How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?
Rant: This has been keeping me up at night for way too long and every time I think about it I feel like am literally choking on my own thoughts. I have other shit to do but everything seems so inconsequential next to this. I just can’t comprehend why or how the universe even exists or how a bunch of atoms can think or that quantum mechanics literally revealed that the world is not loaded when you are not looking like how tf do you know that I am observing something.
Btw I am not looking for a purpose in life although this may be interpreted as me asking for that.
If anyone has the same problem as me good luck my friend just know that you are not alone.
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.
Hmm. Good analogy, I like it
Yeah, this is great! I’ve been down and apathetic for years and recently been coming around to ‘what’s the best thing I can do for now’ or ‘how can I make the best of this’ but the party analogy us a really helpful take.
Whenever I’m anxious about something in my life, I take a deep breath and remind myself “none of this matters.”
The idea of the universe’s indifference can be crushing, and it can be liberating.
Definitely. I take what ever is bothering me and remind myself if my entire world crashed around me tomorrow I’m not going to just drop dead or anything. Time will march on, life will go on. There may be many stages of grief and things that make me feel uncomfortable but ultimately every night I will still go to sleep and wake to start again.
Life is just a series of events. Not inherently bad, not inherently good, just the results of a universe in spin. We can direct the course of our life but if a meteor strikes tomorrow there is nothing an individual themselves could have done to stop it.
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.
Thanks pretty depressing. But it’s nice to know that this will get better with time so thanks.
You absolutely nailed it. This has been my exact experience.
Personally I find it’s easy to not fret about it because I can’t control it. Also, I didn’t mind not existing before I was born so I won’t mind not existing when my time is up.
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.
This is also really comforting it is opposite to some other comments that say to take comfort in the fact that you will be forgotten and nothing that you do matters. Giving people form the eye-catching show sounds pretty fun. Thank you for the new perspective!
Sigh… unzips
This is so anti-nihilistic that it makes me happy. Thanks for the perspective.
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.
Reminds me of a quote I find kinda comforting:
I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Mark Twain
Now I am depressed about all that list time I can never get back.
By the same logic, you have infinite more ahead of you.
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?
Hey, it’s us.
Holy shit it’s Margot Robbie.
I just play her on TV sometimes.
Holy shit, it’s meta Margot Robbie.
Yay
Man, I can’t wait until the day I don’t exist anymore. My existential crisis is that I’m currently forced into existing.
Came here to say this. Won’t have to pay bills if I’m dead!
That one is easy
Ha yeah, I kinda have this outlook too a lot of days.
You and me both.
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.
The greatest gift is that this life eventually ends.
I’d like to be sooner than later, but it’s enough already. When I was younger, I thought the eternal life would be nice, but after contemplating it through my years, it would be worst curse for me.
I thought that once, and then I came to the conclusion that if the universe is infinite and time is as well, our atom arrangement will almost certainly happen again in the future. Essentially creating a new self, that is not aware of its previous self, but has the same kind of consciousness… As far as we can tell in an endless cycle.
Can you explain how that is responsive to the relief that this subjectivity gets to exit the stage?
I’ll try. For example, our nightly state that forms a sort of split in our stream of consciousness is similar.
It’s a bit like saying you are happy life is over when you go to bed, but in reality there’s a pretty good chance you’ll start a dream state which you might not remember afterwards.
Still, even if you might not remember a nightmare, you don’t want a form of yourself to experience it. As you know in that ‘now’ it will be suffering for that version of yourself.
I think I might be self-specific psychopath, as I can’t gin up much beyond mild sympathy for some other instance of the self whose outcomes I can’t influence.
Could be, or maybe I’m the over-anxious one being too emphatic. But I can just imagine there will be a moment that I’m going to be that instance of self, which will experience the world similar to me.
Like it’s as much me as the me in one hour is going to be me. As long as our chemical setup is the same, with (roughly) the same organization of atoms and thus having the same brain, I can relate as I know exactly how it feels.
Welcome back, Mr Nietzsche. How long are you going to stay?
Boltzmann brain is a trippy concept
Thanks for the link, interesting!
I just follow the Mr. PeanutButter philosophy on life at this point
“The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn’t a search for meaning. It’s to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you’ll be dead”
Basically stop thinking so deeply about the enigmas you will never understand and try to enjoy the small things in life. A walk in a park. Helping someone less fortunate. Cooking a good meal, etc.
It wont be the first time I didnt exist
I just avoid thinking about it. There’s other stuff to do. Find a hobby.
I agree with many here in that I expect not to be any more inconvenienced by death than I was before I was born.
A thought that I appreciate that others haven’t mentioned is: The atoms that currently happen to think they’re me have previously thought they were a fish or a raccoon or a different person, or whatever, and they will, eventually, again.
Since my life is probably just ripples on a pond, I am motivated to, ideally, make an interesting, pleasant splash. I hope I’m remembered fondly for the brief time (cosmically) that I’m remembered at all.
I also hope (perhaps against reason) that humanity (and whatever replaces us) are growing more compassionate, so that whatever interesting form my current atoms might join next may also have a decent time, and have a chance to leave more pleasant memories in others.
(And hey, maybe there’s an afterlife. If so, maybe whoever runs it isn’t one of the assholes that the con artists tell us to expect. Or if they are one of those assholes we’ve been promised, maybe they can be distracted and assassinated. I plan to be ready to roll with it, just in case.)
Really liked how you worded that. It reminded me of this video about afterlife I rewatch when I’m having an existential crisis. One quote from the video,
“Ironically enough the only part of me that is immortal, for all intents and purposes, is my material body. Because after I die, and after our Sun dies, and after the planetary nebula it leaves behind fades away, every atom of me will be recycled back into the universe. Ultimately becoming part of other planets and stars. We are originally star dust literally, and we will be star dust again.”
- Cristina Rad
I haven’t thought about the fact that I (what makes me up) might someday be reborn into another form in this way. It is a really comforting realasion l do thank you.
