I like the light.
is it dead or alive?
Reminds me of one of my favourite Alan Watts quotes:
“When you die, you’re not going to have to put up with everlasting non-existance, because that’s not an experience. A lot of people are afraid that when they die, they’re going to be locked up in a dark room forever, - Try and imagine what it would be like to go to sleep and never wake up. And if you think long enough about that…it will pose the next question. What was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep? That was when you were born…you see…you…you can’t have an experience of nothing so after you’re dead the only thing that can happen is the same experience or the same sort of experience as when you were born.”
Doesn’t this leave out the more likely possibility of just continuing to not having any experience?
I experienced getting kicked in the nuts as a kid, that did not make me less afraid of getting kicked in the nuts
Imagine if you got kicked in the nuts and then you stopped existing. You don’t exist, so it can’t hurt and you can’t worry about it what with your non-exisistent mind to not think about it.
Also, you don’t get a choice. You can worry about the sun setting, but that doesn’t stop it. Just try to enjoy the sunshine while you can and learn to be ok with the fact that night will eventually come.
The argument was “it happened before so it’s fine” which is an absurd argument, and I’m just pointing out the absurdity.
“You don’t get a choice so it’s fine” is also an absurd argument. If someone kidnapped me, bound me up, and expressed their intention to cut off my hand, then I would worry about it even if I had no choice. If you’re telling me you wouldn’t be worrying in that situation, you’re a liar or incredibly abnormal. Lack of choice plays nearly no part in the degree of worry.
What can help alleviate worry is knowledge, but here is a topic that is impossible to learn about.
I don’t remember what being 6 months old was like either, but I’m told I screamed and shit myself the entire time, so maybe the experience actually wasn’t great.
You’ve already experienced
Have I though? I don’t think my ability to “experience” existed prior to my birth.
“Experienced” is a poor term to use when describing nonexistence. You weren’t there, there was no mind, there was no you, thusly there is no memory and even if there were, it would be of nothing.
The notion is more that because you did not exist, you had no mind, no consciousness and thusly there was simply nothing. Not you, not an experience for you to absorb.
it’s a weird concept because there is no way to really describe it that relates to anything we know. We know ONLY of existing. We can’t know of not existing because not existing precludes the ability to be cognizant of it.
It’s one of those things you just have to accept. When we die, we simply cease to exist (unless you believe in an afterlife). The closest thing that I’ve experienced to being aware of non-existence is being put under general anthesia. You are lying there with doctors and nurses peering down at you over their masks, wearing their funny little hats, they tell you to count backward, by the time you get to two and a half, you’re gone. When you do eventually come back around, you just have a big empty spot that you time traveled through. No dreams, no thoughts, no awareness, just nothing.
The only difference with death is the whole not coming back around bit. Of course, since you will not exist, you will not be concerned with that part because you will not be.
Using “thusly” in the shitposting community is a new type of irony. Not at all judging just found it a very fun coincidence lmao
chill, isn’t this like a shit post sub
And do you think that you will somehow still be conscious after you die? Your ability to experience will not exist when you die either. I thought that was common sense, but apparently not.
Right, which is exactly what makes the middle period of existence, while brief, extremely appealing.
One thing that has helped me get out of this nihilistic trap sounds a but mystical but bear with me: The self and your perception of it is a construct of your brain. In reality all conscious beings are the same. You are me and I am you, we experience as one, just with different experiences. Future generations will experience the world for us just as we are experiencing it now for the past.
I dunno if I’d call it a “trap”. I believe there is one mega-soul, splintered throughout space and time into every consciousness. I am the splinter that exists in my particular body, you are the splinter in yours. The conditions of our bodies and our experiences color those splinters in unique ways.
Yeah, the fragmented oversoul will continue to experience the world into the future, but it won’t be through the eyes of this body, through its particular frameworks and perspectives.
Like yes, the soul deep down is the same, but I am a unique perspective of the soul, and I would like to have experiences and achieve things. Zen enlightenment is peaceful and all, but it’s boring. If we were meant to be perfectly accepting of unity for eternity, we wouldn’t have emerged into the material plane in the first place.
can’t experience without being alive. 🧬
You now understand EXACTLY what death will be. Your ability to “experience” will no longer exist.
You’ve experienced falling asleep. Same difference.
We are hard-wired to fear death so we don’t usher it on. By the time we are old enough to die of natural causes, we are in enough pain and so starved for serotonin that we’re more or less ok with it.
Because existence outside the void is glorious and beautiful and painful and strange; the Void is just empty nothingness, forever, and should not be cherished.
Humans ruined that too. They made life a punishment.
I dont even think my life is very good and I still would rather experience it than not
Looks out at my 14 acre farmstead Not all of us.
My motorcycle begs to differ you miserable nihilist.
I can handle being dead, and I won’t even complain about it, but dying sounds like it sucks.
When I die I hope I go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming in fear and agony like his passengers.
Lovely subversion of expectations
Meh. Dying in your sleep, surrounded by loved ones or doing radical stuff sounds fine to me.
Just save me from Alzheimer/Dementia. That way to go sucks in a major way. I want to die as Me, not as some husk that wears my face.
Assuming you’re lucky enough to go off in your sleep.
Yeah, it’s only **the story of **[insert name here] that ends. What you essentially are has never started or ended.
I’ve done it once, it wasn’t that bad
Ok, jesus
More like living in the ICU for six months and having a very bad time
Glad ,you made it back , stay safe
I’ve attempted it many times (at least 10). And I’m pretty sure I died at least once too.
Anyway, hope you’re doing better now <3
Before your first taste of ice cream you had none. Now that ice cream is permabanned and you’ll never have it again why you so upset?
Completely different situation. You’d still remember that ice cream existed and therefore miss it. When you die your ability to remember will be gone.
And that is what is scary. The oblivion
But you won’t be conscious to experience it. You won’t be aware of it when it happens, so why are you afraid?
I don’t see why we are so special, that we actually permadie. If nothing is permanent, neither is death.
I believe we just get recycled into whatever creature comes next, so does the universe.
Except I’m not a buddist, so I think it is forever. And that we have been around and experienced forever already, and that most of our lives will be grueling, as you need many creatures to suffer and die to maintain a happy few.
Interesting. I personally don’t believe in reincarnation, but I really like the concept. It would be super cool if it was proven to be true.
What is cool about having no memories carried over, and living most often as an almost mindless, low-tier creature that starves and is eaten?
It’s cool because reincarnation turning out to be true would mean that humans are more than just bags of meat being controlled by electrical signals via the central nervous system. If you die and part of you reappears as another being, clearly something about a person can exist beyond the physical brain. That would be a HUGE paradigm shift.
Also a lot of people who believe in reincarnation believe that good karma vs bad karma affects what you come back as. That would give life meaning and give people an incentive to be good.
Or the person is just a specific collection of specific particles.
But you won’t be aware of the ice cream stopping. Only that it’s going to stop. But you won’t experience that stoppage. You’ll never lack for ice cream. You’ll only ever experience ice cream.
that actually happened to me irl and i’m not upset
Instant surprise switch to nonexistence after my kids are grown up and have their own lifes would be totally fine.
Preferrably in synchronization with the life partner.
It’s not the being dead that’s the problem, it’s all the nasty stuff connected to the transition process.
The thing that currently calls itself me wants to see the third Spiderverse movie before it ceases to exist. If the future “me” doesn’t want to see the third Spiderverse movie then “I” have died and it’s basically the same thing. Don’t leave me on a cliffhanger bro.
Last time I didn’t exist, I existed. I’m terrified it might happen again.
Boot loops suck.
This is such a braindead take.
Elaborate, enlighten the masses!
I only care about other people dying. Not afraid of my own death at all, except in how I know it will affect others. If I knew no one would care or remember that I existed, I’d skip to my death like I’m off to see the Wizard.
Being not alive is not even another state of being. There is nothing to do the “being” on either side of alivetude. It’s not like, once dead, you’re now in Phase 3 of beingosity (the first two phases being pre-alive and alive). Your energy and nutrients will serve other purposes, but we’re talking about consciousness here, and that is as fragile and malleable as a flaccid penis, and as temporary and fleeting as a decent erection.
A way I like to conceptualise it is with this thought experiment:
Everyone on Earth has the power of telepathy, except you. You try to explain what not being able to read or transmit thoughts is like, and the other people who do have telepathy are struggling to grasp it. “Is it like a dial tone? Or is it maybe the ambient silence when you’re in a room with nothing making noise, like the sound of your own bodily vibrations?” and you have to be like “no, it’s none of those things, because those things are all still imagining the presence of a sensory platform that just doesn’t exist in me. It’s not a faulty telepathy, it’s complete absence of it that doesn’t hint at its own absence, there is no telepathy hole in my brain that I can finger, it’s all solid and complete as far as my sense of self is concerned”.
Death is nothing to be afraid of. Your fears and anxieties around it are all supposing the ability to retain hindsight once the process is completed, like you’ll watch the party continue without you and that you’ll miss out on things that would make you happy. You’re simply projecting yourself forward in time, perhaps imagining yourself in some weird paralysed state, uninvolved in life, but still there. You’ll have no framework within which to experience experience. So fuckin’ relax and enjoy yourself and try to make everyone else’s ride as nice as you can. That’s literally all there is to it.
Oh, and MILF porn.
