None of this is new. And none of it helps. It is meaningless if it ends, because it’s not about “if,” it’s an absolute. That means nothing that happens in the time between the start of existence and the end of existence matters; the outcome was always going to be the same. Collecting loving memories doesn’t do anything to change that, having fun doesn’t change that. Those are distractions. They keep you from thinking about the fact that those very things are going to be gone.
One day I won’t be able to have fun anymore, one day I won’t be able to think about those loving memories. I’ll be gone, and assuming there’s no afterlife, I won’t even be aware that I ever had fun or had loving memories, so it doesn’t matter if I do or not. I could sit in a chair and stare at the wall for the rest of my life, and absolutely nothing would change or make any kind of difference to the nature of existence, so what was the point of existing to begin with?
That’s the dilemma. The only way for existence to mean anything is to be able to continue it. When it ends, nothing that happened during that time of existence makes any difference, because it did not change the predetermined outcome. Therefore, existence can have no meaning. I am a person who needs a meaning to why I am here, and there is none, I’m just here. We all are. Enjoying life in the way most people talk about doesn’t solve that problem, it doesn’t get around the fact that we are here for no reason, everything will be taken from us, and all our experiences are for naught. Everyone tries to distract themselves with good times, but that doesn’t work for me. The knowledge that those good times are not only not changing the outcome, but are not going to matter once it all goes away, prevents them from distracting me anymore. I’ve grown out of the child phase where death is a far-off nebulous concept. The truth has revealed itself to my mind, and I cannot forget or ignore it, and so now its specter is constantly hovering over me. Not being able to do anything about it is not a source of comfort, it is the problem in-and-of itself.
I don’t understand why existence has to mean anything? It just is. I genuinely don’t understand why there MUST be some deeper meaning to everything?
You say that were are here for no reason, unless we can continue on forever unending. But if there is no reason for existence, then why would anyone want to continue it? Would not ending it be better?
Edit; not that I’m advocating suicide, while I do frequently have those thoughts myself, I just want to understand where you are coming from with this line of thought.
Because the answer of “it just is” is not good enough. Just being here, for nothing, having awareness of oneself, and knowing that that awareness, and everything else around you, is going to be taken from you, is not enough. Life is not worth living if it simply is. If there’s no reason for it, and we’re going to cease to exist eventually anyway, with no awareness that we ever did exist, then we may as well have never existed to begin with. Since we do exist, there must be a reason for it, or it simply isn’t worth it. Nothing good you are given in life is worth the awfulness of that goodness then being taken from you after you’ve experienced it. No, ending it would not be better; ending it would be horrible. Making it better would be better.
Ok. So simply having experienced the good things isn’t good enough? Having the memory, for example, isn’t good enough? How could it be made better?
Do you think that if immortality was an option, that you would then be able to find meaning in eternity? Of course assuming, the planet/solar system/universe was also eternal.
Yup. Certain conditions would need to be met, and small incremental changes would need to be allowed to take place, but an eternal universe would allow a meaningful existence.
Yes, simply experiencing good things and having memories of them is not enough. Because, what did you experience them for? Suppose you had none? No good experiences, no memories to look back on fondly? How does your fate differ from someone who has? It doesn’t. You will both have the same end and will cease to exist. Therefore, the existence that involves good times and fond memories has no real difference over the one without. Nothing changes, no consequence of either life happens for that life being lived. So that cannot be enough, because it does nothing, it changes nothing, whether you have it or not.
Does it need to? I think there cannot be an eternal value on its own if you need to compare it so someone’s else life. By doing that you further strive away from what you are looking for. But this time not because the laws of nature give limits but because you do.
Ok. So, by this logic someone like Plato or Albert Einstein, who are long dead but are still remembered for their contributions to the world; their lives had no meaning because they died?
Being remembered; your name, deeds, perhaps something you(general you not you specifically) created or invented and is credited to you, is not good enough? Just because the originator of the thing is dead?
I don’t know, it seems to me that this fear or death is simply a fear of the unknown, and assuming that after death the individual simply ceases to be, then they wouldn’t know that they were even dead, because they would be unable know or experience anything.
Maybe it’s just cause i don’t fear death or nothingness, This is so difficult for me to understand. The only people who are affected by a person’s death are the people that are left who remember them and were close enough to have an emotional connection. The dead person is just gone, they don’t know or remember existing and therefore cannot feel that their life has been wasted or is meaningless. They cannot feel anything at all.
All I am looking for is to not die, and to continue enjoying my entertainment without end. I have no goals, nothing that I wish to achieve in life. None of it interests me, and none of it matters. Everything is simply a distraction from the existential, so I have nothing to strive for because I can no longer be distracted except by constant entertainment. I cannot value any achievements I might be able to strive for, so I have no means of telling myself that I’m making my life mean anything, because I know it’s not true.
No, that’s not enough. Because, let me ask you this: what happens after everyone is dead. When there are no more people, when our species is extinct and there’s no one left to remember anything, what did Plato and Einstein’s lives amount to? What did anybody’s? That’s the other half of the whole dilemma: if individuals did not exist forever, but our species did, or some form of sentient consciousness somewhere in the cosmos that could forever remember our lives after we are gone, it might be marginally more palatable. But, all of humanity is going to cease to exist, so we’ll have no one to remember or be impacted by our lives and deeds. And if there are any aliens out there, eventually the earth itself will cease to exist, so they’ll never know we were here. And if by chance they did somehow learn of us, they too will cease to exist, as will everything else in the universe eventually, and there will be nothing to be remembered and no one to remember it. What difference will anything anyone has ever done matter then?
I don’t know man. I guess it just doesn’t seem all that bad to me for things to end eventually. That’s the cycle of existence. It began. It exists. It ends. And perhaps in the ending of the previous one a new one begins, on and on forever. You or I may not be here to see or experience it but it will happen.
Hmmm. perhaps if the universe, in all of it’s possible iterations, is just a big continuously looping cycle of birth, life, death and re-birth. Doesn’t seem so bad to me.
I almost made a poll, but when crafting choices it feels like I’m putting words into the mouths of those who would vote when they might think differently.
So I’ll just ask (if it’s okay). What is your opinion of consciousness? Or, what is it to YOU?
If Heisenberg feels this is hijacking the topic then I can open a new topic. But I think it fits well here since it seems to hinge in a way on being dead or alive.
To be fair I should go first since I put forth the question.
To me, it’s what gives us our awareness. We can even choose what we focus that awareness on. Well, “choose” might not be the right word, but we can at least make efforts. I could post more, but I’m at work and have other “real life” issues to tend to.
So at one hand you want to live forever because otherwise the life has no meaning, but if that happened you just want to be distracted for eternity?
Personally Epiphenomenalism makes the most sense to me, that we are controlled by physical laws in our brain and our consciousness is something that emerges from that but has no control over what happens.
But despite that I don’t live by that in regular life because that is just an assumption from me without having evidence. It would also mean that we could not have an ethical system or laws because you could not give people responsibility for what they do.
No. If life was eternal, I would have actual reason to strive toward its betterment. There’d be no need for constant distraction, and there would be actual stakes involved. The outcomes of things would matter, because you could end up having to live with them for quite some time before having a chance to correct things. There would be a point to engaging with the world, unlike now, where we are all just trying to keep ourselves busy while waiting for a clock to finish counting down, with no actual ultimate consequences to anything.
Given that we are billions of years away from the end of the universe and how much we invented in the blink of an eye in comparison, it is not impossible that we end up with some kind of eternal human history.
Who knows, we could invent time travel in 10k years and then just travel back to the beginning if the current universe reaches its end. Another 10k years and humans could live forever while doing so without aging.
Could be you and your work in this time that brings us a year or two closer to that. You would not witness it but in the grand scheme your life has a meaning.
That is even true if you did something else that helps a few humans around you who have their role in the chain of events.
I think consciousness is very important when we decide moral consideration. I hate to bring it up again and I will leave it at just one sentence but it’s the main reason I don’t want to eat animals.
It’s everything. The world ends every time somebody’s lights go out, when they can’t think, see or feel ever again. So we have essentially isolated apocalyptic events that occur every day and as a species, we collectively shrug and go “That’s the way it is, people die.” I wholly reject that, there’s a solution to the permanent loss of consciousness (death) and we just haven’t found it yet.
I know this was in reply to @Heisenberg , but to me that would be preferable over death. Something is always better than nothing.
I know this isn’t the point you’re trying to make, but I’d have to say that this point of view is untrue, depending on the context. An X-Ray checking for tumors, for example, is always better to have nothing than something.
Sure, I’m more referring to the context of sensation. Unless the sensation is pain that isn’t expected to subside, which is why we allow assisted suicide for terminally ill patients that aren’t expected to recover in Canada. Otherwise, even a boring existence is preferable to the absence of one.
Exactly. Because as long as that existence continues, there are possibilities, and the hope of those possibilities. A boring or sad or painful life, with time, has a chance to get better. With time being limited and drawing toward an eventual end, there may not be sufficient time to change it, so death may seem preferable to waiting without hope of change before the end. But that is only because of the limited time. If that were not a factor, there would always be a possibility to fix your state of life, and a hope to hold onto as a result.
I want to counter the idea about immortality being desirable.
I think it’s because of our limited time that we value life so much. I think it’s actually quite neat that it, like everything else, must come to an end. In my opinion, it makes our time very meaningful.
Really consider what living forever would mean. On the small scale, there’s a big chance civilisation as we know it will fail in the coming hundreds or thousands years. Either due to climate change or nuclear war.
You’d roam an inhospitable world for no reason other than to “be alive”.
On the grander scale, our solar system will cease to exist. By that time your existence will be completely meaningless, just floating around in an endless void. Why would you ever want that fate for yourself.
You already know what being dead “feels” like. For the vast majority of human history you weren’t alive. It didn’t bother you in the slightest. Death is gonna be exactly like that. You even get a taste of it every time you have a dreamless sleep. I find it comforting.
You’re confusing being eternal with being immortal. I’m talking about the former, not the latter. Being immortal would most likely suck. I’m speaking of being eternal. I don’t just want a world where I don’t die. As I’ve stated in much earlier entries to this thread, it’s not just my own existence that I seek to be unending, but nearly all the rest. A universe that does not succumb to entropy, a star that never burns out, a planet that shall forever remain habitable. Some things would need to have changes; there’d still be seasons, the majority of plants and animals would still live and die mostly as normal, although with perhaps expanded lifespans, but the forests would never run out, the oceans would never dry up, etc., etc., you get the idea.
Yes, we may assign value to our lives because of their limited time, but that doesn’t actually give them value. In fact, it’s precisely why they have none. There is nothing to actually work toward, no lasting consequence that happens from our being here, because everything will eventually cease to be, meaning that it’s no different than if it had never been at all. The limited time of our lives doesn’t give them value, it’s the very thing that robs them of it.
No, I don’t know what being dead is like. Having your life taken is not the same as having it given. We may not know what existence was like before we existed, but now we do exist, we do know what that’s like. That’s a profound threshold, that’s a fundamental line being crossed; simply going back to the previous state is not any form of comfort. That should not be. Everything about existence tells us that once something changes, it can never be that same thing it was again. Not being aware of the universe before we came into existence is not the same; we are aware now, we do exist now. It should not be a thing that that gets undone.
You would not witness it but in the grand scheme your life has a meaning.