that the truth will set me free... yet what is the truth, and why does it matter? Is the idea of truth and/or my obligation to it confined to the illusion that makes up the better part of my human experience?

What does it mean to exist? Nothing is static... except for that class of abstractions we designate laws and principles. Everything else is constantly in flux. The moment I say "that _____," it has already changed in time and in space. I am changing, aging, hurled along in orbit around the Sun for which I can only hope to make the journey another 50 or so times (as I would then be approaching 80), hurled through these dimensions like in a dream, the images of the past still in my mushy lump of tissue as sights and sounds that I once lived... they were real. But what are they now? Are thoughts real? Do they exist? It seems impossible to deny. But how do they exist? How does the world of solid objects with definite properties throughout this eternal succession of change exist in contrast to the world of infinitesimally small particles separated by relatively great amounts of space, though these are "simply" manifestations of energy fields dancing a reactionary tango according to universal laws that evolved, apparently, as a result of more basic laws, or perhaps a chaotic lottery, itself something of a law for potentiality; that potentiality itself only self-recognized NOW, as everything that ever happens happens now. What does it mean to say that anything around us, or in us, as it appears either to perception or conception, exists?

I don't find reality simply breathtaking and mindbogglingly messed up. I also find it terrifying. I came from nothing and to nothing I shall return, and everything around me that I can identify also appears to be nothing, for a moment later it is something slightly different, and that as well, et cetera ad infinitum. Ah, infinity. Like nothing...but everything. I see colors, smell perfumes, enjoy life immensely... but soon, and I mean soon, it will be gone. I will be gone. And none of it will ever be again within my purview of experience. Once dead, always dead. Perhaps not, and I can't say I'd necessarily mind waking up at some point in the future, but then again, I'm one of the privileged ones and I don't doubt many would find my wishes quite disagreeable. On top of that, what would it mean to be resurrected? How could I be "me"? Are we to believe that we, as conceived individual selves, lacked any existence for eternity, or that we wake up again and again in the now but without memory?

So, I presume my mind will dissolve forever and my atoms will return to the eco-system from which they came to be recycled as other products of the environment seen through the eyes and brain of... a worm, rat, a bird, or perhaps another person like me, thinking, "What the fuck is going on?"

[downbeatplumb]

I think you need a beer.

[bennyboy]

I'd say that anyone who approaches philosophy with any other attitude than the OP shows doesn't really get what it means to be a philosopher. Good stuff.

I like the Buddhist response to all this: acceptance. Accept the futility and absurdity of your existence. Call it the impermanent dream it is, and don't demand that it must make sense. It's ironic that thinking and logic have as their goal making sense of the chaos, but that the most logical view is still that existence is nonsensical madness, full of paradox, ambiguity and inconsistency.

[GrandizerII]

I get the "What the fuck?" feeling as well whenever I deeply contemplate my existence, but it is often accompanied with a dazed giddy feeling sort of like "It's real, I REALLY do exist!", and it scares me even more.

[Alex K]

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Seriously, what is the deal with existence

I think your thoughts are the starting point of an interesting journey.

[JuliaL]

I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Seriously, what is the deal with existence

I think your thoughts are the starting point of an interesting journey.

When faced with the (I find trivial) question of, "Why is there something rather than nothing."
I answer, "Why not?"
It's economical.
But please feel free to enjoy the journey of exploration of your choice. It's on me.

I'd say that anyone who approaches philosophy with any other attitude than the OP shows doesn't really get what it means to be a philosopher. Good stuff.

I like the Buddhist response to all this: acceptance. Accept the futility and absurdity of your existence. Call it the impermanent dream it is, and don't demand that it must make sense. It's ironic that thinking and logic have as their goal making sense of the chaos, but that the most logical view is still that existence is nonsensical madness, full of paradox, ambiguity and inconsistency.

Me too.
Particularly my distillation of Zen:
'Life is suffering. Try not to think about it too much.'

But I embrace the painful condition and find the universe far too entertaining to practice any discipline that wants to empty my mind. Suffering lets you know you're alive.

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to
think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and
look around.

[Faith No More]

Part of his kind of reminds me of the other night when I was trying to wrap my brain around just what exactly the present is. I mean, I understand the past and the future, as they appear to be clearly defined, but every attempt to pinpoint just what the present is kept slipping into the past!

---

I like the Buddhist response to all this: acceptance. Accept the futility and absurdity of your existence. Call it the impermanent dream it is, and don't demand that it must make sense. It's ironic that thinking and logic have as their goal making sense of the chaos, but that the most logical view is still that existence is nonsensical madness, full of paradox, ambiguity and inconsistency.

I wholeheartedly agree. It's as if the search for knowledge cannot properly begin until one accepts that it is an absurd endeavor.

[JuliaL]

Part of his kind of reminds me of the other night when I was trying to wrap my brain around just what exactly the present is. I mean, I understand the past and the future, as they appear to be clearly defined, but every attempt to pinpoint just what the present is kept slipping into the past!

It gets worse....always.
We each of us have special circuitry that tries to keep now current. Because of the propagation delays in nerves, a simultaneous stimulus that occurs on your neck arrives sooner than one from your foot by an interval that would be significant given the processing speeds our wetware. The cerebellum serves as a bunch of programmable delay lines to coordinate the process so that discovering now is less of a problem.
So is now the same for your foot as your head? Or is this an illusion maintained to keep us upright. Degradation in coordination functions are part of the suite of delightful changes that make us more clumsy and accident prone in old age.

[Pyrrho]

Nestor, your post made me immediately think of that other thread in which I recommended a book that you have said you have not yet gotten. From that other thread:

• I recommend getting an old copy of The Stoic and Epicurean Philosophers: The Complete Extant Writings of Epicurus, Epicetus, Lucretius, Marcus Aurelius edited by Whitney J. Oates. You can buy this from web sites that sell used books, and it can be currently had from Amazon for about $22 including shipping, though you may be able to find it cheaper elsewhere. It contains a very good translation of Epicurus' works, which I highly recommend to everyone.

The primary focus of those philosophers was on how to live a good life. I particularly recommend Epicurus. (As an aside, the English word "epicurean" almost means the exact opposite of what Epicurus actually advocated. This is because of the lies spread by Christians who hated him and wanted to stamp out his philosophy. Fortunately a few [but only a few] of his writings remain, as Christians destroyed most of his writings in their efforts to stamp him out.)

Here is a sample:

• 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.

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.

[Mudhammam]

The only way I can feel the least bit important is to
think of all the mud that didn't even get to sit up and
look around.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

---

Part of his kind of reminds me of the other night when I was trying to wrap my brain around just what exactly the present is. I mean, I understand the past and the future, as they appear to be clearly defined, but every attempt to pinpoint just what the present is kept slipping into the past!

It really is strange...there is no discernible "now" yet it's all that there ever is in one very true sense. William James supposedly calculated our psychological perception of "now" as a length of twelve seconds... kind of a funny idea when you think about it. There's a great lecture about his life and views, well worth a listen and much of it touches upon the stuff in the OP, but especially check out the bit starting around 15:00 and going to 25:00.
https://youtu.be/qSJnEFEtGJc?t=15m

I like the Buddhist response to all this: acceptance. Accept the futility and absurdity of your existence. Call it the impermanent dream it is, and don't demand that it must make sense. It's ironic that thinking and logic have as their goal making sense of the chaos, but that the most logical view is still that existence is nonsensical madness, full of paradox, ambiguity and inconsistency.

I wholeheartedly agree. It's as if the search for knowledge cannot properly begin until one accepts that it is an absurd endeavor.

I third that.

---

• 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, 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. 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 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? 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...).

One book I can't recommend highly enough is Irvin Yalom's Staring At The Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death. It made me weep and laugh, and at the end of the day, really put the philosophy espoused by those such as Epicurus and Nietzsche into flesh and blood for me.