Comment on Fear not, and enjoy this mere interlude to its fullest!
lemmyknow@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Idk, sounds kinda scary. Idk what it was like before, because I lacked consciousness to experience it. And the idea that it all ends, back to nothingness forever. We live a few years. Pretty much nothing, if we consider the forever before, and the forever after our existence.
It’s something I recall fearing as a kid, due to the scary unknown. Glad to have enjoyed a decade of bliss. Too bad the fear has come back to haunt me. It’s not constant, though. Sometimes it comes, outta nowhere. Real strong. Not fun. But I don’t live day to day in fear.
blargh513@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The thing is, once youre dead, there won’t be consciousness, you will not have any perception of a void, you won’t know anything because you will not be.
Marc Maron put it into good perspective. He was hiking in the hills and passed out. He noted that he could very well have been dead, and that would have been that.
You can’t be afraid when you dont exist and you will not be aware of anything.
Redex68@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I don’t believe in God nor am I religious, but consciousness just feels so fucking weird man. Everything in the world can be explained through science and physics, cause and effect, hell even our brains and actions are just a chain of atoms interacting. But consciousness just feels so out of place. Why am I? Why am I even aware of my own existence? Why has a set of atoms resulted in my non-material consciousness? It feels so out of place. Why isn’t it just a bunch of atoms bumping into eachother, why am I capable of feeling and thinking?
Zink@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
I think about this more than anything in those quiet “run the brain’s existential dread garbage collection routine” moments.
Self aware consciousness is just so wild. Like you say, how does it even exist? But it’s also so common on our little planet here (even if we only count the humans) that it is as commonplace as it is spectacular.
It feels like this magical “extra” thing, but at the same time the evidence kinda suggests it’s just something that naturally happens once you get complex life.
blargh513@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You might find some answers in Julian Jaynes The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind.
Short version: consciousness is kind of new. We aren’t really good at it.
Also, Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright is very good. Less about Buddhism more about how we think and why it works.
Redex68@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
The weirdest thing to me is that it’s literally impossible to measure and detect whether something has consciousness. Every other thing in our universe can be measured theoretically, even if not by our current tools, but there is no way to confirm that someone else is experiencing what I am experiencing currently. It’s just so weird.
Wilco@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
You are the construct of a million cells, an evolutionary “trick” that allows all the pieces to act as one. Your task is to percieve your environment and survive in it.
Redex68@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure, I get the biology and technical aspect of it and I can understand that something could evolve whose atoms would move in such a way that it results in an object that is capable of responding dynamically to its roundings, plan and think. But for that collection of atoms to then result in this experience, I feel is extraordinarily exceptional.
jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Do we really know this though?
What if upon death we exit the simulation?
Sometimes I think non-sim me decided to play life on hard mode. I’d kind of like to kick his ass for that. But then I realize he is me.
blargh513@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
You can’t know until then, so what is the value in worrying?
parody@lemmings.world 3 weeks ago
Do we really know our dentists aren’t CIA agents installing radios but calling them fillings?!
What happens after death is just about the least concerning thing I can imagine. (yay rejoice!) Anywhere from seconds to decades of stuff to worry about before that! :) (oh no anxiety again sorry!)
:)
lemmyknow@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
That’s precisely the scary part. A nothingness, for all of eternity. It ends, never to continue. I do not know what it is like. Just… not seeing. Not hearing. None of the senses, and no thoughts either. No consciousness.
I wouldn’t be scared after dead, cuz I’dn’t have the consciousness for that. However, being alive, I can. I can fear the eternal nothingness of inexistence
I think this may or may not have some connection to a post from that monkey in the brain guy who also has a TED Talk (Tim Something?). I recall seeing a post of his about life or something. Talked about how short our lives are in the grand scheme of things. Had even an image with days or weeks or months of life, like a progress bar
On the other hand, reading that people actually close to death don’t worry as much as people imagining being close to death, iirc, may have had a positive impact in my fear. Though I recalln’t well
blargh513@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Dear brother/sister rest your mind. You cannot control what will happen and worry/fear will only agitate you.
I don’t like the idea of life being over, but it is inevitable. Seek acceptance and peace with this so you do not waste your precious hours with unnecessary discomfort. There is so much more to enjoy while we are still here!
Loss of life is followed by mourning - except when it is our own. Some spend decades mourning the end of their lives because they are scared of facing it down. You’ve done the big scary part already. Now spend the time taking yourself through all of your fears. Once you come to acceptance it doesn’t change what will be, but it will trouble you a lot less.
LordCrom@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, there technically may not be an eternity. Universe is 14 billion years old now…in 32 trillion years or so the last black holes and last particles will cease to exist. Time will no longer have any meaning, and the nothingness will be all there is.
What a shit hand we were dealt.
lemmyknow@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Well, maybe not eternity, but that sure is a whołe lot of time for someone who’ll be around for probably less than 100 years (not sure why 100 is the number I think of when I think of an age limit to life. Is this a common occurrance, folks? Or just me? I mean, I do know some people go past it, but still…)
dontsayaword@piefed.social 2 weeks ago