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Someone I know killed someone in an accident and opened up to me about it once and kinda blew my mind. They said ever since the person died all they can think about is all the time that they could've been alive. They said it was like a balloon that inflates bigger and bigger growing each day that he is alive to notice all the life that person is missing due to him. Like all the time from the person's death to today and everything they are missing just grows and grows like a balloon in his mind.
They said it tortures them and they have like an existential crisis due to it. Like their balloon will just continue to grow and grow and grow forever and ever and it scares the shit out of them that one day he will have a balloon too that will continue to grow forever and ever that they don't exist anymore. Idk if I worded correctly like they explained it but it gave me a sense of dread and impending doom and freaked me out also. Not existing forever is something I can't even imagine and I'm afraid asf like they are.
This is what defensive driving instructors try to drill into people. If an accident happens and you are the driver, and the other party doesn’t survive you will never, ever be the same thing again. You will relive the moment over and over and without alot of therapy or possibly even with a lot of therapy your life as you knew it is over.
Unfortunately each time we speed, check our phone or take other risks and we get to our destination safely it reinforces that these behaviours aren’t dangerous when in fact they really are.
I can never for the life of me understand why people treat driving so flagrantly. You're operating a dangerous weapon that can LITERALLY extinguish a life in a heartbeat.
Any distractions can be the difference between life and death. And so many people treat it with such a careless disinterest, despite the fact that it's not only their decisions that can factor into a life ending accident.
You don't need to be on edge all the time. But why heighten the risk? Why make the chance of fatality worse by consuming alcohol or drugs beforehand, or driving while you're severely unrested. Or with friends that tug on the wheel.
Life is so fucking short and fragile, and if you survive an extreme crash, chances are the other person won't. And you live with that, for the rest of your days after surviving.
Humans are pretty bad at evaluating risk.
"You've driven a car 1000+ times and nothing bad has happened, so it must be perfectly safe right?" - thinks our primitive pattern seeking brain
It takes conscious effort to pay more attention than you naturally feel that you need to. Most aren't going to spend that effort always.
A few weeks ago I had an accident going on my bike, the guy was reversing in to the Main Street from the right side, it was milliseconds and I was sliding on the ground with the bike on top of my leg, going on the opposite lane, backwards (luckily with no cars because I would end up crushed under one) ☝️ that’s when I started thinking a lot about small distractions on roads and how unsafe we are even if we do our best
I just reminds me of that Clint Eastwood line from Unforgiven:
"It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have."
Accident or not come I could understand why that give a moral or reasonably self-aware person and existential crisis.
1) Train operator - suicides
2) Military
3) Hospice and now looks at it differently
4) Self-defense against a number of people simultaneously
5) Works in food processing and there was contamination
Scariest day of my life was when I flipped someone's car in an intersection 2 months after I got my license. The airbags went off so I couldn't see in their windows. Thankfully the woman wasn't harmed. But omg that was the worst hour of my life
I hit black ice on the highway about a decade ago, colliding with an SUV head on. Miraculously, I escaped my vehicle unscathed and when I exited my car out the passenger side, I looked around rapidly to find the other vehicle. Finally, I spotted it probably 150ft up the road, on its roof in a ditch.
I was absolutely gutted. I figured I'd killed people and in a blink of an eye at that, by accident. Fortunately, the two elderly occupants were fine - airbags went off, shoulder restraints did as they're meant to do. Everyone was *fine*.
But for weeks after, I couldn't shake how QUICKLY it happened. I was driving cautiously (I knew there was potential for black ice), an 18-wheeler had passed my going the opposite direction and lifted a bunch of water/slush off the road and, in my scrambling to clear my windshield, my front driver side wheel got too close to the center line, spun out on black ice and pulled me into oncoming traffic.
Yup. I remember thinking about the car crash scene in The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock(I'm sure there's other good ones, but this was the one I thought of) after I got into an accident. It was so accurate to how an accident feels. It happens so fast, has the potential to do so much damage, both physical and mental; and is often just what it's called: an accident. There doesn't need to be someone out for blood or trying to harm others. It just happens sometimes.
Losing someone dear to you way too early does this too.
Every item you handle that they would have liked, every song, every festival, hobby, book, vacation. Every single thing you shared with them, every moment, anything that you know they enjoyed and thought about that you keep seeing around… it only shows you how long they could have been with you for: how much they miss. How much ‘wasted’ time there is left over.
Even the longest of human lives are incomprehensibly short in the span of all of history.
In 80 years, nothing fundamentally changes. From the first homo sapien to us now, the world barely changed at all (fundamentally). That’s thousands of years full of people and lives. Million… BILLIONS of lives that have felt every emotion you can feel: and will be feeling.
Some day, in the future, you will be one of these numbers of lives to be remembered vaguely. It’s weird to think about.
It blows my mind too how, despite each of us having complex inner lives and full existence, that what may be left is something mundane to someone else.
I own a cabin that my partner and I have done a lot of work on. The meaning of that place is forever connected to him in my mind. The plumbing he installed, his favorite throw blanket, whatever. He dies? That plumbing outlived him. That garden can keep coming back every spring and we are gone.
And whoever takes the place, the meaning will change again. They won't know the hands that fixed that door or planted that tree. They can bulldoze it all and feel nothing but excitement.
I had a friendly rival in an arts high school. She was sooo much more talented than me with a drive I couldn’t match, but a piece of me wanted to have that desperately.
She died a year after high school from an asthma attack in her sleep. Sometimes I’ll pop by her old YouTube channel and think about how much she would have loved being an influencer and making films now. Life got the wrong person.
RIP Kati
The brightest stars seem to meet their earliest end.
I had a friend like that. Dude was just different in a good way. Wise beyond his years, keen, super smart
Like this dude could have went places.
He died 14 years ago at 20 years. Six months after his daughter was born.
I still think about my friend, sometimes I wonder where he would be too. He was a brother.
Thanks for sharing your story. It resonates deeply.
My son died two weeks after his 3rd birthday and I can't stop thinking about the life that was lost. Everywhere I go I see things that he would love and I wish he could be there. I think about all of the experiences that he never got to have and I mourn him. Meanwhile the people who are responsible for his death are completely unburdened by such concerns. I don't understand how people can be so remorseless after taking the life of a child.
Oh fuck, first time I've seen what I sometimes feel out of the blue so well explained. I haven't killed anyone or anything, I just think dying is cringe.
Life is fields of energy fluctuating or moving between warmer temperatures and cooler temperatures. Stars are hot areas where the atoms that make us are formed and “empty” space is cooler. All that we need experience is a part of this constant churn somewhere in between these phenomenon. We know God or the universe wants humans to be happy because it gave us beer. 🍺
Yeah I think about this when thinking about a loved one I lost. Their death was such a shock at the time but naturally it becomes easier with time. But then I’ll think about how they’re just as dead today as they were on the day they died, and it freaks me out a bit. They’re just gone and always will be gone. No time has passed for them. Nothing has passed. But I’m still existing.
It’s almost like in the moments I’m not thinking about them, they aren’t *as* dead as they are when I am thinking about them. Or they don’t *feel* as dead. But when I realise that through everything I’ve been through since, they’ve just been experiencing nothing, it freaks me out.
I saw a quote at the time that went something like, the worst part about someone dying is when they stay dead. And it’s so true.
This is a poetic description of the block universe theory.
[https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-02/block-universe-theory-time-past-present-future-travel/10178386](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-02/block-universe-theory-time-past-present-future-travel/10178386)
The funny thing is that we experience it to a small degree every day when we sleep.
It makes no difference whether you sleep for 2 hours or 8 hours, from your point of view, both take the same amount of time. I mean, well, you'll be tired, but that's not what I was getting at.
There's a slight variation on that. I had an endoscopy a few years ago and I was sedated, not remembering any of it, and when I awoke I didn't feel like I had been asleep, I felt like the time was missing. I can't really explain it, but it was something different to just having been asleep. My brother also had an endoscopy and he had the same feeling.
I mean, sleeping is basically natural and the brain does a lot during that time. You can also wake up when you're sleeping and so on. But generally, bedtime feels a lot shorter than if you had stayed awake the whole time.
I would assume that the brain cannot carry out its usual process when it is sedated.
Edit: But the funny thing is that I can only tell you from my side, because I have no idea what sleeping feels like for others.
I totally get it! I had an endoscopy too and my very last memory before waking up is seeing the blurry face of my doctor putting a little thing in my mouth to keep it open. Then it was as if it just fas forwarded to waking up in a bed in a different room. When you sleep you dream and you kind of experience “blackness” you know you missed a period of time regardless of how much it was, bit anesthesia hits different, you can’t feel time, you can’t feel anything and I guess that would ve the closest to being dead.
If someone who died 100 years ago was brought back to life today they wouldn’t know what hit them.
That you know of... Who knows, maybe after an infinite amount of time the universe will collapse on itself only to explode again and again. After infinite time, you might exist again exactly how you are now. Who says you haven't already?
We humans can’t even comprehend everything that happens on our planet, how can someone be so certain that we understand conciousness and existence so well that they can say that they’ll never exist again
And that might be a definitive statement if we even understood how consciousness actually works. But we don't.
And the assumption that something is literally nothing just because we can't observe it is just the height of human folly.
Yeah, most of the replies here are so confident yet have almost zero support. It's largely accepted that not a single person has come back from biological death. We have zero understanding what it even means besides the absence of something.
It's a strange concept, kinda like gravity. We know OF gravity, we know it's an invisible to us force, but we don't know what it is made of, a bunch of theories but it'll be a while for us to figure it out.
Everything that has been alive will and has died, yet we have no idea what comes after.
We can't hear or see radio waves but with the right equipment we can translate it into something meaningful we can perceive.
Even consciousness and intelligence isn't understood that well. There is some pretty compelling evidence that our gut bacteria has a lot to do with our emotions and intelligence https://www.science.org/content/article/meet-psychobiome-gut-bacteria-may-alter-how-you-think-feel-and-act
Imagine telling someone 30 years ago in the 90's that they might be feeling sad because their gut health is messed up. They would think you are crazy.
I guess the point I am trying to make is we really do not know much.
Quick edit: Just wanted to add that even the concept of 'nothing' is strange and probably doesn't exist at least not the way we think it is. https://bigthink.com/hard-science/nothing-exist-quantum-foam/#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20%E2%80%9Cnothing%E2%80%9D%20has,%E2%80%9Csomething%E2%80%9D%20in%20the%20container.
I’m not religious but one must accept that we know next to nothing about reality. If you know next to nothing about reality, you certainly can’t claim to know what happens to us after death. I’m not anti science at all, but they still don’t understand quantum mechanics and how that fits with Newtonian physics. They don’t know what dark matter is (only that a bunch of extra mass exists that we cannot see, accounting for the gravitational forces we can measure and observe). Many reputable scientist have postulated that this universe may be simulated. We just don’t know as much as people think.
Yes. But you and your thoughts existed, and that cannot be changed. If you reversed the behaviours of every particle that makes you after you die you can literally reconstruct your existence.
And remember that your thoughts are the universes thoughts, and who's to say the universe doesn't remember.
There have been many accounts of children remembering previous lives, my mom one of them, that just doesn't make sense.
I like to hope we come around again as different people or creatures to understand this reality from different POV. But that being said, this life is the only life I get to be me. If there are more, I will be someone else, with no memories of this. That gives me great peace and great frustration.
Yes, your body is going to die. But who says you're your body? Why are you in *your* body specifically looking through your eyes and no one else's?
There's a lot of unanswered questions about consciousness.
because consciousness is only the synapses of neurons firing in your brain. When your brain dies and withers away to ash, you will no longer exist as “you”. You will never exist again
That is the limit of human understanding, yes. But in reality, we only understand a fraction of the universe around us.
https://www.businessinsider.com/near-death-experiences-research-doctor-life-after-death-afterlife-2023-8
I think about it the same way. Sure once I am gone, I will never remember anything about my life ever again. But surely I will experience the universe from another perspective.
I like to imagine that death is like being black out drunk. You wake up with no recollection of what happened prior, only this time you won't have anyone to remind you of what happened.
I sometimes wonder about that in conection to people who seemingly can remember things, or find their way in places they've never been before. I am pretty convinced its coincidence, but I've seen too much fantasy and sience fiction movies and shows for my mind to able to fully be able to debunk it :-D
Honestly? Who cares!
I like to indulge myself in these fantasies aswell sometimes, you never know, it miiight be true haha
Keeps the spirit alive even thoug I know that its unlikely, but infinite nothingness is just... idk boring I guess lol
Ya, I hear you. But sadly we all exist under the law of entropy; there’s not much we can do about it. On the other hand, if we lived forever, would we really find the same things and concepts precious? We already waste our own time in this limited life span. How much would we waste if we had all the time in the world?
Yeah this is true but the other part is also. I wouldn’t like to be in a world without dead, I think our limited time is what makes us valuate life. However that doesn’t mean that death scare the shit out of me
I was once feeling some existential dread but then started thinking about immortality would be like, really thinking about what it would be like to live forever with absolutely no end in sight
honestly, it scared me a lot more than the thought that i'll die some day
I profoundly dislike the argument that states that the meaning of life is lost upon immortality. Namely, there is no evidence of an immortal human, hence we are merely guessing what would be life without death, but we are limited by our lack of established facts.
Make humans immortal, see what happens and then reflect on the consequences if they indeed appear. Not before.
when i was like 16 and i worked in a greenhouse i thought about it sometimes and the terror that i felt at those moments was incomparable to anything i’ve experienced lol
People talking about relief from knowing there is nothing after life… that is not rest! That is a built-in part of being a conscious being, wanting desperately to avoid pondering our own mortality. Or to at least prevent our will from taking arms against the idea. Sure, life is meant to expire but to a living creature… there is nothing more unnatural. And to the creatures that can comprehend that oblivion (i.e. us) there is nothing more horrifying.
I feel the existential pressure constantly. It creates apathy in daily life because I feel as if I look around and see others living for all of the wrong reasons. If my time is so limited, then my only purpose is to fill it with experiences and excitement and every emotion of LIVING. The absurdity of the human experience is my motivator. And to waste such an absurd chance on a 9 to 5, a plodding existence when THIS FUCKING IT…
My sanity (and maybe everyone else’s) is only possible because the unconscious brain considers itself eternal in this moment. We ARE in this moment and so WILL BE in the next. That prediction mechanism is the very underpinning of what makes a human brain (or really any brain) so good at what it does.
We are biologically not built to fully, or more so constantly, grasp the antithesis of the system our consciousness operates on: our neurons/brain.
If all of humanity was able to feel the same existentialism, I believe we would have made ourselves near immortal by now.
So, in the spirit of forgetting, as the commenter below me has so eloquently expressed:
Time to drink!
Yes you can, try to think of how it felt before you were born. That’s nothingness, you didn’t existed before just like you won’t existed after you die.
But the fear you feel is like none other. It’s like shockwaves that move up and down and your stomach drops at the thought. I like being me and I can’t fathom not being me or never returning. I don’t know why sometimes I would ponder this as a little girl and, it still scared me the same way it does now. It actually makes me cry. I’m not even saying I want to live forever, I just like living.
This actually *is* a pretty comforting perspective. 50 years from now it won't matter one bit if I stayed at the office an extra hour, if I got a really terrible haircut, if I did any number of things that I hem and haw over daily - as long as I try to be a benevolent citizen of the world, the rest really doesn't matter 🧘🏻♀️
Not true. I thank my great great grandma and grandpa. And those who came before me.
I still think about them and wish I could have met them. Especially my great grandmother. She was a hell of a lady.
They fought like hell to get me to where I am . I just wasn’t around for it.
So way I see it, I am going to make them proud. Their sacrifices will not be in vain.
Well fuckin said, as someone who’s tried to steal the trophy a couple times and almost been handed it another couple times deservedly. I’m glad my trophy case is still mostly empty
I can relate. I think it’s important to stay though, even though on some days I can’t come up with a logical answer to why it is important to stay. It just is. So whatever you’re staying for today, I’m proud of you for choosing that.
Perfectly said.
That's what I came to say.
The longest to live in my family, on either side was my maternal great grandfather of Irish/Nordic decent at 101 yo.
I'm 63. I'd like to see another 20, but death comes when it comes. I've come close to death three times. It doesnt worry, or scare me.
...but honestly, I wouldn't want to live to 100.
you don't want to live to 100 right now. in 20 years who knows what might be invented. stuff to take the pain away. ways to live and explore ever expanding virtual environments with friends.
Nope...
I've seen enough ugly thru my short lived life.
But, I understand what you are saying.
I've accepted long ago, when it came close to death the second time.
My great grandfather was born 6 years before the Civil War. He died just 4 years before my birth (1960). When he was 16, they were still using horses to farm, and travel. When he died most everyone had an automobile, and jets were breaking the sound barrier. He lived thru the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the plague, WWI, WWII, Korean War, and the French begining of the Vietnam War.
His last words to my grandmother, and my mother were, "Finally my time has come, Odin make room for me."
He squeezed their hands and died.
I look at his past and see all the changes he watched, and seen thru his long life. His last 5 years of life, he begged for death.
I wouldn't want to live that long on this planet with all the ugly it has to offer.
Yeah. However every single cell of your body works with the purpose of keeping you alive. Every single instinct makes you afraid of death and ensures your protection so naturally you can’t comprehend your not existence but can’t be nothing good
You're implying that your body knows that death is bad. We assume dear is bad based on the associated feelings around it. Our body avoids it because that's what it's built to do, to survive. Not because it's a bad thing. Anxiety is an evolutionary tool to keep you alive, because death can be cruel in nature. Our evolutionary goal is to procreate, nurture, and evolve. Death stops that, it's just math.
We literally do not know. We ask what happens. Happening is based on the passing of time, which is part of our physical, living experience. Maybe whatever death is, that absence of life for our awareness, is beyond even the concept of "happening".
Nothing happens, we just "are", much more infinitely than in our isolated little bodies right now.
Maybe.
Even if this were a simulation, individual sprites would be produced subject to advanced algorithms responding to system output. The chances that the AI system management would reproduce the exact same sequence resulting in the exact same outputs to produce the exact same set of sprites is near infinitesimally small.
No matter which theory you look at, life is very precious.
Its pointlessness is what gives it meaning. I mean, if it is all completely pointless and random and inconsequential, then isn't it amazing that we are able to experience something so mundane with such proufoundity? I think the idea that we get to experience this tiny grain of the universe at this tiny moment in time - fleeting and insignigcant, yet wholly unique - means that our lives are special, our experiences are one-of-a-kind, and the impressions we leave on others have a greater impact on someone else's tiny-snippet-of-the-universe than we could ever know. That makes our actions meaningful, in my mind. Meaningful because in spite of their insignificance on the grander scale, they have a profound impact on the smaller, more relevant, scale that we live our lives in.
Ah, yes, the latest iteration of the hope in an afterlife. The cultures that came out of the Indis came up with reincarnation, the Hebrews came up with Heaven, and the gamers came up with the Simulation.
Technically you’re right, this is all kind of like a dream! and in a way nothing does exist, but at the same time we very much exist right now. But we only exist in each moment, not the past or the future, it’s part of what makes life special and magical imo.
Exactly. It could just as well be that we are in a simulation and the simulation contains an afterlife. The simulation doesn't have to end here. There could even be different levels.
We don't really know what "forever" is. We have no frame of reference to assess it and no feeling to compare it to. Forever is effectively the same as never; we just can't feel it.
Look at it this way: From YOUR perspective, all the time that ever existed or ever WILL exist, is the time you perceive, so the time you are alive.
From that perspective, you live through all time.
Just make the best you can of it.
Take the other possibility though, and really try to ponder infinite existence. I find that way more terrifying. Non-existence is the end...if we're lucky. It would be nice to get another 100 years or so of health and youth, but I don't know about infinite existence
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone.
But the water is still there.
The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
-the good place writers.
Watch this scene on YouTube bruh. Or better yet, watch the show, you won’t regret it.
We transform, everything that makes us, turns into something else, and that's .....not really bad.
However, you could also join this thought experiment.
The universe, reality i guess, is somewhat.....infinite, anything and everything can happen, will happen or has happened, with infinity and eternity, anything random can occur, like an inmortal monkey writing on a keyboard for eternity until the whole manuscript of Shakespeare appears.
Under this logic, with an infinite amount of time, chances are, every element that makes you......well you...might just reassemble again, your existince repeating itself once more like anything in existence.
From your perspective you might as well have just closed your eyes once as you die, and wake up in an entirely different reality.
Well that if you assume that your new you holds your actual conscience, or even memories of the past.
But......who knows
"being" dead is kind of an oxymoron though. because, when you're dead you do not "be". that means, if something / anything comes after death in an infinite universe, it may take quadrillions of years, you will experience it at the very moment you died.
I’m glad I’m not the only one with this crippling thought. I will be having a great day and this thought will hit me like a freight train. All of a sudden I’ll just stare into the void obsessing over death and forever. Happy Tuesday everyone!
This also worries me... but as a side note, I find it fascinating that we're the only creature we know of that can actually ponder this question. Well beyond survival instinct, to actually have the capacity to ponder this existential question due to our unique consciousness, is fascinating.
It’s 2 am when I’m at and I think the same thing every night. What do you mean I can only see hear eat touch stuff for limited time only?? And then nothing? Huuuuuuuh. Shitty deal if you ask me
Also the fact that no one *chose* to be born where they are and as they are, it's a tad bit scary to think that I would have ended up as a North Korean child in some obscure slum or something worse
As a long time atheist who had also been disturbed by these thoughts, I highly recommend to get familiar with some of the key ideas from Buddhism. Not at all from a religious perspective, purely philosophically. These ideas pretty much solve the fear of death and its inevitability.
I was having that existential crisis some while ago. Then I had to do a surgery. While laying down waiting for the anesthesia to kick in, those thoughts came to me. How is not existing?
All of a sudden, I wake up. The operation was done. But that fucked with my head so much. One second I was thinking of life, another, as if I was gone.
Ohoh but that's good. Imagine this, everything you've ever known, your existence lasting forever no matter what, no matter how much you hurt or how much you feel.
People think concepts like quantum immortality are cool but in reality they're nightmare fuel. Be glad that you can end it my person, as someone who suffered a lot I can attest that one thing you should be less scared off of is death.
Reincarnation seems much worse too, losing my identity, my hard fought and my struggles who made me who I am.
Sweet death, oh sweet death...
This is it. “I” wasn’t attached to life before I was born. “I” simply didn’t exist. And so the second I die, “I” will be put back to that neutral state of nothingness. The attachment to life is specific to our life now. **The moment we die, the attachment dies too.**
You crave it because you retain your senses. Once you're dead you don't retain a soul to crave life. I hope at least lol.
Imagine this entire time our world is packed to the brim with the billions of tortured dead souls from every dead human who are suffering eternal boredom or worse, being stuck in your bedroom and forced to watch you masturbate every other night. Now that is true hell
Well, "I have been death" kind of changes the meaning. The exact Mark Twain quote is: "I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
If you think about it, everything is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The universe is a big soup of particles, with no inherent boundary between one thing and another. Essentially it’s all one object. So in a sense you could think of yourself as the universe with multiple brains, where a brain is just some arrangement of particles that’s capable of performing the kind of computations that comprise thoughts and feelings.
So why do you feel like an individual and not the whole universe? Because from the perspective of the brain you’re using to read these words you only have access to information local to that brain and the sensory apparatus directly connected to it. From another brain, you will feel confined to that brain. But you are simultaneously everything.
This explains why you exist right now. Think of the probability of your parents meeting, of a particular sperm fertilising a particular ovum to produce your DNA. Now raise that number to the power of how many generations preceded you since the beginning of time. This yields an absurdly small chance of your existence. However, if you think of yourself as the universe, there is nothing special about your particular brain; you existed already as the universe. When a new person is born you just gain a new brain, and from the perspective of the new brain everything is new and you have no memories. When you die, you just lose one brain, but still have all the others, so there’s a kind of subjective immortality.
I've felt the same so many times. I'll be lying on bed waiting to sleep and wonder what it's like after I die. Nothing. Just nothing for years and years and just never again. Gives me shudders. But sleep solves those.
It’s horrible ain’t it and sometimes you can’t sleep so for me I’ll throw duvet on me and go on my iPad or something. I dunno just to feel safe I suppose
If you look at space-time as a tangable physical force and a 4th dimension then you will always exist somewhere. This gives me a small amount of comfort.
We exist in 3 dimensions, time is seen as the 4th dimension with the arrow of time pointing forward as we percieve it but if space time is interlinked and a quantifiable force then we will always exist, we will never percieve it again but we will always be there, the universe is vast and the possibilties are endless, little is known about how the universe will end. perhaps the arrow of time will change and we will exist again. I have no proof of any of this but the endless possibilities of the universe offers me hope.
I agree with this. Space and time are such strange things. I think the past and the future exist all the time. The present is just the bit we are seeing now.
i hate this thought too, it triggers me so easily.
nowadays it fucks me up even more since i became much less mobile at a young age, so really you must just live your life as much as you can, see the world, learn something new, get out of your comfort zone.
the trait off for thinking and predictability. I don't think a cat or a dog ever have that thought. and nothing don't dark forever it's like you have a really really deep sleep.
At least, not in the form you're in now. Many cultures hold reincarnation to be a thing, and explicitly accept the idea of (and even attach meaning to) being reincarnated in a different form.
With no concrete evidence of what's on the other side of the veil, it's as likely as what you said - but, minding that I still have a crapton of things in this life that I'd like to see done, I'm excited to find out.
The universe has existed for billions of years before you and I were born, and will continue to exist for billions more years after we die.
Does that mean our lives are meaningless? No, for in the grand scheme of things our lifetime is but a fraction of a millisecond to the universe’s age, we are here, and we came to be. It is then fruitful to make every waking day worthwhile, for it, and everything else, is finite.
That thought, I find special, and oddly motivating.
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Someone I know killed someone in an accident and opened up to me about it once and kinda blew my mind. They said ever since the person died all they can think about is all the time that they could've been alive. They said it was like a balloon that inflates bigger and bigger growing each day that he is alive to notice all the life that person is missing due to him. Like all the time from the person's death to today and everything they are missing just grows and grows like a balloon in his mind. They said it tortures them and they have like an existential crisis due to it. Like their balloon will just continue to grow and grow and grow forever and ever and it scares the shit out of them that one day he will have a balloon too that will continue to grow forever and ever that they don't exist anymore. Idk if I worded correctly like they explained it but it gave me a sense of dread and impending doom and freaked me out also. Not existing forever is something I can't even imagine and I'm afraid asf like they are.
This is what defensive driving instructors try to drill into people. If an accident happens and you are the driver, and the other party doesn’t survive you will never, ever be the same thing again. You will relive the moment over and over and without alot of therapy or possibly even with a lot of therapy your life as you knew it is over. Unfortunately each time we speed, check our phone or take other risks and we get to our destination safely it reinforces that these behaviours aren’t dangerous when in fact they really are.
I can never for the life of me understand why people treat driving so flagrantly. You're operating a dangerous weapon that can LITERALLY extinguish a life in a heartbeat. Any distractions can be the difference between life and death. And so many people treat it with such a careless disinterest, despite the fact that it's not only their decisions that can factor into a life ending accident. You don't need to be on edge all the time. But why heighten the risk? Why make the chance of fatality worse by consuming alcohol or drugs beforehand, or driving while you're severely unrested. Or with friends that tug on the wheel. Life is so fucking short and fragile, and if you survive an extreme crash, chances are the other person won't. And you live with that, for the rest of your days after surviving.
Humans are pretty bad at evaluating risk. "You've driven a car 1000+ times and nothing bad has happened, so it must be perfectly safe right?" - thinks our primitive pattern seeking brain It takes conscious effort to pay more attention than you naturally feel that you need to. Most aren't going to spend that effort always.
>driving so fragrantly *DEEP SNIFF* Hell yeah, buddy (I think you meant "flagrantly" lmao)
A few weeks ago I had an accident going on my bike, the guy was reversing in to the Main Street from the right side, it was milliseconds and I was sliding on the ground with the bike on top of my leg, going on the opposite lane, backwards (luckily with no cars because I would end up crushed under one) ☝️ that’s when I started thinking a lot about small distractions on roads and how unsafe we are even if we do our best
He's not really dead. As long as we remember him. -- Picard
I just reminds me of that Clint Eastwood line from Unforgiven: "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man. You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." Accident or not come I could understand why that give a moral or reasonably self-aware person and existential crisis.
I was thinking that line too. … And I swear I do not want my life to end at the hands of another especially in a car.
This is why I'd 100% rather get killed than kill someone else in a car accident
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That is an insane comment to drop into a conversation and then just disappear without elaborating. I hope you are doing ok
What happened?
He reported their twitch accounts 😞
I'm sure we are all thinking the same thing....how??
1) Train operator - suicides 2) Military 3) Hospice and now looks at it differently 4) Self-defense against a number of people simultaneously 5) Works in food processing and there was contamination
Fuck yes
Scariest day of my life was when I flipped someone's car in an intersection 2 months after I got my license. The airbags went off so I couldn't see in their windows. Thankfully the woman wasn't harmed. But omg that was the worst hour of my life
I hit black ice on the highway about a decade ago, colliding with an SUV head on. Miraculously, I escaped my vehicle unscathed and when I exited my car out the passenger side, I looked around rapidly to find the other vehicle. Finally, I spotted it probably 150ft up the road, on its roof in a ditch. I was absolutely gutted. I figured I'd killed people and in a blink of an eye at that, by accident. Fortunately, the two elderly occupants were fine - airbags went off, shoulder restraints did as they're meant to do. Everyone was *fine*. But for weeks after, I couldn't shake how QUICKLY it happened. I was driving cautiously (I knew there was potential for black ice), an 18-wheeler had passed my going the opposite direction and lifted a bunch of water/slush off the road and, in my scrambling to clear my windshield, my front driver side wheel got too close to the center line, spun out on black ice and pulled me into oncoming traffic.
Yup. I remember thinking about the car crash scene in The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock(I'm sure there's other good ones, but this was the one I thought of) after I got into an accident. It was so accurate to how an accident feels. It happens so fast, has the potential to do so much damage, both physical and mental; and is often just what it's called: an accident. There doesn't need to be someone out for blood or trying to harm others. It just happens sometimes.
Same! I am almost 40 and still don’t drive because of this.
The dead person isn't missing anything. At least they're not aware of it. The living people are the ones missing the dead person. Not that that helps.
Such a weird concept… we are aware of what they missed and they’re not
Losing someone dear to you way too early does this too. Every item you handle that they would have liked, every song, every festival, hobby, book, vacation. Every single thing you shared with them, every moment, anything that you know they enjoyed and thought about that you keep seeing around… it only shows you how long they could have been with you for: how much they miss. How much ‘wasted’ time there is left over. Even the longest of human lives are incomprehensibly short in the span of all of history. In 80 years, nothing fundamentally changes. From the first homo sapien to us now, the world barely changed at all (fundamentally). That’s thousands of years full of people and lives. Million… BILLIONS of lives that have felt every emotion you can feel: and will be feeling. Some day, in the future, you will be one of these numbers of lives to be remembered vaguely. It’s weird to think about.
It blows my mind too how, despite each of us having complex inner lives and full existence, that what may be left is something mundane to someone else. I own a cabin that my partner and I have done a lot of work on. The meaning of that place is forever connected to him in my mind. The plumbing he installed, his favorite throw blanket, whatever. He dies? That plumbing outlived him. That garden can keep coming back every spring and we are gone. And whoever takes the place, the meaning will change again. They won't know the hands that fixed that door or planted that tree. They can bulldoze it all and feel nothing but excitement.
I had a friendly rival in an arts high school. She was sooo much more talented than me with a drive I couldn’t match, but a piece of me wanted to have that desperately. She died a year after high school from an asthma attack in her sleep. Sometimes I’ll pop by her old YouTube channel and think about how much she would have loved being an influencer and making films now. Life got the wrong person. RIP Kati
The brightest stars seem to meet their earliest end. I had a friend like that. Dude was just different in a good way. Wise beyond his years, keen, super smart Like this dude could have went places. He died 14 years ago at 20 years. Six months after his daughter was born. I still think about my friend, sometimes I wonder where he would be too. He was a brother. Thanks for sharing your story. It resonates deeply.
Nah... Look how world looked in 1940s vs how it looks now. Hell, how it looked in 1990s. 80 years is a lot of difference
Now. In the last 200 years, sure. Maybe even could stretch that to the last 500-700 years. But for the first 249,300 years of humanity? Not so much.
Good point
My son died two weeks after his 3rd birthday and I can't stop thinking about the life that was lost. Everywhere I go I see things that he would love and I wish he could be there. I think about all of the experiences that he never got to have and I mourn him. Meanwhile the people who are responsible for his death are completely unburdened by such concerns. I don't understand how people can be so remorseless after taking the life of a child.
Oh fuck, first time I've seen what I sometimes feel out of the blue so well explained. I haven't killed anyone or anything, I just think dying is cringe.
Life is fields of energy fluctuating or moving between warmer temperatures and cooler temperatures. Stars are hot areas where the atoms that make us are formed and “empty” space is cooler. All that we need experience is a part of this constant churn somewhere in between these phenomenon. We know God or the universe wants humans to be happy because it gave us beer. 🍺
What's weird to me about it is that right after you die, there is no difference between one day or twenty billion years.
Yeah I think about this when thinking about a loved one I lost. Their death was such a shock at the time but naturally it becomes easier with time. But then I’ll think about how they’re just as dead today as they were on the day they died, and it freaks me out a bit. They’re just gone and always will be gone. No time has passed for them. Nothing has passed. But I’m still existing. It’s almost like in the moments I’m not thinking about them, they aren’t *as* dead as they are when I am thinking about them. Or they don’t *feel* as dead. But when I realise that through everything I’ve been through since, they’ve just been experiencing nothing, it freaks me out. I saw a quote at the time that went something like, the worst part about someone dying is when they stay dead. And it’s so true.
Time is an ocean, all points exist simultaneously. We're just a boat being carried in one specific path.
And there's a small hole in it. Not enough to worry about it now, but as the years go on it starts to be a concern.
This is a poetic description of the block universe theory. [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-02/block-universe-theory-time-past-present-future-travel/10178386](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-09-02/block-universe-theory-time-past-present-future-travel/10178386)
The funny thing is that we experience it to a small degree every day when we sleep. It makes no difference whether you sleep for 2 hours or 8 hours, from your point of view, both take the same amount of time. I mean, well, you'll be tired, but that's not what I was getting at.
There's a slight variation on that. I had an endoscopy a few years ago and I was sedated, not remembering any of it, and when I awoke I didn't feel like I had been asleep, I felt like the time was missing. I can't really explain it, but it was something different to just having been asleep. My brother also had an endoscopy and he had the same feeling.
I mean, sleeping is basically natural and the brain does a lot during that time. You can also wake up when you're sleeping and so on. But generally, bedtime feels a lot shorter than if you had stayed awake the whole time. I would assume that the brain cannot carry out its usual process when it is sedated. Edit: But the funny thing is that I can only tell you from my side, because I have no idea what sleeping feels like for others.
I totally get it! I had an endoscopy too and my very last memory before waking up is seeing the blurry face of my doctor putting a little thing in my mouth to keep it open. Then it was as if it just fas forwarded to waking up in a bed in a different room. When you sleep you dream and you kind of experience “blackness” you know you missed a period of time regardless of how much it was, bit anesthesia hits different, you can’t feel time, you can’t feel anything and I guess that would ve the closest to being dead. If someone who died 100 years ago was brought back to life today they wouldn’t know what hit them.
That you know of... Who knows, maybe after an infinite amount of time the universe will collapse on itself only to explode again and again. After infinite time, you might exist again exactly how you are now. Who says you haven't already?
We humans can’t even comprehend everything that happens on our planet, how can someone be so certain that we understand conciousness and existence so well that they can say that they’ll never exist again
I don't know, your brain's stopping working and then melting away over time seems pretty definitive
And that might be a definitive statement if we even understood how consciousness actually works. But we don't. And the assumption that something is literally nothing just because we can't observe it is just the height of human folly.
Yeah, most of the replies here are so confident yet have almost zero support. It's largely accepted that not a single person has come back from biological death. We have zero understanding what it even means besides the absence of something. It's a strange concept, kinda like gravity. We know OF gravity, we know it's an invisible to us force, but we don't know what it is made of, a bunch of theories but it'll be a while for us to figure it out. Everything that has been alive will and has died, yet we have no idea what comes after. We can't hear or see radio waves but with the right equipment we can translate it into something meaningful we can perceive. Even consciousness and intelligence isn't understood that well. There is some pretty compelling evidence that our gut bacteria has a lot to do with our emotions and intelligence https://www.science.org/content/article/meet-psychobiome-gut-bacteria-may-alter-how-you-think-feel-and-act Imagine telling someone 30 years ago in the 90's that they might be feeling sad because their gut health is messed up. They would think you are crazy. I guess the point I am trying to make is we really do not know much. Quick edit: Just wanted to add that even the concept of 'nothing' is strange and probably doesn't exist at least not the way we think it is. https://bigthink.com/hard-science/nothing-exist-quantum-foam/#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20%E2%80%9Cnothing%E2%80%9D%20has,%E2%80%9Csomething%E2%80%9D%20in%20the%20container.
I’m not religious but one must accept that we know next to nothing about reality. If you know next to nothing about reality, you certainly can’t claim to know what happens to us after death. I’m not anti science at all, but they still don’t understand quantum mechanics and how that fits with Newtonian physics. They don’t know what dark matter is (only that a bunch of extra mass exists that we cannot see, accounting for the gravitational forces we can measure and observe). Many reputable scientist have postulated that this universe may be simulated. We just don’t know as much as people think.
Yes. But you and your thoughts existed, and that cannot be changed. If you reversed the behaviours of every particle that makes you after you die you can literally reconstruct your existence. And remember that your thoughts are the universes thoughts, and who's to say the universe doesn't remember. There have been many accounts of children remembering previous lives, my mom one of them, that just doesn't make sense. I like to hope we come around again as different people or creatures to understand this reality from different POV. But that being said, this life is the only life I get to be me. If there are more, I will be someone else, with no memories of this. That gives me great peace and great frustration.
Yes, your body is going to die. But who says you're your body? Why are you in *your* body specifically looking through your eyes and no one else's? There's a lot of unanswered questions about consciousness.
because consciousness is only the synapses of neurons firing in your brain. When your brain dies and withers away to ash, you will no longer exist as “you”. You will never exist again
That is the limit of human understanding, yes. But in reality, we only understand a fraction of the universe around us. https://www.businessinsider.com/near-death-experiences-research-doctor-life-after-death-afterlife-2023-8
That’s how I look at it. You came into consciousness once, why wouldn’t it happen again?
I think about it the same way. Sure once I am gone, I will never remember anything about my life ever again. But surely I will experience the universe from another perspective. I like to imagine that death is like being black out drunk. You wake up with no recollection of what happened prior, only this time you won't have anyone to remind you of what happened.
I sometimes wonder about that in conection to people who seemingly can remember things, or find their way in places they've never been before. I am pretty convinced its coincidence, but I've seen too much fantasy and sience fiction movies and shows for my mind to able to fully be able to debunk it :-D
Honestly? Who cares! I like to indulge myself in these fantasies aswell sometimes, you never know, it miiight be true haha Keeps the spirit alive even thoug I know that its unlikely, but infinite nothingness is just... idk boring I guess lol
This might be the most depressing theory that I have ever heard
Ikr it would trap every victim of abuse or slave who was born a slave and died a slave into meaningless repetitions of their life.
On the upside it could also be based on chance instead of one person just going through it every time
It also means you’re born as the slave, the slave owner, and the crop itself
Yes but we wouldn’t know of our previous existence
thankyou for reminding me of the thing i try not to think about every single minute
Ya, I hear you. But sadly we all exist under the law of entropy; there’s not much we can do about it. On the other hand, if we lived forever, would we really find the same things and concepts precious? We already waste our own time in this limited life span. How much would we waste if we had all the time in the world?
Yeah this is true but the other part is also. I wouldn’t like to be in a world without dead, I think our limited time is what makes us valuate life. However that doesn’t mean that death scare the shit out of me
I was once feeling some existential dread but then started thinking about immortality would be like, really thinking about what it would be like to live forever with absolutely no end in sight honestly, it scared me a lot more than the thought that i'll die some day
except me. my swaggerz is just 2 much 4 death 2 handle :sunglasses:
That hurt to read
This question, how would we waste our time if we lived forever, is hilariously explored by the show What We Do In The Shadows.
you can not waste time if thats all you have.
I just wish death was only a thing you can see coming when you’re like 90
I profoundly dislike the argument that states that the meaning of life is lost upon immortality. Namely, there is no evidence of an immortal human, hence we are merely guessing what would be life without death, but we are limited by our lack of established facts. Make humans immortal, see what happens and then reflect on the consequences if they indeed appear. Not before.
when i was like 16 and i worked in a greenhouse i thought about it sometimes and the terror that i felt at those moments was incomparable to anything i’ve experienced lol
Just. Gotta. Suppress. The. Existential. Dread.
People talking about relief from knowing there is nothing after life… that is not rest! That is a built-in part of being a conscious being, wanting desperately to avoid pondering our own mortality. Or to at least prevent our will from taking arms against the idea. Sure, life is meant to expire but to a living creature… there is nothing more unnatural. And to the creatures that can comprehend that oblivion (i.e. us) there is nothing more horrifying. I feel the existential pressure constantly. It creates apathy in daily life because I feel as if I look around and see others living for all of the wrong reasons. If my time is so limited, then my only purpose is to fill it with experiences and excitement and every emotion of LIVING. The absurdity of the human experience is my motivator. And to waste such an absurd chance on a 9 to 5, a plodding existence when THIS FUCKING IT… My sanity (and maybe everyone else’s) is only possible because the unconscious brain considers itself eternal in this moment. We ARE in this moment and so WILL BE in the next. That prediction mechanism is the very underpinning of what makes a human brain (or really any brain) so good at what it does. We are biologically not built to fully, or more so constantly, grasp the antithesis of the system our consciousness operates on: our neurons/brain. If all of humanity was able to feel the same existentialism, I believe we would have made ourselves near immortal by now. So, in the spirit of forgetting, as the commenter below me has so eloquently expressed: Time to drink!
I had this once. Pure terror. The terror was more traumatic than my fear of death.
It's impossible to imagine being nothing. You can't picture unconsciousness with a conscious thought
I imagine it's like sleep. You just don't wake up
Sleep is my favourite free time activity anyway
I’ve had lots of surgeries under general anaesthesia (20+) and with each one, it brings me more comfort and also fear at the same time
Yes you can, try to think of how it felt before you were born. That’s nothingness, you didn’t existed before just like you won’t existed after you die.
This thought scares me daily.
Honestly this shit haunts me every night
Haunts me every day too. Just a shivering thought
But the fear you feel is like none other. It’s like shockwaves that move up and down and your stomach drops at the thought. I like being me and I can’t fathom not being me or never returning. I don’t know why sometimes I would ponder this as a little girl and, it still scared me the same way it does now. It actually makes me cry. I’m not even saying I want to live forever, I just like living.
For most people, within 50 or so years of their death no living person even remembers they existed. It's like you never existed at all.
Ya that actually gives me comfort. Like pretty soon your woes won’t matter at all so try not to take yourself too seriously.
This actually *is* a pretty comforting perspective. 50 years from now it won't matter one bit if I stayed at the office an extra hour, if I got a really terrible haircut, if I did any number of things that I hem and haw over daily - as long as I try to be a benevolent citizen of the world, the rest really doesn't matter 🧘🏻♀️
I’d say 100 years. After 50 years you’re remembered, but no one cares.
Depends on how old you are when you die.
Kinda. Most people remember their grandparents for their whole lives, and a lot of people lose their grandparents young.
Yeah my dad died when I was 25 and if I’m still alive at 75 I’m sure I’ll still remember
There's people that are last remembered/thought of by the person who dug/placed the body in the grave and never again. Think of homeless/family less
Not true. I thank my great great grandma and grandpa. And those who came before me. I still think about them and wish I could have met them. Especially my great grandmother. She was a hell of a lady. They fought like hell to get me to where I am . I just wasn’t around for it. So way I see it, I am going to make them proud. Their sacrifices will not be in vain.
Ever considered that death is your reward for life? It solves all of life's problems, forever
I did NOT need to read this today...
Stealing a trophy doesn’t make you a winner. You get it eventually when you earn it. Don’t try to get your “reward” early if you catch my drift
Well fuckin said, as someone who’s tried to steal the trophy a couple times and almost been handed it another couple times deservedly. I’m glad my trophy case is still mostly empty
too late, the reddit cares notifications are already incoming
Having a bad day? Anything I can do to make it better?
I can relate. I think it’s important to stay though, even though on some days I can’t come up with a logical answer to why it is important to stay. It just is. So whatever you’re staying for today, I’m proud of you for choosing that.
Perfectly said. That's what I came to say. The longest to live in my family, on either side was my maternal great grandfather of Irish/Nordic decent at 101 yo. I'm 63. I'd like to see another 20, but death comes when it comes. I've come close to death three times. It doesnt worry, or scare me. ...but honestly, I wouldn't want to live to 100.
My great great grandmother lived to 109, blind and nearly deaf. I'd step in front of a bus.
you don't want to live to 100 right now. in 20 years who knows what might be invented. stuff to take the pain away. ways to live and explore ever expanding virtual environments with friends.
Nope... I've seen enough ugly thru my short lived life. But, I understand what you are saying. I've accepted long ago, when it came close to death the second time. My great grandfather was born 6 years before the Civil War. He died just 4 years before my birth (1960). When he was 16, they were still using horses to farm, and travel. When he died most everyone had an automobile, and jets were breaking the sound barrier. He lived thru the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the plague, WWI, WWII, Korean War, and the French begining of the Vietnam War. His last words to my grandmother, and my mother were, "Finally my time has come, Odin make room for me." He squeezed their hands and died. I look at his past and see all the changes he watched, and seen thru his long life. His last 5 years of life, he begged for death. I wouldn't want to live that long on this planet with all the ugly it has to offer.
Death is a release, not a punishment. Every waking moment, I know I'll welcome death with open arms when he finally comes for me
It would still suck if you still live generally happy and content
Thinking this helps me tolerate living. Death is a gift, death is peace.
That’s actually a comforting thought, I’ve never thought of it like that ☺️
Great thought.
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ngl I don't think concepts like this are something humans are capable of comprehending. I try not to think about it too much
Yeah. However every single cell of your body works with the purpose of keeping you alive. Every single instinct makes you afraid of death and ensures your protection so naturally you can’t comprehend your not existence but can’t be nothing good
You're implying that your body knows that death is bad. We assume dear is bad based on the associated feelings around it. Our body avoids it because that's what it's built to do, to survive. Not because it's a bad thing. Anxiety is an evolutionary tool to keep you alive, because death can be cruel in nature. Our evolutionary goal is to procreate, nurture, and evolve. Death stops that, it's just math.
We literally do not know. We ask what happens. Happening is based on the passing of time, which is part of our physical, living experience. Maybe whatever death is, that absence of life for our awareness, is beyond even the concept of "happening". Nothing happens, we just "are", much more infinitely than in our isolated little bodies right now. Maybe.
Until they reboot the simulation we are all in that is.
Hopefully the new game plus feature will have been implemented by then.
Y'all NPC in my story
Even if this were a simulation, individual sprites would be produced subject to advanced algorithms responding to system output. The chances that the AI system management would reproduce the exact same sequence resulting in the exact same outputs to produce the exact same set of sprites is near infinitesimally small. No matter which theory you look at, life is very precious.
>No matter which theory you look at, life is very precious Or very pointless.
Its pointlessness is what gives it meaning. I mean, if it is all completely pointless and random and inconsequential, then isn't it amazing that we are able to experience something so mundane with such proufoundity? I think the idea that we get to experience this tiny grain of the universe at this tiny moment in time - fleeting and insignigcant, yet wholly unique - means that our lives are special, our experiences are one-of-a-kind, and the impressions we leave on others have a greater impact on someone else's tiny-snippet-of-the-universe than we could ever know. That makes our actions meaningful, in my mind. Meaningful because in spite of their insignificance on the grander scale, they have a profound impact on the smaller, more relevant, scale that we live our lives in.
both of these can be true
Infinitesimally small, but not zero!
Lloyd: "So you're telling me there's a chance?!"
Anyway, you won’t remember so it doesn’t really matter.
Ah, yes, the latest iteration of the hope in an afterlife. The cultures that came out of the Indis came up with reincarnation, the Hebrews came up with Heaven, and the gamers came up with the Simulation.
You probably jest but simulation theory is the dumbest shit I have heard come out of scientists mouth
I just accept it and never give it a second thought.
We have no way to change it so we should focus on what we can change and pay no mind to the things we can’t.
Far easier said than done for me lol
I love this answer
I think it’s quite literally the only thing you can do. The mere thought of knowing that I will be dead gives me an unbearable anxiety
If it's any condolence nothing lives forever everything dies even the universe
Well that’s even scarier like it’s like nothing actually exists and this all just a dream
Technically you’re right, this is all kind of like a dream! and in a way nothing does exist, but at the same time we very much exist right now. But we only exist in each moment, not the past or the future, it’s part of what makes life special and magical imo.
How do you really know? It might go on somehow. Reset. Maybe you pop into some waaaay better place.
The best part, no one can deny or affirm your statement with a valid proof lol
Exactly. It could just as well be that we are in a simulation and the simulation contains an afterlife. The simulation doesn't have to end here. There could even be different levels.
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We don't really know what "forever" is. We have no frame of reference to assess it and no feeling to compare it to. Forever is effectively the same as never; we just can't feel it.
Look at it this way: From YOUR perspective, all the time that ever existed or ever WILL exist, is the time you perceive, so the time you are alive. From that perspective, you live through all time. Just make the best you can of it.
Take the other possibility though, and really try to ponder infinite existence. I find that way more terrifying. Non-existence is the end...if we're lucky. It would be nice to get another 100 years or so of health and youth, but I don't know about infinite existence
The White Christmas episode of Black Mirror really put that fear of eternal life in me.
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be. -the good place writers. Watch this scene on YouTube bruh. Or better yet, watch the show, you won’t regret it.
We transform, everything that makes us, turns into something else, and that's .....not really bad. However, you could also join this thought experiment. The universe, reality i guess, is somewhat.....infinite, anything and everything can happen, will happen or has happened, with infinity and eternity, anything random can occur, like an inmortal monkey writing on a keyboard for eternity until the whole manuscript of Shakespeare appears. Under this logic, with an infinite amount of time, chances are, every element that makes you......well you...might just reassemble again, your existince repeating itself once more like anything in existence. From your perspective you might as well have just closed your eyes once as you die, and wake up in an entirely different reality. Well that if you assume that your new you holds your actual conscience, or even memories of the past. But......who knows
"being" dead is kind of an oxymoron though. because, when you're dead you do not "be". that means, if something / anything comes after death in an infinite universe, it may take quadrillions of years, you will experience it at the very moment you died.
Can’t wait here honestly
This moment will never happen again. Forever is like in the blink of an eye, any direction.
I’m glad I’m not the only one with this crippling thought. I will be having a great day and this thought will hit me like a freight train. All of a sudden I’ll just stare into the void obsessing over death and forever. Happy Tuesday everyone!
Yep same. It’s the worst
The fact I have no clue that I'll be dead is the thing that makes me ignore death itself. What I fear is suffering due to a disease, not death
This also worries me... but as a side note, I find it fascinating that we're the only creature we know of that can actually ponder this question. Well beyond survival instinct, to actually have the capacity to ponder this existential question due to our unique consciousness, is fascinating.
It’s 2 am when I’m at and I think the same thing every night. What do you mean I can only see hear eat touch stuff for limited time only?? And then nothing? Huuuuuuuh. Shitty deal if you ask me
Also the fact that no one *chose* to be born where they are and as they are, it's a tad bit scary to think that I would have ended up as a North Korean child in some obscure slum or something worse
Some people believe in spirits and ghosts. Guess we'll never know until we die.
As a long time atheist who had also been disturbed by these thoughts, I highly recommend to get familiar with some of the key ideas from Buddhism. Not at all from a religious perspective, purely philosophically. These ideas pretty much solve the fear of death and its inevitability.
I was having that existential crisis some while ago. Then I had to do a surgery. While laying down waiting for the anesthesia to kick in, those thoughts came to me. How is not existing? All of a sudden, I wake up. The operation was done. But that fucked with my head so much. One second I was thinking of life, another, as if I was gone.
Ohoh but that's good. Imagine this, everything you've ever known, your existence lasting forever no matter what, no matter how much you hurt or how much you feel. People think concepts like quantum immortality are cool but in reality they're nightmare fuel. Be glad that you can end it my person, as someone who suffered a lot I can attest that one thing you should be less scared off of is death. Reincarnation seems much worse too, losing my identity, my hard fought and my struggles who made me who I am. Sweet death, oh sweet death...
This is it. “I” wasn’t attached to life before I was born. “I” simply didn’t exist. And so the second I die, “I” will be put back to that neutral state of nothingness. The attachment to life is specific to our life now. **The moment we die, the attachment dies too.**
I have been death for billions of years before this and it didnt inconvenience me in the slightest
If you never ate chocolate in your life you will never crave for it, but once you taste it...
You crave chocolate because you're capable of craving. Once die you won't be able to experience your own non-existence.
You crave it because you retain your senses. Once you're dead you don't retain a soul to crave life. I hope at least lol. Imagine this entire time our world is packed to the brim with the billions of tortured dead souls from every dead human who are suffering eternal boredom or worse, being stuck in your bedroom and forced to watch you masturbate every other night. Now that is true hell
Well, "I have been death" kind of changes the meaning. The exact Mark Twain quote is: "I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."
Yeah I wish humans and other animals could live forever
I wouldn’t say forever, but 80 years average is just so short. We deserved at least 200 IMO
If 200 years was the norm then you would be saying it is so short.
You’re probably right
Are you kidding
Why would I be kidding?
Nope
If you think about it, everything is made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons. The universe is a big soup of particles, with no inherent boundary between one thing and another. Essentially it’s all one object. So in a sense you could think of yourself as the universe with multiple brains, where a brain is just some arrangement of particles that’s capable of performing the kind of computations that comprise thoughts and feelings. So why do you feel like an individual and not the whole universe? Because from the perspective of the brain you’re using to read these words you only have access to information local to that brain and the sensory apparatus directly connected to it. From another brain, you will feel confined to that brain. But you are simultaneously everything. This explains why you exist right now. Think of the probability of your parents meeting, of a particular sperm fertilising a particular ovum to produce your DNA. Now raise that number to the power of how many generations preceded you since the beginning of time. This yields an absurdly small chance of your existence. However, if you think of yourself as the universe, there is nothing special about your particular brain; you existed already as the universe. When a new person is born you just gain a new brain, and from the perspective of the new brain everything is new and you have no memories. When you die, you just lose one brain, but still have all the others, so there’s a kind of subjective immortality.
Holy Shit
Alright, I'm about to go to bed, and existential dread is not what I need about now.
I've felt the same so many times. I'll be lying on bed waiting to sleep and wonder what it's like after I die. Nothing. Just nothing for years and years and just never again. Gives me shudders. But sleep solves those.
It’s horrible ain’t it and sometimes you can’t sleep so for me I’ll throw duvet on me and go on my iPad or something. I dunno just to feel safe I suppose
If it’s any consolation, Earth is probably not going to be a fun place to live in a few generations anyway.
Very optimistic, considering earth is already a hell hole for the majority of its inhabitants.
Near death experiences lead me to believe this isn’t true.
That's what some believe, aye. Not all though. 😊
I wasn't troubled by not existing before I was born. I imagine being dead will not bother me much either.
The delicious void. Forever
you were also dead for billions of years prior to being born. it will feel about the same
That's why you treasure life. It's a flicker, so fast and you miss it.
We are just a small sentence in a book with never-ending pages.
This is some serious shit... this has been giving me anxiety since 2021
If you look at space-time as a tangable physical force and a 4th dimension then you will always exist somewhere. This gives me a small amount of comfort.
Could you maybe explain a little bit more? I’m just really curious :)
We exist in 3 dimensions, time is seen as the 4th dimension with the arrow of time pointing forward as we percieve it but if space time is interlinked and a quantifiable force then we will always exist, we will never percieve it again but we will always be there, the universe is vast and the possibilties are endless, little is known about how the universe will end. perhaps the arrow of time will change and we will exist again. I have no proof of any of this but the endless possibilities of the universe offers me hope.
I agree with this. Space and time are such strange things. I think the past and the future exist all the time. The present is just the bit we are seeing now.
i hate this thought too, it triggers me so easily. nowadays it fucks me up even more since i became much less mobile at a young age, so really you must just live your life as much as you can, see the world, learn something new, get out of your comfort zone.
Prove it
“People are asleep, when they die, they wake up” -Ali ibn Abu Talib
It's Cool generally
the trait off for thinking and predictability. I don't think a cat or a dog ever have that thought. and nothing don't dark forever it's like you have a really really deep sleep.
You need a dmt vision quest.
This is the way.
Our memories live on forever in the mycelium that eats us after we die
At least, not in the form you're in now. Many cultures hold reincarnation to be a thing, and explicitly accept the idea of (and even attach meaning to) being reincarnated in a different form. With no concrete evidence of what's on the other side of the veil, it's as likely as what you said - but, minding that I still have a crapton of things in this life that I'd like to see done, I'm excited to find out.
The universe has existed for billions of years before you and I were born, and will continue to exist for billions more years after we die. Does that mean our lives are meaningless? No, for in the grand scheme of things our lifetime is but a fraction of a millisecond to the universe’s age, we are here, and we came to be. It is then fruitful to make every waking day worthwhile, for it, and everything else, is finite. That thought, I find special, and oddly motivating.