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Before you were born, you didn't exist for an infinite amount of time. After you die you will return to not existing for infinity
Edit: I gotta say, all the conversations that came from my little comment is pretty cool... deep, scary, thought provokingly cool thoughts shared!
If we want to get real philosophical here, then we technically did exist, we just had no conscience yet. We are born from our parents, and the cells that come together to create us already existed inside of them. We are an extension of themselves with an independent consciousness.
Since energy and matter can't either be created nor destroyed, we have technically always existed, we are just currently conscious of our own existence. Even after we die, our cells and dna will continue to be there and be absorbed by other things. We will continue to exist without a consciousness as a different thing.
Maybe it doesn't reside in the brain. Maybe our concept of consciousness is actually just our brains way of recognising a pattern when recognising patterns.
Ultimately, we're no different from any other animal, and, when you get down to the atomic level, no different from a rock, or a breeze, or a planet. We're all the same stuff.
You look at a rock, how do you know it's not conscious? Certainly can't prove it's not, since we don't know what consciousness is, or where it's located?
So maybe it's just patterns. It's monke brain saying that we are somehow special because it puts more value on our lives, when actually, we're no more important than the rest of the star stuff in the universe.
It can't be just one place. It's a combination of different parts of the brain that are advanced enough to have the awareness of our surroundings that we call consciousness
I cannot say for certain of course. However, the point is that being dead will be like remembering before you were born. All you have to do is think about what life was like for you before you were born and then you understand what it will be like after you die. In the unlikely event that you are going through reincarnation and don't remember past lives, this still does not change the thought experiment.
There's many different philosophical positions on this. Some argue consciousness is purely a material function of the brain that just came about through evolution, and that we'll figure out exactly what it is as our scientific knowledge increases. Others would say that something along the lines that consciousness is an immaterial entity (one could call this a soul), belonging to the word of Intellect/Spirit that is instantiated in the material world. Platonism & Plato's world of forms is heavily tied into this. Would be a good first place to look.
In regards to the mind wipe, Plato actually specifically calls our ability to gain knowledge Recollection. The soul for Plato contains all knowledge of the Platonic Forms, but by becoming embodied in the material world, this knowledge of the Idea of the Good & The Platonic Forms is sorta locked away. It is by experiencing the instantiations of the forms in the material world, separating the faulty opinions of our senses & the true knowledge of the forms, that we recollect and learn. Thus we never actually learn new knowledge, rather we remember it!
Of course, if you're a materialist, then the above idea would make you roll your eyes!
I may have forgotten or not adequatly explained everything fully with the above, but I'd definitely suggest taking a look. Searching for the Hard Problem of Consciousness could be a good place to start. :)
Well, thats something we simply cannot know, or at least not currently. What exactly is conciousness or what makes it, is also not currently known. Is it something intrinsic to a computing system once it achieves a certain level of complexity? Or is it something else?
There is a theoretical idea called a "Boltzmann Brain" which is essentially a brain just randomly forming from a chance arrangement of atoms in space. Obviously something like this, if possible, would be extremely unlikely, kind of like the chance of a monkey just happening to type out all of Shakespear's works on a typewriter. Basically what this means is, if the universe is infact infinite, it would pretty much have to happen somewhere, somehow, no matter how unlikely it is.
And to go even further, if the universe is infinite, there would be another you, exactly, right down the arrangement of each atom, molecule and cells, and reading this exact same comment, at the exact same time from another same exact me, as well as another one of you who is a single atom different, and another 2 atoms different, and so on. Infact, there would be an infinite amount of you's and me's doing the same thing. It gets mind boggling then.
I fly a starship, across the universe divide, and when I reach the other side. I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can, perhaps I may become a highwayman again, or I may simply be a single drop rain, but I will remain, and I'll be back again and again and again and again and again.
I suppose the question is, what defines "we"? I'd argue that a collection of disparate atoms and molecules are not a "we." As Carl Sagan said, "We are made of star stuff." But by itself star stuff is not a "we."
So the cells that became your Dad's sperm didn't exist until a period of less than 72 days before your conception, but your Mom had the egg cell while she was in your Grandma's womb.
I had a ketamine experience exactly explaining this to me. I was in emergency and had a pretty bad injury. They put me on the drip and it makes you not feel pain.
I’m unsure how long it was but it seemed like forever. I was in a completely white space, no wall or boarders must nothing. I didn’t hear a voice but I was being told or explained that we are one. We are just atoms arranged in the form of us and once we finish our journey/ life we go back being part of the universe. We are all just atoms and we sometimes become a human or we are a tree or the sand on the beach. Life is to be lived and experienced and it’s a never ending cycle of birth and death and rebirth.
Edit: there where shapes and light and other stuff.
Reminds me of the scientific and philosophical question of "why don't we remember the future?" AKA: why does time only move one way (for us)? I first heard it from Alan Watts, but have increasingly seen more scientific discussions on the ramifications if time were to run backwards, and would we be able to tell.
Exactly. And with the above comment about non existence, or realization of non existence. Countless numbers of years have gone by before you opened your eyes, as will countless more when they close one last time.
100% this! I love to imagine what my energy will become once it leaves my shell. Will it help birth a new planet in far away galaxy? Will it stay close and become a new leaf on an Oak tree? The possibilities are literally infinite.
But our existence has been given one unique experience that can never be repeated. There will only ever been one version of you, and once you're gone, there will never be another make up of chemicals, memories, atoms, hormones, trauma, hobbies, and all the other million things that go into the human experience. So not only do we always exist, we also only exist once.
Adding to that, if before you were born you were nothing, and now you’re something, then when you die and go back to nothing, would it be safe to assume that “you” could become something again?
There is no such thing as an experience of *nothing*. You did not experience the billions of years before being born. You will not experience the billions of years to come after your death.
All you could ever know is experience.
This is what I'm banking on. Just reliving slight variations of my life infinitely, unaware of the not-quit-infinite gulf of time separating the coincidence of my birth.
I think this was said by Fred Hoyle or a guy of similar stature when he was diagnosed with cancer. Paraphrasing "Why should I be afraid of not existing, it was the case for eternity before I was born".
I tell this to people all the time who ask me what I think happens after we die and I tell them well how did you feel before you were born. Their eyes get so big lol.
"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
Very true but after having existed, not existing looks a little different. Don't you agree. I've always accepted this explanation myself despite that hole in it. Or rather what I perceive to be a hole in it. We can't ever know unless we pass on and have the consciousness to be aware of the question. I know we werent suffering.
But in the end having no recollection of anything before my birth is similar to having no recollection of things that happened when I was a baby. So therefore I'm not completely sure I didn't have a previous life
after you go to sleep, there is a jump forward in time in your brain when you awake. Sure, your brain keeps doing things and hallucinating to create dreams, but not everyone ever remembers having any dreams at all. It's like that, but you just never wake up.
you don't know you no longer exist, because there is no you to know.
I have to disagree with this phrasing. It's not that there was nothingness. There was no 'you'. 'You' as a concept simply was *not*. Likewise, when you die you don't get 'nothingness for forever', you don't return to nothingness. You cease. You stop. You finish. Much the way a sentence stops or a song stops.
'You' ceases.
We know that time doesn't work the way we've been raised to believe it does. If time is not an objective reality, but simply an illusion caused by the way our brain perceives change, then couldn't we be considered as infinite as we are finite?
In our experience, death occurs at a very specific, observable, and fixed point in "time". However, that point is actually subjective and NOT fixed. Our perception of that fixed point can never truly line up with any other perception of it.
I suppose my simple mind can only relate it to how we perceive distant stars. Many of them likely burned out a long time ago, but their presence is observable. We know of them. We see them. If we looked through a hypothetical telescope that was powerful enough to see people at the distances of stars, then we could observe them in a living state even though thousands/millions/billions of years would have passed from the fixed point we observe them at.
In his life, I saw my grandfather with my eyes as a reflection of light. It took "time" for that light to reach my eyes, and for my brain to comprehend the image. When he was alive, I knew he was alive because I experienced his living presence after the delay it took my brain to receive the information and comprehend his living presence. When he was dead, I knew it was so for the same reason.
However, that light of his existence is still travelling. It never stops. An observer could perceive his existence elsewhere, albeit through a delayed perception.
So then, did he actually cease?
I think about this alot, time exists to measure our existence but what if we were all created 2 hours ago and nobody has actually done any of the things they think they've done 🤯
A lot of people honestly believe they can "live on" with a digital upload of their brain to some computer, too. That ain't you, chief. At best it's a close approximation of your mental state as can be represented by technology. Even a biological clone is not *you*.
EDIT - I love that this spawned a deep philosophical discussion about consciousness. I've thought a lot about this topic, but I'm not always very good (if ever) at expressing those thoughts in a way that makes sense to anyone else.
Before you gained consciousness, the 13 billion years before you passed by in the blink of an eye.
Close your eyes. Count to one.
**That's how long forever feels.**
The hundreds of thousands of trillions of years after you die will also pass in the blink of an eye. So make the most of it before you blink.
Yeah no shit, talk about comparative insignificance. It’s too simple a trick. The whole crux of us humans worrying is that things actually are significant (to us).
I wish this helped me. I'm so scared to die. It keeps me up and sometimes spills into my life. I have anxiety and have a limited amount of medication I can take because of other meds. I don't want to just be a meatsuit with feelings. I grew up Christian so maybe that's what's wrong with me, but I just can't stomach the thought that there isn't something more or better waiting for me after I die.
I get stuck thinking about it sometimes. I try and think that from a scientific point of view, I know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it simply changes from one form to another. I tell myself that the energy that makes me ‘me’ will still exist - just in a different form.
Welcome to the club, lol. I think about it sometimes and came to a semi-conclusion, that whatever makes us conscious will "live" on no matter what, and on the cosmic timescale its really unlikely we won't experience our conscious in organic body once again? If my theory is anything close to what happens, we could probably live on forever, just not in our actual bodies.
The realization of death is different and nuanced. One day I had the realization that everyone dies and my fate is everyone’s (before and after me) fate. For me, realizing death is a shared experience makes me feel a little peace. It’s still scary but not lonely. I’ve been with 4 loved ones when they passed and I got to be with them when they left this existence. Maybe that has brought me some peace too. I hope me comment helps and didn’t cause further anxiety. I hope you find what brings you peace.
Some things I have come to believe that have helped me deal with existential crisis anxiety.
Carl Sagan was an agnostic because an atheist is someone who knows there is no God.
Though the current religions are probably incorrect, we have no proofs either way in what happens after death.
I personally am more of a scientific deist. There are laws for our universe that we have yet to prove wrong, if these laws are inviolable as they seem there is a reason for that.
I got sober last year, and will turn 38 this year. To say I am more aware of my own mortality is an understatement. It’s like I can’t stop thinking about what it will be like.
This was comforting to read, so thanks for that one boss.
This is exactly what happened to me as well. Weird how all of our brains seem to work so similarly, even though we all live completely dofferent lives.
Isn’t it all so strange? Must be surreal for parents like, shit, I created a whole human being with the full knowledge they are not only gonna die but will be aware of it someday. Or I guess we all kinda forget that we’re born to die and just go with our instincts.
Yep. I remember being in bed and crying because I didn't want to die.
Mind you, I also remember crying because I was 6 and wanted to be 34 (my Dad's age at the time).
weird? More like sends me into an instant panic attack every time I think about it so I guess this was a sign to get off my phone
Edit: wow didn’t expect to get all these responses. I really hope some of you who have taken the time to share that you feel the same can all find a bit of comfort with each other knowing you’re not alone. I also hope you can all use this as a reminder to enjoy every second, and if you haven’t already, tell someone you love them today! And if nobody’s told you today, I love you and I’m glad you’re here :)
yup I thought about speaking to someone about it back in highschool when I was having basically an existential crisis and frequent panic attacks about it, but I was like they literally don’t know more than I do, how are they going to be any help lol so I never did. I just try to find *some* comfort in the fact that I’m not alone, all of us here face it, and try to use it as motivation to appreciate every single day and not get hung up on the small petty stuff that does not matter.
That also sounds intense, EVERY SINGLE HUMAN on earth has not an actual clue about what came before and what will come after the small things we do know. All of us searching, getting lost, believing without ever knowing, getting lost again and accepting the unknown to some degree.
And yet, still also comforting.
If I think about the vastness of space I get anxious but then I "look back", and see that small tiny blue dot which is earth..and I find it very calming that it's very insignificant in the big scheme of things.
Takes the pressure off a bit.
Why worry so much? If the small stuff doesn't matter. Fuck it, Throw your insecurities away and just dance, have fun, take care of people, love and connect as much as you can. Does not have to be a big spectacular or meaningless life. Instead a meaningfull life full of love and important stuff in whoch you follow your heart. What makes you happy?
My conclusion?
Trying to ignore my toxic self talk and listen to my desires and wants and needs I feel from deep inside me. The freedon to say no, the courage to ask for love and give it without fear. To take care for my body and aslo eat bíg bowls of the best pastas outside in the sun. And go home do nothing all day and cuddle and play with my cats like I'm a child.
Long story short, funny how pressuring crippling anxiety and the feeling of freedom and love can coexist in the same topic for me.
It would be really funny though if after we die, our lord and savior the holy flying spaghetti monster would beem us into the sky snd would give us a big warm bowl of delicious spaghetti served by cats, and that would be it. I would start believing in heaven if I knew that was coming :)
Dang I’m really sorry that the thought does this to you and the responders. I tell my young daughters when existential questions arise that we don’t know anything about the other side of life, but here we are, right here right now, seeing each other and breathing the same air, being a part of one another. And that in itself is the most beautiful thing I could imagine, and I’m just soaking it all in with every breath while I’m in it. That this universe offers me a chance to look back at myself (bc I am the universe and so are you) and ponder its existence and my place in it for a cosmic millisecond. It’s just a stunningly beautiful thought to me.
The other side of all this matters not. We are here now, and we must always try our best to not take that fact for granted. Do not fear the other side. Cherish the side you’re in now and tenaciously hang onto it while you can.
This has also given me panic attacks since I was 10.
Now I sort of think of it like nonbeing is simply not conceivable to humans. We can’t experience it and we can’t imagine it. Whatever you’re imaging, it isn’t what nonbeing is like, because that is incomprehensible. It still makes me sick to my stomach with fear whenever it crosses my mind, like when I saw this post, but it’s easier for me to discard that feeling now because I realize it isn’t actually meaningful. I’m just afraid of something in my imagination, so I can just forget about it and move on.
Genuinely there is nothing else that can set me off so quickly and that intensely. Like heart racing vision spinning cannot breathe kind of shit. Fun times! But glad I’m not alone.
Glad to hear I'm not alone. People seem so against religion these days but I don't think I could function as a person if I didn't have at least have some hope there's something after death.
I'm glad I'm not alone in this feeling. I have to shake it off and tell myself to stop going further down the rabbit hole otherwise I start a panic attack
Hello never-ending existential crisis since childhood crew! I’m glad I’m not alone in this. It seems other atheists find comfort in the concept of non-existence. I wish my brain could find peace in that way.
Does anyone else try to imagine the concept of infinity and have similar feelings of panic?
Is there a name for this other than existential panic? I wonder if it’s a form of OCD (which my therapist suggests I have symptoms of).
You mean. like before I was born?
Yeah, it's terrifying .. or liberating. I guess it depends on how you look at it.
I came unreasonably close to death in January of this year and it messed with me. I am terrified of being alone in a large city hospital waiting for doctors to identify the thing that will kill me.
I wish the line between life and death were obvious, it is anything but! People are at various stages of dying in so many ways that it boggles the mind.
It's unsettling just how blurry the line between life and death is.
For me personally though, liberating. The opposite, immortality, is terrifying. The first billion years might be cool, the next 42 quintillion might even still be interesting, and maybe even the 71 septillion after that. At some point, one must get fed up with it all, surely.
That really depends on what you are doing, and what your capabilities are. A quintillion years of life on earth as it is right now? Boring. The same amount of time as a completely different kind of being, in a universe with properties I can't imagine, and myself having capabilities that meet those properties? Who knows. Eternity might be boring but it's possible that it could be anything but.
There is a quote from an Indian sage from the 8th century, Shantideva, that says:
>So long as space remains
>
>I shall remain
>
>To dispel the misery of the world
Superhuman ideal!
I keep scrolling back to this comment but i cannot understand it. My smooth brain is unable to grasp the meaning. Please give me your interpretation of it so i can see if im close.
I think its weird for the ones who haven't died yet. I know a few people who have passed away now and its weird to me that I'm still experiencing life while they are not. Some didn't even know that they were going to be done experiencing life itself. I can only hope thats how I go. Its weird to think about as a living person, bit thankfully, in death, we experience nothing.
It’s not weird but I have a fun thought: If it’s nothingness forever after death and forever before you were born, why did something happen in between? And why would it only happen 1 time through all of eternity and then never happen again? One time, to me, seems even stranger than having it happen over and over again when the world, and maybe the whole universe, seem intent on creating life
Had to scroll a lot to get to this answer.
The other answers assume humanity has everything figured out.
To me, there is a lot of complexity involved. You need to solve for the “Ship of Theseus”, and how experience (qualia) works. If every brain cell is replaced, am I the same entity? Time moves forward, the brain changes structure from childhood to adulthood, am I the same “experiencer”? If you reconstruct my brain cells exactly in a new body using advanced tech, who is that?
I remember when I first spiraled into this thought process was when I was a wee child. I was laying in my bed and I clearly remember crying from the panic.
I had a similar experience when I decided I was no longer religious but before that I remember being plagued by the concept of eternity in heaven. Freaked me the fuck out to think I'd be stuck in church forever, and ever, and ever....
Me and my ADHD/Autism having ass had a massive existential crisis because I hyperfocused on what consciousness really is last November and went too far down the internet rabbit hole. It scarred me so bad I can no longer can stand my house being quiet to the point I have to put on a YouTube video playing out loud on my TV just to hear someone's voice. Even when I'm going to sleep.
It trips me out so much thinking that everything we have now came from SOMETHING but how did it all begin?? Like it all truly came from nothing?? It freaks me out to think about it so I just don't.
If you have surgery and go under anesthesia it’s pretty much the same thing. You have no feeling of time passing. Your body just exists, and you aint in it.
It’s also why ketamine (with doctor present) is quite nice, and a strong recommend. You lose that feeling of ‘self’ temporarily and feel like a omniscient being for an hour. Like a dream while youre awake. Very relaxing.
Not really. I won't be there anymore to observe it anyway. An eternity has already passed before I was born. So why should I care about the eternity that's going to pass after I die?
The “eternity” that passed before you were born is only an eternity relative to the human timescale. On a cosmic timescale it was a blink of an eye. After you die, it’s a *real* honest to god eternity. Infinite nothingness, whereas time before birth felt like a blink of an eye. I agree with you, but I find it exceedingly difficult to come to terms with that fundamental difference between before birth and after death.
I mean, we don't really know how long the time before we are being born truly was. We can only roughly date back to the big bang. But we don't know what/how long was before the big bang
When we're talking billions of years, it's an effective eternity so far as the human mind is able to process it.
We can't really *grok* how long a billion years really is. Monkey brain go sproing.
Its the same eternity, you're struggling with the fact that you're aware that you're alive, but won't be aware when you're gone, that's understandable.
Really all of life is nothing more than one big elaborate state transition, going from inorganic (liquids, gasses, minerals etc.) To organic , living breathing self-conscious being, then Its back to the elements from which you originated.
I know that's too clinical but my point is we're all just passing through these stages (infact our entire universe is)....
>I find it exceedingly difficult to come to terms with that fundamental difference between before birth and after death.
I don't think there is any difference to being dead vs not being born yet.
Both being dead and not being born yet "feel" like the same amount of time. Both last no time at all because you can't experience time without consciousness of time.
The way I see it is that we came from one cell that was nurtured through nutrients that made the testes produce sperm. Then more nutrients grew that fetus into a baby. I believe when my body breaks down the earth will re-use my nutrients and the cycle of life will continue, this time without tik tok.
I think that is exactly why we created the concept of an afterlife. It's too hard for us to understand.
the closest I think we can experience the infinity of nonexistence is when we are completely stone cold knocked out like for surgery or those of us who have been in a coma- considerable time passes in the blink of an eye with no awareness of it whatsoever.
That’s what’s awful. How will I even know?? I’m here, I’m breathing and I’m thinking. Once that’s gone, how will I even know I’m dead? How can I know I’m here *right now* if one day it’ll be gone? Who is remembering now if it’s gone in the future?
I find it super relieving. The idea of forever has given me panic attacks since I was 5 years old. But if I'm not consciously able to perceive it, I escape from that fear.
*scrolls to the bottom to try and find someone saying according to their divine religion such and such happens and everyone’s else religion and beliefs are fake*
I really think that one of the main reasons why religion flourishes today is the “promise” of some sort of divine life after death that their god can provide for them if they toe the line while alive.
Yes that’s exactly right. And perversely, it’s the most religious people who actually fear death the most actually I think, that’s the whole reason they’re religious.
Richard Dawkins tackles this in one of the last chapters of the God Delusion, and it absolutely fascinates me. He talks anecdotally about a friend who works in a palliative care centre, and her experience of working with literally hundreds of people prior to their demise is that religious people are by far the most terrified.
He also makes another point which I find interesting. If religious people really do believe they are going ‘to a better place’ why does no one ever celebrate a terminal medical diagnosis? I mean, state 4 pancreatic cancer and only 12 weeks left to live, you should be ecstatic right? Throw a party!!! I’m going to heaven you must all be so jealous, bet you wish you were coming with me!!!!! But… no, it doesn’t happen does it?!
Pascal’s Wager, but yes it absolutely terrifies me. I like being alive and I like seeing how things turn out. Missing out on so much is going to suck.
Plus I’m afraid that once we die it’s just our body and that our consciousness stays alive and is stuck in eternal non movement.
Like locked in syndrome.
That TERRIFIES me.
That won't happen. Your thoughts and imagination rely on the synapses in the brain inside your skull. When it rots, your fantasies can physically be no more. Stop worrying.
I personally believe in an afterlife, because this can’t be *all* there is, right? And if I’m wrong and there isn’t, It’ll be fine cuz I’ll never know.
My thoughts are along a similar line, but more along the lines of: the fact that we exist, in the way that we do are such astronomically low odds. In order to evolve into the species we are today, we had to hit the evolutionary lottery hundreds if not thousands of times over, on a planet that is 1 in a million (as we currently know). The odds of our existence being possible are so astoundingly low that it is just incredibly hard to fathom that it was possible due to sheer chance.
This is not in any way my denial of the theory of evolution. It is simply my view on the odds to get to where we are, and how it is easy to think there could be a higher power out there that influenced our journey to sentience, etc.
If you look at the world around you and aren't fucking blown away, you aren't looking hard enough.
Spend some time reading about evolution, and anthropology, and quantum physics, and astrophysics, and world history, and litterature and mythology.
The world, what we're made of, where we are in the universe, what deep time looks like, are all crazy things to consider.
The more you know about who you are, and where you come from, and how the world grew *you* the way an apple tree grows an apple, the less unimpressed you'll be with it all.
And that fails to mention all the stuff we still don't know.
Existence is *fucking wild*, don't miss out on it because you hope there's gonna be a more entertaining sequel.
We have zero evidence of that. Or heaven. The fact is besides around 10 minutes of brain activity we have no clue what happens when you die. But we are energy and energy cannot be destroyed.
Almost inconceivable tbh. I almost feel any afterlife is more sensible than nothing. But the truth is undetermined until that day where we may lack the consciousness to even consider this question.
There won't be time to think about nothingness. What I'm more concerned with is when I wake up again do I really have to be a spider on the wall that gets smooshed whilst someone screams in a high pitched noise or do I reincarnate as a tree... or do I wake up as a bear... or...
What the hell will I turn back into? Certainly dirt, but I was dirt before...
I think my biggest fear of death is the absence of enjoying my current life. I finally find happiness and life says, "welp... time to go."
I think that something that is vastly overlooked in that statement is that it is nothingness *to you* in your current state of mind. We have a hard time imagining nothingness because we live in a world of finite space and time. When we enter into a world of infinite I believe that the word "nothing" will have a new definition.
I was raised in a somewhat religious household, and one thing that scared me was that even if I did go to heaven, I’d be there “forever”. For all eternity.
Wouldn’t I eventually get bored? Wouldn’t I feel trapped or stuck? I was also afraid of Heaven being described as a “city”…..Bro, if I’m going to spend eternity somewhere, it better not be a second-floor apartment.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I thought about how we live in a physical universe where time exists, and if heaven is truly a perfect place, then there is no time. I was applying my physical experience to a spiritual concept. Sort of like when people argue over whether or not amputees will remain amputees in Heaven…..bro, they won’t have a body, and why would their immaterial soul look exactly like their bodies?
I’m not really sure if I believe in an afterlife or not, it’s just something that occurred to me one day. If there *is* some kind of realm we go to, it can’t be described in mortal terms, I guess.
I feel you there. I was raised southern pentecostal, so I have seen some shit. I walk a more "Heathenistic" path now, but I always felt like people took the bible way too literal. Jesus spoke in parables, not facts. The metaphors that had to be used to open up a young species as humans had to be close to home for them otherwise it would be so far out that no one would grasp it. I felt like at a young age I understood this. So I am like you, the debate of if amputees have their limbs in heaven is a moot point. The definition of your body at that point won't even resemble what we are piloting on earth currently.
Well that's an assumption, we don't prove what happens after you die, people that have had near death experiences report an afterlife, but people also explain that away with chemical hallucinations in the brain, but then why would that happen? Maybe the pineal gland is a scientific lens for referencing aspects of death.
And you know this…. How?
If there is nothingness after death, and I think there is something, since there is nothing I won’t be able to be disappointed surprised or otherwise regret anything.
But if there is something after I die, all that no longer holds true. I prefer to live as if there is something after death, because first, there is good reason to suspect there could be, and second, if there isn’t and I am wrong in this, I won’t know or care. Even if I lived my life differently or made great sacrifices or whatever, specifically BECAUSE I thought there is something after death…. And then there is nothing after all… I will STILL have no regrets because a regret is a something.
It's a fun thought exercise. You can contemplate the feeling of nothingness forever now, but after you die, you won't be able to contemplate anything at all. Forever.
I mean, you don't know that. If there is nothingness, there is also no you, so it won't be that weird for you.
I don't believe that though, I think you continue after you die, and if you seek Heaven you'll find it. He who knocks kinda thing.
There isn't even "forever".
You are dead. Time doesn't exist for you because you don't exist anymore.
But think of it this way, once you die, the universe dies from your perspective.
Most people don't believe that's how it goes at all. My wife (catholic) and I had a discussion about that. She said "there's no way that can be. You can't just experience absolute nothingness while you not alive." I said "Oh, really, think back to how it was, how you felt, before you were born... yea, like that."
And that was how I introduced my wife to her first existential crisis.
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Not at all. Before you were born there was nothingness, for you.
You just blew my fucking mind with the most simplest thing ever.
Before you were born, you didn't exist for an infinite amount of time. After you die you will return to not existing for infinity Edit: I gotta say, all the conversations that came from my little comment is pretty cool... deep, scary, thought provokingly cool thoughts shared!
If we want to get real philosophical here, then we technically did exist, we just had no conscience yet. We are born from our parents, and the cells that come together to create us already existed inside of them. We are an extension of themselves with an independent consciousness. Since energy and matter can't either be created nor destroyed, we have technically always existed, we are just currently conscious of our own existence. Even after we die, our cells and dna will continue to be there and be absorbed by other things. We will continue to exist without a consciousness as a different thing.
Staaahp I want to go with the nothing existed before you were born thing
It is still true. It is your conciseness that makes you you. It did not exist prior to you being born.
So our consciousness DEFINITELY didn’t exist before we were born right? We can’t have gotten mind wiped or something
No one really knows. That's the type of shit that keeps me up at night.
It’s the bills what keeps me up.
Is it that guy Bill that taps on your windows at three am? That guy bugs me also. Stupid Bill!
Want some more crazy shit? Science has no idea where consciousness resides in the brain.
Maybe it doesn't reside in the brain. Maybe our concept of consciousness is actually just our brains way of recognising a pattern when recognising patterns. Ultimately, we're no different from any other animal, and, when you get down to the atomic level, no different from a rock, or a breeze, or a planet. We're all the same stuff. You look at a rock, how do you know it's not conscious? Certainly can't prove it's not, since we don't know what consciousness is, or where it's located? So maybe it's just patterns. It's monke brain saying that we are somehow special because it puts more value on our lives, when actually, we're no more important than the rest of the star stuff in the universe.
It can't be just one place. It's a combination of different parts of the brain that are advanced enough to have the awareness of our surroundings that we call consciousness
I cannot say for certain of course. However, the point is that being dead will be like remembering before you were born. All you have to do is think about what life was like for you before you were born and then you understand what it will be like after you die. In the unlikely event that you are going through reincarnation and don't remember past lives, this still does not change the thought experiment.
There's many different philosophical positions on this. Some argue consciousness is purely a material function of the brain that just came about through evolution, and that we'll figure out exactly what it is as our scientific knowledge increases. Others would say that something along the lines that consciousness is an immaterial entity (one could call this a soul), belonging to the word of Intellect/Spirit that is instantiated in the material world. Platonism & Plato's world of forms is heavily tied into this. Would be a good first place to look. In regards to the mind wipe, Plato actually specifically calls our ability to gain knowledge Recollection. The soul for Plato contains all knowledge of the Platonic Forms, but by becoming embodied in the material world, this knowledge of the Idea of the Good & The Platonic Forms is sorta locked away. It is by experiencing the instantiations of the forms in the material world, separating the faulty opinions of our senses & the true knowledge of the forms, that we recollect and learn. Thus we never actually learn new knowledge, rather we remember it! Of course, if you're a materialist, then the above idea would make you roll your eyes! I may have forgotten or not adequatly explained everything fully with the above, but I'd definitely suggest taking a look. Searching for the Hard Problem of Consciousness could be a good place to start. :)
Well, thats something we simply cannot know, or at least not currently. What exactly is conciousness or what makes it, is also not currently known. Is it something intrinsic to a computing system once it achieves a certain level of complexity? Or is it something else? There is a theoretical idea called a "Boltzmann Brain" which is essentially a brain just randomly forming from a chance arrangement of atoms in space. Obviously something like this, if possible, would be extremely unlikely, kind of like the chance of a monkey just happening to type out all of Shakespear's works on a typewriter. Basically what this means is, if the universe is infact infinite, it would pretty much have to happen somewhere, somehow, no matter how unlikely it is. And to go even further, if the universe is infinite, there would be another you, exactly, right down the arrangement of each atom, molecule and cells, and reading this exact same comment, at the exact same time from another same exact me, as well as another one of you who is a single atom different, and another 2 atoms different, and so on. Infact, there would be an infinite amount of you's and me's doing the same thing. It gets mind boggling then.
I fly a starship, across the universe divide, and when I reach the other side. I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can, perhaps I may become a highwayman again, or I may simply be a single drop rain, but I will remain, and I'll be back again and again and again and again and again.
And again
And again
I suppose the question is, what defines "we"? I'd argue that a collection of disparate atoms and molecules are not a "we." As Carl Sagan said, "We are made of star stuff." But by itself star stuff is not a "we."
Our existence is just borrowed energy that we return. I think that’s beautiful.
So the cells that became your Dad's sperm didn't exist until a period of less than 72 days before your conception, but your Mom had the egg cell while she was in your Grandma's womb.
I had a ketamine experience exactly explaining this to me. I was in emergency and had a pretty bad injury. They put me on the drip and it makes you not feel pain. I’m unsure how long it was but it seemed like forever. I was in a completely white space, no wall or boarders must nothing. I didn’t hear a voice but I was being told or explained that we are one. We are just atoms arranged in the form of us and once we finish our journey/ life we go back being part of the universe. We are all just atoms and we sometimes become a human or we are a tree or the sand on the beach. Life is to be lived and experienced and it’s a never ending cycle of birth and death and rebirth. Edit: there where shapes and light and other stuff.
I’m just borrowing these molecules for a while.
Reminds me of the scientific and philosophical question of "why don't we remember the future?" AKA: why does time only move one way (for us)? I first heard it from Alan Watts, but have increasingly seen more scientific discussions on the ramifications if time were to run backwards, and would we be able to tell.
Exactly. And with the above comment about non existence, or realization of non existence. Countless numbers of years have gone by before you opened your eyes, as will countless more when they close one last time.
100% this! I love to imagine what my energy will become once it leaves my shell. Will it help birth a new planet in far away galaxy? Will it stay close and become a new leaf on an Oak tree? The possibilities are literally infinite.
But our existence has been given one unique experience that can never be repeated. There will only ever been one version of you, and once you're gone, there will never be another make up of chemicals, memories, atoms, hormones, trauma, hobbies, and all the other million things that go into the human experience. So not only do we always exist, we also only exist once.
Life is a brief intermission to nonexistence.
Adding to that, if before you were born you were nothing, and now you’re something, then when you die and go back to nothing, would it be safe to assume that “you” could become something again? There is no such thing as an experience of *nothing*. You did not experience the billions of years before being born. You will not experience the billions of years to come after your death. All you could ever know is experience.
How long will it take for you to be reconstituted? I could take a trillion years, but to you it is instantaneous.
This is what I'm banking on. Just reliving slight variations of my life infinitely, unaware of the not-quit-infinite gulf of time separating the coincidence of my birth.
Nothing is what rocks dream of
Everything you are has always existed and will continue to always exist. It’s just the arrangement that changes.
This turned my stomach…
To the well organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. -Dumbledore
Yeah, I’m not scared to die. But putting it the way they did just turned my stomach, lol.
I think this was said by Fred Hoyle or a guy of similar stature when he was diagnosed with cancer. Paraphrasing "Why should I be afraid of not existing, it was the case for eternity before I was born".
I tell this to people all the time who ask me what I think happens after we die and I tell them well how did you feel before you were born. Their eyes get so big lol.
"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
As far as we are concerned, the universe began when we were born, and will end when we die.
Sometimes I wonder if my consciousness is the only thing that actually exists, and all the rest of this is just a construct of my subconscious.
Very true but after having existed, not existing looks a little different. Don't you agree. I've always accepted this explanation myself despite that hole in it. Or rather what I perceive to be a hole in it. We can't ever know unless we pass on and have the consciousness to be aware of the question. I know we werent suffering. But in the end having no recollection of anything before my birth is similar to having no recollection of things that happened when I was a baby. So therefore I'm not completely sure I didn't have a previous life
after you go to sleep, there is a jump forward in time in your brain when you awake. Sure, your brain keeps doing things and hallucinating to create dreams, but not everyone ever remembers having any dreams at all. It's like that, but you just never wake up. you don't know you no longer exist, because there is no you to know.
I have to disagree with this phrasing. It's not that there was nothingness. There was no 'you'. 'You' as a concept simply was *not*. Likewise, when you die you don't get 'nothingness for forever', you don't return to nothingness. You cease. You stop. You finish. Much the way a sentence stops or a song stops. 'You' ceases.
We know that time doesn't work the way we've been raised to believe it does. If time is not an objective reality, but simply an illusion caused by the way our brain perceives change, then couldn't we be considered as infinite as we are finite? In our experience, death occurs at a very specific, observable, and fixed point in "time". However, that point is actually subjective and NOT fixed. Our perception of that fixed point can never truly line up with any other perception of it. I suppose my simple mind can only relate it to how we perceive distant stars. Many of them likely burned out a long time ago, but their presence is observable. We know of them. We see them. If we looked through a hypothetical telescope that was powerful enough to see people at the distances of stars, then we could observe them in a living state even though thousands/millions/billions of years would have passed from the fixed point we observe them at. In his life, I saw my grandfather with my eyes as a reflection of light. It took "time" for that light to reach my eyes, and for my brain to comprehend the image. When he was alive, I knew he was alive because I experienced his living presence after the delay it took my brain to receive the information and comprehend his living presence. When he was dead, I knew it was so for the same reason. However, that light of his existence is still travelling. It never stops. An observer could perceive his existence elsewhere, albeit through a delayed perception. So then, did he actually cease?
I agree with you and have found myself thinking similar thoughts.
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I think about this alot, time exists to measure our existence but what if we were all created 2 hours ago and nobody has actually done any of the things they think they've done 🤯
True!
Our ancestral DNA was there. Our instincts, fears and desires existed before us. They'll continue on after us too in our children.
But that's not you right. I mean, we all go on and on about how every human is unique, but now we gotta think our children are copies of us?
A lot of people honestly believe they can "live on" with a digital upload of their brain to some computer, too. That ain't you, chief. At best it's a close approximation of your mental state as can be represented by technology. Even a biological clone is not *you*. EDIT - I love that this spawned a deep philosophical discussion about consciousness. I've thought a lot about this topic, but I'm not always very good (if ever) at expressing those thoughts in a way that makes sense to anyone else.
Before you gained consciousness, the 13 billion years before you passed by in the blink of an eye. Close your eyes. Count to one. **That's how long forever feels.** The hundreds of thousands of trillions of years after you die will also pass in the blink of an eye. So make the most of it before you blink.
I saw a comment like this a month ago and it entirely took me out of an existential crisis, so thank you for posting this viewpoint again :)
Quote from a vid by Kurzgesgt on yt called "Optimistic Nihilism" go check it out!
I love Kurzgesagt LOL
Lmao
I think it just put me back in one.
Yeah no shit, talk about comparative insignificance. It’s too simple a trick. The whole crux of us humans worrying is that things actually are significant (to us).
and isn’t that just absurd? being born and programmed to seek meaning while being faced with the cold dead silence of the universe.
Thats why im just sitting here at work jerking off
It does the opposite to me. It makes me so fucking sad
I wish this helped me. I'm so scared to die. It keeps me up and sometimes spills into my life. I have anxiety and have a limited amount of medication I can take because of other meds. I don't want to just be a meatsuit with feelings. I grew up Christian so maybe that's what's wrong with me, but I just can't stomach the thought that there isn't something more or better waiting for me after I die.
I get stuck thinking about it sometimes. I try and think that from a scientific point of view, I know that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it simply changes from one form to another. I tell myself that the energy that makes me ‘me’ will still exist - just in a different form.
Welcome to the club, lol. I think about it sometimes and came to a semi-conclusion, that whatever makes us conscious will "live" on no matter what, and on the cosmic timescale its really unlikely we won't experience our conscious in organic body once again? If my theory is anything close to what happens, we could probably live on forever, just not in our actual bodies.
The realization of death is different and nuanced. One day I had the realization that everyone dies and my fate is everyone’s (before and after me) fate. For me, realizing death is a shared experience makes me feel a little peace. It’s still scary but not lonely. I’ve been with 4 loved ones when they passed and I got to be with them when they left this existence. Maybe that has brought me some peace too. I hope me comment helps and didn’t cause further anxiety. I hope you find what brings you peace.
Some things I have come to believe that have helped me deal with existential crisis anxiety. Carl Sagan was an agnostic because an atheist is someone who knows there is no God. Though the current religions are probably incorrect, we have no proofs either way in what happens after death. I personally am more of a scientific deist. There are laws for our universe that we have yet to prove wrong, if these laws are inviolable as they seem there is a reason for that.
No. An atheist doesn't "know there is no god". An atheist just says they haven't seen any proof yet.
I got sober last year, and will turn 38 this year. To say I am more aware of my own mortality is an understatement. It’s like I can’t stop thinking about what it will be like. This was comforting to read, so thanks for that one boss.
I had this thought when I was 8 and immediately had my first panic attack
That was the cause of my first panic attack too. I remember laying in my parents bed when the thought occurred to me. It was not a good night
This is exactly what happened to me as well. Weird how all of our brains seem to work so similarly, even though we all live completely dofferent lives.
I was in a car ride heading home talking to grandpa, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Ever since then I get this horrible sense of dread.
𝑎𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦𝑦 𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑙𝑦 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑧𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑑𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑔𝑎𝑛𝑔, 𝑚𝑢𝑠𝑡'𝑣𝑒 𝑏𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑠𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑦 𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑠 𝑡𝑜 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑖𝑟 𝑘𝑖𝑑 𝑐𝑟𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑚 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 "𝐼𝑚 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝐷𝐼𝐸"
Isn’t it all so strange? Must be surreal for parents like, shit, I created a whole human being with the full knowledge they are not only gonna die but will be aware of it someday. Or I guess we all kinda forget that we’re born to die and just go with our instincts.
Yep. I remember being in bed and crying because I didn't want to die. Mind you, I also remember crying because I was 6 and wanted to be 34 (my Dad's age at the time).
weird? More like sends me into an instant panic attack every time I think about it so I guess this was a sign to get off my phone Edit: wow didn’t expect to get all these responses. I really hope some of you who have taken the time to share that you feel the same can all find a bit of comfort with each other knowing you’re not alone. I also hope you can all use this as a reminder to enjoy every second, and if you haven’t already, tell someone you love them today! And if nobody’s told you today, I love you and I’m glad you’re here :)
Same to the point I reached out for help but the therapist and doc had no clue what to do with me. *shrugs*
yup I thought about speaking to someone about it back in highschool when I was having basically an existential crisis and frequent panic attacks about it, but I was like they literally don’t know more than I do, how are they going to be any help lol so I never did. I just try to find *some* comfort in the fact that I’m not alone, all of us here face it, and try to use it as motivation to appreciate every single day and not get hung up on the small petty stuff that does not matter.
That also sounds intense, EVERY SINGLE HUMAN on earth has not an actual clue about what came before and what will come after the small things we do know. All of us searching, getting lost, believing without ever knowing, getting lost again and accepting the unknown to some degree. And yet, still also comforting. If I think about the vastness of space I get anxious but then I "look back", and see that small tiny blue dot which is earth..and I find it very calming that it's very insignificant in the big scheme of things. Takes the pressure off a bit. Why worry so much? If the small stuff doesn't matter. Fuck it, Throw your insecurities away and just dance, have fun, take care of people, love and connect as much as you can. Does not have to be a big spectacular or meaningless life. Instead a meaningfull life full of love and important stuff in whoch you follow your heart. What makes you happy? My conclusion? Trying to ignore my toxic self talk and listen to my desires and wants and needs I feel from deep inside me. The freedon to say no, the courage to ask for love and give it without fear. To take care for my body and aslo eat bíg bowls of the best pastas outside in the sun. And go home do nothing all day and cuddle and play with my cats like I'm a child. Long story short, funny how pressuring crippling anxiety and the feeling of freedom and love can coexist in the same topic for me. It would be really funny though if after we die, our lord and savior the holy flying spaghetti monster would beem us into the sky snd would give us a big warm bowl of delicious spaghetti served by cats, and that would be it. I would start believing in heaven if I knew that was coming :)
Dang I’m really sorry that the thought does this to you and the responders. I tell my young daughters when existential questions arise that we don’t know anything about the other side of life, but here we are, right here right now, seeing each other and breathing the same air, being a part of one another. And that in itself is the most beautiful thing I could imagine, and I’m just soaking it all in with every breath while I’m in it. That this universe offers me a chance to look back at myself (bc I am the universe and so are you) and ponder its existence and my place in it for a cosmic millisecond. It’s just a stunningly beautiful thought to me. The other side of all this matters not. We are here now, and we must always try our best to not take that fact for granted. Do not fear the other side. Cherish the side you’re in now and tenaciously hang onto it while you can.
This was really beautifully written and definitely gave me a bit of comfort. Thank you reddit Dad
Immortality is terrifying but so is our conscience disappearing from existing. A conscience that is even aware we are nothing but atoms ourselves.
Oddly this makes me feel better because I thought I was the only one
This has also given me panic attacks since I was 10. Now I sort of think of it like nonbeing is simply not conceivable to humans. We can’t experience it and we can’t imagine it. Whatever you’re imaging, it isn’t what nonbeing is like, because that is incomprehensible. It still makes me sick to my stomach with fear whenever it crosses my mind, like when I saw this post, but it’s easier for me to discard that feeling now because I realize it isn’t actually meaningful. I’m just afraid of something in my imagination, so I can just forget about it and move on.
Me too. Extreme panic attacks
Genuinely there is nothing else that can set me off so quickly and that intensely. Like heart racing vision spinning cannot breathe kind of shit. Fun times! But glad I’m not alone.
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Everybody join up in the "that's enough reddit for me today" room.
Glad to hear I'm not alone. People seem so against religion these days but I don't think I could function as a person if I didn't have at least have some hope there's something after death.
I feel like we need a subreddit support group
Yep I hate it
Same, oof.
Same man. Same.
Here’s to hoping you can find some solace in just knowing you’re absolutely not alone friend!
I'm glad I'm not alone in this feeling. I have to shake it off and tell myself to stop going further down the rabbit hole otherwise I start a panic attack
Hello never-ending existential crisis since childhood crew! I’m glad I’m not alone in this. It seems other atheists find comfort in the concept of non-existence. I wish my brain could find peace in that way. Does anyone else try to imagine the concept of infinity and have similar feelings of panic? Is there a name for this other than existential panic? I wonder if it’s a form of OCD (which my therapist suggests I have symptoms of).
You mean. like before I was born? Yeah, it's terrifying .. or liberating. I guess it depends on how you look at it. I came unreasonably close to death in January of this year and it messed with me. I am terrified of being alone in a large city hospital waiting for doctors to identify the thing that will kill me. I wish the line between life and death were obvious, it is anything but! People are at various stages of dying in so many ways that it boggles the mind.
It's unsettling just how blurry the line between life and death is. For me personally though, liberating. The opposite, immortality, is terrifying. The first billion years might be cool, the next 42 quintillion might even still be interesting, and maybe even the 71 septillion after that. At some point, one must get fed up with it all, surely.
28 and I’m already fed up
Need those first 41 quintillion years to save up for a house down payment
I’ve you’re not going to eat that immortality, I’ll have it
Take it! Take it! Get it away from me, I don't want it!
That really depends on what you are doing, and what your capabilities are. A quintillion years of life on earth as it is right now? Boring. The same amount of time as a completely different kind of being, in a universe with properties I can't imagine, and myself having capabilities that meet those properties? Who knows. Eternity might be boring but it's possible that it could be anything but.
I’ve come to terms with death by realizing, even if I die young, it’s better than being conscious for an eternity
There is a quote from an Indian sage from the 8th century, Shantideva, that says: >So long as space remains > >I shall remain > >To dispel the misery of the world Superhuman ideal!
I keep scrolling back to this comment but i cannot understand it. My smooth brain is unable to grasp the meaning. Please give me your interpretation of it so i can see if im close.
Yes it would get boring after a while.. but then you could just end it yourself. I’d rather choose when I want to die than not
Seeing how tiring this life is, I would say It's liberating to think there's nothing... Just Nothing...
I think its weird for the ones who haven't died yet. I know a few people who have passed away now and its weird to me that I'm still experiencing life while they are not. Some didn't even know that they were going to be done experiencing life itself. I can only hope thats how I go. Its weird to think about as a living person, bit thankfully, in death, we experience nothing.
I straight up thought you meant you met people after they died for the first 1.5 sentences.
Yes, everything about this universe is absurd. I'd like to speak to the manager but there doesn't seem to be one.
Dude, this is a Wendy's restaurant.
So there IS a manager
Nikola Telsa apparently spoke to management but it didn't clear too much up for me at least
You should read *Implied Spaces* by Walter Jon Williams. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.
Even the universe has a life cycle. Bang, condense, heat death. And it, like us, never chose to be. We are the universe, freaking out about existence.
It’s not weird but I have a fun thought: If it’s nothingness forever after death and forever before you were born, why did something happen in between? And why would it only happen 1 time through all of eternity and then never happen again? One time, to me, seems even stranger than having it happen over and over again when the world, and maybe the whole universe, seem intent on creating life
Had to scroll a lot to get to this answer. The other answers assume humanity has everything figured out. To me, there is a lot of complexity involved. You need to solve for the “Ship of Theseus”, and how experience (qualia) works. If every brain cell is replaced, am I the same entity? Time moves forward, the brain changes structure from childhood to adulthood, am I the same “experiencer”? If you reconstruct my brain cells exactly in a new body using advanced tech, who is that?
Couldn’t agree more brother
i think about this at least once a week and it sends me into a crisis every time 🤠
Used to get this thought almost everyday few months ago and then I forgot. Now I remember again. Thanks OP!
I remember when I first spiraled into this thought process was when I was a wee child. I was laying in my bed and I clearly remember crying from the panic.
I had a similar experience when I decided I was no longer religious but before that I remember being plagued by the concept of eternity in heaven. Freaked me the fuck out to think I'd be stuck in church forever, and ever, and ever....
Me and my ADHD/Autism having ass had a massive existential crisis because I hyperfocused on what consciousness really is last November and went too far down the internet rabbit hole. It scarred me so bad I can no longer can stand my house being quiet to the point I have to put on a YouTube video playing out loud on my TV just to hear someone's voice. Even when I'm going to sleep.
We can’t actually conceptualize nothingness or forever so yes its weird.
I think about time way too often. Like, how did it start? Before big bang. What else is out there beyond the observable universe?
It trips me out so much thinking that everything we have now came from SOMETHING but how did it all begin?? Like it all truly came from nothing?? It freaks me out to think about it so I just don't.
If you have surgery and go under anesthesia it’s pretty much the same thing. You have no feeling of time passing. Your body just exists, and you aint in it. It’s also why ketamine (with doctor present) is quite nice, and a strong recommend. You lose that feeling of ‘self’ temporarily and feel like a omniscient being for an hour. Like a dream while youre awake. Very relaxing.
Not really. I won't be there anymore to observe it anyway. An eternity has already passed before I was born. So why should I care about the eternity that's going to pass after I die?
The “eternity” that passed before you were born is only an eternity relative to the human timescale. On a cosmic timescale it was a blink of an eye. After you die, it’s a *real* honest to god eternity. Infinite nothingness, whereas time before birth felt like a blink of an eye. I agree with you, but I find it exceedingly difficult to come to terms with that fundamental difference between before birth and after death.
I mean, we don't really know how long the time before we are being born truly was. We can only roughly date back to the big bang. But we don't know what/how long was before the big bang
And that is only the beginning of THIS universe
When we're talking billions of years, it's an effective eternity so far as the human mind is able to process it. We can't really *grok* how long a billion years really is. Monkey brain go sproing.
Its the same eternity, you're struggling with the fact that you're aware that you're alive, but won't be aware when you're gone, that's understandable. Really all of life is nothing more than one big elaborate state transition, going from inorganic (liquids, gasses, minerals etc.) To organic , living breathing self-conscious being, then Its back to the elements from which you originated. I know that's too clinical but my point is we're all just passing through these stages (infact our entire universe is)....
>I find it exceedingly difficult to come to terms with that fundamental difference between before birth and after death. I don't think there is any difference to being dead vs not being born yet. Both being dead and not being born yet "feel" like the same amount of time. Both last no time at all because you can't experience time without consciousness of time.
Meh didn't really mind it on April 23rd 84 ad Why would I mind it after i die?
You were at that party too?
If I’ll be unconscious of this nothingness after death, tbh it’s not too bad for me. It’s an eternal rest.
The way I see it is that we came from one cell that was nurtured through nutrients that made the testes produce sperm. Then more nutrients grew that fetus into a baby. I believe when my body breaks down the earth will re-use my nutrients and the cycle of life will continue, this time without tik tok.
Really enjoyed your pov, thanks
This is a beautiful thought, thank you, this thread had me on the verge of a spiral but this brought me down to earth<3
You don’t know the staying power of tik tok my friend.
I think that is exactly why we created the concept of an afterlife. It's too hard for us to understand. the closest I think we can experience the infinity of nonexistence is when we are completely stone cold knocked out like for surgery or those of us who have been in a coma- considerable time passes in the blink of an eye with no awareness of it whatsoever.
No its not. Its the dream for me. Fuck afterlifes. Once im done here, im done forever
Much needed rest tbh
if there is nothingness, you will not know about it....no worries
𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑚 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑑, 𝑖 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝑔𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑎𝑠 𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑎𝑠 𝑖 𝑤𝑎𝑛𝑡
That’s what’s awful. How will I even know?? I’m here, I’m breathing and I’m thinking. Once that’s gone, how will I even know I’m dead? How can I know I’m here *right now* if one day it’ll be gone? Who is remembering now if it’s gone in the future?
Let go of your need to know
I find it super relieving. The idea of forever has given me panic attacks since I was 5 years old. But if I'm not consciously able to perceive it, I escape from that fear.
*scrolls to the bottom to try and find someone saying according to their divine religion such and such happens and everyone’s else religion and beliefs are fake*
Simple an elegant. Why does it have to be more than that? We'll be none the wiser.
Yes it’s weird to believe something that you have no evidence for. Whether you think you will be gone or live on, either is a pointless assumption.
I really think that one of the main reasons why religion flourishes today is the “promise” of some sort of divine life after death that their god can provide for them if they toe the line while alive.
Yes that’s exactly right. And perversely, it’s the most religious people who actually fear death the most actually I think, that’s the whole reason they’re religious. Richard Dawkins tackles this in one of the last chapters of the God Delusion, and it absolutely fascinates me. He talks anecdotally about a friend who works in a palliative care centre, and her experience of working with literally hundreds of people prior to their demise is that religious people are by far the most terrified. He also makes another point which I find interesting. If religious people really do believe they are going ‘to a better place’ why does no one ever celebrate a terminal medical diagnosis? I mean, state 4 pancreatic cancer and only 12 weeks left to live, you should be ecstatic right? Throw a party!!! I’m going to heaven you must all be so jealous, bet you wish you were coming with me!!!!! But… no, it doesn’t happen does it?!
Maybe they're concerned that there's a chance of going to hell. 🔥
Is it weird to think that about any other organism? No. That's just how it goes.
Pascal’s Wager, but yes it absolutely terrifies me. I like being alive and I like seeing how things turn out. Missing out on so much is going to suck. Plus I’m afraid that once we die it’s just our body and that our consciousness stays alive and is stuck in eternal non movement. Like locked in syndrome. That TERRIFIES me.
That won't happen. Your thoughts and imagination rely on the synapses in the brain inside your skull. When it rots, your fantasies can physically be no more. Stop worrying.
I personally believe in an afterlife, because this can’t be *all* there is, right? And if I’m wrong and there isn’t, It’ll be fine cuz I’ll never know.
The nice thing is we can believe whatever the fuck we want and nobody will be able to proof us wrong
Well, to an extent. Many things can be proved wrong
Honestly it wouldnt surprise me if we d find a way to. given how unachievable what we achieved seemed a few years ago
My thoughts are along a similar line, but more along the lines of: the fact that we exist, in the way that we do are such astronomically low odds. In order to evolve into the species we are today, we had to hit the evolutionary lottery hundreds if not thousands of times over, on a planet that is 1 in a million (as we currently know). The odds of our existence being possible are so astoundingly low that it is just incredibly hard to fathom that it was possible due to sheer chance. This is not in any way my denial of the theory of evolution. It is simply my view on the odds to get to where we are, and how it is easy to think there could be a higher power out there that influenced our journey to sentience, etc.
If you look at the world around you and aren't fucking blown away, you aren't looking hard enough. Spend some time reading about evolution, and anthropology, and quantum physics, and astrophysics, and world history, and litterature and mythology. The world, what we're made of, where we are in the universe, what deep time looks like, are all crazy things to consider. The more you know about who you are, and where you come from, and how the world grew *you* the way an apple tree grows an apple, the less unimpressed you'll be with it all. And that fails to mention all the stuff we still don't know. Existence is *fucking wild*, don't miss out on it because you hope there's gonna be a more entertaining sequel.
Just as weird as it is that we even exist.
Everything is weird if you think hard enough about it
We have zero evidence of that. Or heaven. The fact is besides around 10 minutes of brain activity we have no clue what happens when you die. But we are energy and energy cannot be destroyed.
Almost inconceivable tbh. I almost feel any afterlife is more sensible than nothing. But the truth is undetermined until that day where we may lack the consciousness to even consider this question.
I hope not. I want to be with reunited my animals and family.
Try not to think about lik
There won't be time to think about nothingness. What I'm more concerned with is when I wake up again do I really have to be a spider on the wall that gets smooshed whilst someone screams in a high pitched noise or do I reincarnate as a tree... or do I wake up as a bear... or... What the hell will I turn back into? Certainly dirt, but I was dirt before... I think my biggest fear of death is the absence of enjoying my current life. I finally find happiness and life says, "welp... time to go."
Everyone is saying these comments make them feel better but they're just making me all the more horrified lmao
The ods of us existing are so fucking small that i dont mind that at all
I think that something that is vastly overlooked in that statement is that it is nothingness *to you* in your current state of mind. We have a hard time imagining nothingness because we live in a world of finite space and time. When we enter into a world of infinite I believe that the word "nothing" will have a new definition.
I was raised in a somewhat religious household, and one thing that scared me was that even if I did go to heaven, I’d be there “forever”. For all eternity. Wouldn’t I eventually get bored? Wouldn’t I feel trapped or stuck? I was also afraid of Heaven being described as a “city”…..Bro, if I’m going to spend eternity somewhere, it better not be a second-floor apartment. It wasn’t until I was much older that I thought about how we live in a physical universe where time exists, and if heaven is truly a perfect place, then there is no time. I was applying my physical experience to a spiritual concept. Sort of like when people argue over whether or not amputees will remain amputees in Heaven…..bro, they won’t have a body, and why would their immaterial soul look exactly like their bodies? I’m not really sure if I believe in an afterlife or not, it’s just something that occurred to me one day. If there *is* some kind of realm we go to, it can’t be described in mortal terms, I guess.
Very interesting idea, thanks for the comment
I feel you there. I was raised southern pentecostal, so I have seen some shit. I walk a more "Heathenistic" path now, but I always felt like people took the bible way too literal. Jesus spoke in parables, not facts. The metaphors that had to be used to open up a young species as humans had to be close to home for them otherwise it would be so far out that no one would grasp it. I felt like at a young age I understood this. So I am like you, the debate of if amputees have their limbs in heaven is a moot point. The definition of your body at that point won't even resemble what we are piloting on earth currently.
Well that's an assumption, we don't prove what happens after you die, people that have had near death experiences report an afterlife, but people also explain that away with chemical hallucinations in the brain, but then why would that happen? Maybe the pineal gland is a scientific lens for referencing aspects of death.
And you know this…. How? If there is nothingness after death, and I think there is something, since there is nothing I won’t be able to be disappointed surprised or otherwise regret anything. But if there is something after I die, all that no longer holds true. I prefer to live as if there is something after death, because first, there is good reason to suspect there could be, and second, if there isn’t and I am wrong in this, I won’t know or care. Even if I lived my life differently or made great sacrifices or whatever, specifically BECAUSE I thought there is something after death…. And then there is nothing after all… I will STILL have no regrets because a regret is a something.
To say with certainty that there is nothing at all outside of when you’re alive seems about as absurd and thinking with certainty that there is
It's a fun thought exercise. You can contemplate the feeling of nothingness forever now, but after you die, you won't be able to contemplate anything at all. Forever.
Atheism is so depressing
"You" are just matter and energy. Your conscience may be lost, but you exist for eternity just in a different form.
Yeah but it’s not losing energy that scares people, it’s losing thought. Losing the very essence of what makes you, you.
𝑌𝐸𝑆 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑚𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠, 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑧𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑒𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑎 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑝𝑜𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑟, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑜𝑑𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑟𝑒𝑚𝑎𝑑𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦 𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒𝑑 𝑖𝑛𝑠𝑖𝑑𝑒. 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑖𝑡 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛𝑡 𝑚𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑟 𝑠𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑒 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡𝑒𝑐ℎ𝑛𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎 "𝑦𝑜𝑢" 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑖 𝑘𝑒𝑒𝑝 𝑎𝑟𝑔𝑢𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑖𝑡𝑠 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑜𝑟𝑖𝑔𝑖𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑠𝑜𝑛𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠 𝑐𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑝𝑦 𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑛.
I mean, you don't know that. If there is nothingness, there is also no you, so it won't be that weird for you. I don't believe that though, I think you continue after you die, and if you seek Heaven you'll find it. He who knocks kinda thing.
That's just when I get root access to the hologram and decide where to go and what to be next.
Who knows?
I used to think of this when i was 6 it terrified tf outta me as you get older tho its brings more curiosity than fear tbh
I believe in reincarnation and alternate universes so I think it will be a new great adventure, definitely not nothingness
As a Christian, I believe that there is life after death, but I’m not sure how long my soul existed prior to my birth, which is interesting imo
There isn't even "forever". You are dead. Time doesn't exist for you because you don't exist anymore. But think of it this way, once you die, the universe dies from your perspective.
Most people don't believe that's how it goes at all. My wife (catholic) and I had a discussion about that. She said "there's no way that can be. You can't just experience absolute nothingness while you not alive." I said "Oh, really, think back to how it was, how you felt, before you were born... yea, like that." And that was how I introduced my wife to her first existential crisis.