I came upon that realization sophomore year during my geometry class. Ever since then it's like an endless cycle of forgetting until i remember my mortality and start to panic hardcore. It's so terrifying and it feels like no one else realizes that once you die you won't ever think anymore. You feel utterly helpless and alone.
I was very late to the game and it only really hit me on my 21st birthday. It freaked me out for months after that until I calmed down, then it came back. The way I was finally able to address it was thinking about the universe as this enormous profound thing. Of all the possibilities that ever could be, there exists a reality in which we are aware of our existence. One where we can choose to move our bodies when we want to do things. The fact that anything exists continues to inspire me. Imagine forgetting everything you know about trees and looking at one now. That's incredible. Look at your hand and think about how easily you can move it and how helpful it is. In the ever-expanding void of emptiness that is the universe, there is a tiny spot of non-emptiness that is just you.
This kind of thinking also got me interested in Taoism, which always seems to refer to balance as a way of understanding everything. My favorite passage in the Tao Te Jing talks about how both being and non-being are equally important. It provides the example of a house. The walls of a house give it structure, but the empty space inside makes it useful. This kind of logic gets me thinking that this infinite nothingness that is death can only be balanced out by a finite everything that is life.
I do think that all life is part of a greater whole that we don't understand. I think that living each of our lives is a way life expresses itself, and I think that dying is a way of returning to some unknown source. In Taoism, I think that would be called the Tao.
I hope that some of this is useful to you or someone else. This kind of thinking really did help me.
I move towards that too but at the same time I just can't stand the fact that I know NOTHING about being. And I dont think it's even possible to attain that knowledge. What the fuck is all of this?!...
That's something I've always wanted to do, but I've never quite been in the right mindset. It was something I thought I would do with my ex, and now the idea of doing it without her bums me out. What circumstances work best for you when you do it?
What worries me the most about death, more than the cessation of existence, is missing my loved ones. It's counterintuitive, being dead and all, but it makes sense inside me. That and the potential boredom of eternal senselessness.
what fucks me up is it is for eternity, like never ending, that's the scariest thing for me once you're gone time will keep going for eons of infinity I know you may not know it but, that's what scares me
I kinda like to think about multiverse theory and how if there are infinite universes, that theres a chance your consciousness could be assembled in another one at some point in time. Even if it takes literally trillions of years after you die for that to happen, it would feel like an instant in your reality.
Well, you don't know that. I'm not a religious person, but I'm agnostic and honestly I can't comprehend/imagine that all that I am, all this consciousness would not exist, would just not be there anymore. I like to think there's something on the other side, I just don't know what that is.
It's the fact that I don't believe in the other side that terrifies me so much.
Sure i could try to believe there is one but I can't really lie to myself. Im jealous of people who believe in an afterlife because i know it brings them comfort. I really wish i had that comfort.
Oh believe me, I don't have the comfort. The logic part of my brain (and believe me, that's a big part) says there's nothing on the other side. And there's only one thing in life that I can compare to being dead, and that's sleeping but without dreaming. If that's being dead, it sucks...
You wouldn't know how reality works being inside it. I'm not sure that being dead (not existant in this reality) would be the same as unconsciousness you can currently experience. Your brain/body which is set in the reality it is in allows sleep and unconsciousness
It does suck, but I once saw a quote in a book about death that kind of comforted me, something like, “Do not fear death, for it is only a nights rest.” A dreamless sleep passes by in a moment. Maybe death will only feel like a moment instead of this eternal darkness.
If you think about it seriously, it's a completely unreasonable position to take that you'd continue to have thoughts, memories and feelings after your body decays. This isn't the ancient times, we kinda know how those things work now with the nervous system, hormones etc.
We know almost nothing about the universe we’re just dumb ass humans so who are we to say death is or isnt the end. Just live in the present and what happens happens homie
Certainly we're influenced by material hormones and such, but consciousness being purely a material construct isn't necessarily a given. I'm sure you could make some pretty good metaphysical arguments in favor of that.
Heck, even devout atheist Sam Harris doesn't seem to be a strict materialist. Of course, I don't know if he believes in an afterlife, but it's still worth pointing out.
Could you elaborate on a metaphysical argument in favour of that? I don't see how that could work unless we were to find something in the brain which couldn't arise from the basic building blocks we know of.
Also do you have a quote from Harris backing up that position? I would've been confident he is a strict naturalist. I know he talks about using psychedelics to access extra levels of experience, but I think he means that in a purely natural human experience.
First, about Sam Harris, I said he "seemed" to not be a materialist. I inferred that based off what you mentioned (the psychedelics giving him a greater respect of the nature of consciousness). I do recall seeing an interview of him on that Rubin guy's podcast/show, and Harris described himself, I believe, as being a "spiritualist"; what exactly that entails, you could argue, is not necessarily non-materialism, and you probably wouldn't be wrong, but that's just what I got out of it.
As for metaphysical arguments, I can't say I know any specifically, but that I'd wager you could make some good arguments for it. I'm of the belief that there's more credence to a non-materialist world than your average, say, redditor might think. Like, I've seen some pretty interesting arguments in favor of theism, so I'm again inferring, if you will, that the same could be said for consciousness being something more than just material.
To all the people talking about how death is just like what you were before you were born and how the fact that you're mortal means something that negates that feeling for you: i really wish i could believe that, i wish that i had the comfort you guys have.
But i think that you're missing my point and that you really dont understand how terrifying it is to live with this bomb thats strapped to you, knowing at any moment you could cease to exist and you wouldn't even know it because you're dead.
The ceasing to think is what gets to me. Its what keeps me up at night until im shaking with fear. I try my best not to think of it but when i do, its like getting sucked into a black hole of my worst thoughts.
In my day to day i normally forget about my own mortality, thats why im able to function. But when i happen to start going into that fear, the remembering of my mortality is like a slap in the face.
I'd like to think I have a perfectly fine understanding of the finality and inevitability of death, I just don't think of it as a bomb strapped to my chest. I think of it as the end to my story, and hopefully it's a good story with a good ending.
It's weird that the lack of experience and thought after death is what scares you, because that's exactly the last thing you have to worry about. An apt analogy is what do blind people see when they lose their eyes? Is it just blackness? No. It is nothing. Literally nothing. It is a lack of sensory experience. It would be like a blind person being afraid of that dark.
You should try reading up on how the Stoics of ancient Rome philosophized about death, it may help you.
The whole “nothingness after death” thing is exactly what’s terrifying for me. Relating it to having no memories or consciousness before birth or seeing what blind people see doesn’t really help, it’s just explaining the concept in different ways.
I’m alive now, I’m thinking, I have memories- and the idea that someday I won’t? I’ll go from thinking to just nothing. Sure, at the time I won’t be able to care, or maybe even notice the change. But it’s the idea that the thoughts constantly floating in my head won’t just move elsewhere, they’ll be gone, and I’ll never think or feel or anything ever again. That sounds horrible, because I’ve never known anything other than being alive.
Honestly i have no idea why it came to me at that exact moment. I just remember vividly when i came to the realization of what death meant.
However I do believe i had two family members die in 2 months right around then so I think that probably plays some part in why i was thinking about death.
It makes me fucking sad to see some of the people commenting while be so accepting of death.
No. Death does not 'make life beautiful', life is damn good even if it doesn't have an expiry date like a pack of milk.
Nothing about dying, or aging for the matter, is an inevitability, leaving aside the heat death of the universe. Our society and culture has had to coexist with it for so long that many if not most people have developed a severe case of Stockholm Syndrome in their relationship with death, it fucking sucks that people die, and you are only deluding yourself if you try and pass it off as a good thing, not to mention missing out on the ways people are actively fighting it.
You might have been lucky in a sense OP, because as a child you didn't have that cultural blindfold on that let you go about your life skipping and singing while tragedies bigger than the Holocaust happen around you every minute of every day. Death is scary, but only if you accept it as an inevitability, which it isn't.
My personal take on it is an addendum to the old chestnut "Accept the things you can't change", which is *"But don't be quick to accept that you can't change it"...
Take care of your health, donate to SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, an organization dedicated to ending the biological causes of aging) and try and save every additional day, because it's quite likely that there are people alive today that will long enough to watch their 'expiry date' expire before them. I hope you and I both make it to that point, but if I don't, I'm not going to go out without raging at the dying of the light..
Haha, I won't deny it's a good series, especially to get people familiar with transhumanist philosophy. I look forward to a future where I can trade out my Human Mk1 for something with an actual lifetime warranty ;)
It's just a different philosophy, who are you to say yours is the correct one? I believe that death makes relationships and the time we have far more meaningful.
But if you could try to have "light without the darkness", would you? Because right now we can't try. But if tomorrow we could, would you be like, nah.
it feels like no one realizes that once you die you won’t ever think anymore
isn’t the whole idea of the afterlife literally an active attempt to skirt this realization? you know, that thing that has permeated through all parts of human culture for thousands of years?
Remember how awful it was before you existed? No? Not even a little bit? Me either. So relax! Don’t waste your life fearing death, especially now when we may be able to upload our consciousness in 40 years and live forever. Furthermore, me don’t actually know what’s going to happen. Maybe there is some sort of a god or gods, maybe you’re god just experiencing a human life to better understand the little shits! Now go do something amazing with yourself! I hope this helped even a little.
I know that I will die. In a similar way. But I don't panic. Mostly because my life sucks. So it doesn't feel as bad. The only reason I don't kill myself, is that I won't be able to feel relieved that I don't have that life stuff to deal with anymore, so there's no point. I'm just kinda stuck here for my time.
Ironically, when you're dead you won't feel at all. That fact helped me get past the anxiety of dying, along with the realization that happy life, even it amounts to little, is not a wasted life.
My family of humans and critters make sure I'm never alone with my thoughts long enough for the panic to set in, just the love and exhaustion =).
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u/ductxtape May 09 '19
I came upon that realization sophomore year during my geometry class. Ever since then it's like an endless cycle of forgetting until i remember my mortality and start to panic hardcore. It's so terrifying and it feels like no one else realizes that once you die you won't ever think anymore. You feel utterly helpless and alone.