Bleak and hopeless thoughts are difficult to chronicle in a way that seems genuine yet still intellectual. Often notions of hopelessness are looked down upon as juvenile; opinions befitting of a teenager who has just discovered Nietzsche, and nothing more. Ill informed angst and frustration. An outlet for a troubled, growing mind. Though this is not the way I'd like for this to be interpreted, perhaps it's unavoidable. While I'd like to give myself more credit than an immature highschool student, it's not really up to me how it's interpreted. All I can do is try to convey my thoughts and feelings to the best of my ability, and hope that, above any preconceived notions you bring with you, or any incompetence on the behalf of my writing, the message that I intended will shine through. This is what I have to say:
I was raised Catholic, and grew up to believe in God, heaven and hell, and the soul. I had faith in those who led a good life. That they would go on to spend eternity in the kingdom of god, living eons out among the stars, absorbing knowledge and truth, finally experiencing true, unending happiness.
These are reassuring thoughts for a child. It all sounds very poetic and just; good things ultimately happen to good people, and bad things to bad people. By the end of it all, everything will fall into place. These encouraging sentiments compel one to lead a good life; to improve and occasionally suffer, repenting and worshiping, eventually becoming old, wise, and absolved, ready to move on to that next holy plain of existence when your time comes.
cont.
The longer I observed and questioned these concepts, though, I found myself becoming disenchanted with it all. The discovery of all these lower forms of life, the constant contributions to every scientific field, each proof and theory more valuable and exciting than the last, slowly led me down a path where I wondered why we were special. All this life exists here on this planet so perfectly, and our past has shown just how resilient life is. After constant flooding, fires, volcanos, and perhaps the odd asteroid collision, life has begun anew again, eventually progressing to where we are now. We've come a long way, wouldn't you say?
So, the thought presents itself: If we – we, not just being humans, but life on earth in general - can achieve all of this from nothing, why is it so unrealistic to think that there is not similar sequences happening all across the universe? When viewed from this angle, is intelligent life outside of our own really that surprising? That outlandish?
From there, I look down, to the microscopic life beneath our perception; that which lives and exists everywhere around us at all time. It's on the screen as you read this, on my hands as I type it. You need only to open your eyes, and you find life, even if you don't register it. This life is not intelligent, but it still exists. And, from there, we ascend from form to form. We have insects and arachnids, fish and amphibians, dogs and cats, bears and monkeys, birds and elephants. They all exist, and each gives hardly any thought to the former. The dog is not aware of the microbe's existence, and a bat eats a mosquito without thinking twice.
And we, humans, look down upon them all. We are certainly more complex creatures, but have the same basic pasterns as the rest. The same needs. Despite this, we consider ourselves better.
cont.
My thought is this: why do we assume that a higher form from us is celestial and all knowing, and not just a more complex concept of what I just described? We think of these microbes as stupid, inane creatures. Who is to say that we're not being looked down upon the same way? That we're not as insignificant; that we're not small, ourselves, and that we've given ourselves these concepts of souls and gods to make us feel like we have worth, when we really don't.
This has been a concept I've thought of for much of my youth. One of my favourite film director's is Woody Allen, who would often introduce these concepts into his films. As they're somewhat well known, I won't linger. I'd like to focus on a different aspect.
I'm now writing under the assumption that there is no god, we don't have souls, and that our consciousness, memories, experiences, and a certain degree of genetic inheritance makes up who we are.
What happens when we die?
There is no heaven or hell, no reincarnation of the soul. Our life as we know it is our consciousness. So what happens when our brain shuts down, stops functioning, and we're put in a box 6 feet in the ground, and that inactive brain begins to rot?
We cease to exist. That is the end of it all. Who we are disappears, completely, never to be resumed or recovered. That complex arrangement of information we've constructed and grown into, lived with our entire lives, WAS our entire lives, dies with us.
cont.
The thought of this frightens me beyond belief. As I write this, I am shivering. I am thinking, observing, looking around and interacting. I perceive the world through my senses, and I have original thoughts. I feel emotions, and have people I love and care about. And this just stops. I think about how comforting it was when I slept as a child; as I'd go to sleep, I'd dream and occupy myself while I was unconscious, but when I woke, it would feel instantaneous, and I'd seldom remember the dreams I had. I'd be excited, knowing that even if I struggle to fall asleep now, as soon as I do, it will suddenly be tomorrow, and I can continue with whatever I wanted to do.
I now think back, and think every night as I fall asleep how terrifying a concept that is when you apply it to death. You fall asleep, and never wake up. The next morning never arrives, you never continue with what you intended to do. I think about those seemingly dreamless nights, and how I'd just wake up with sudden sunshine, and that void in between now deeply disturbs me. The absence of any memory or thought, with the only respite being that I'll wake and it will resume.
Imagine not waking? That nonexistence of anything for you. Nothing is thought or perceived.
How do you deal with this concept, /his/?
>>834208
Yes death is an upsetting thing to face, but accepting reality as it is is nonetheless rewarding. As to "imagine being dead! Bogus, dude!" well sure, but I was 'not alive' for billions of years before I was born without it bothering me in the slightest, the same will be true after I die.
God and heaven really does exist dude.
>>834266
This.
If your worldview leads you to suicide, ditch it before it kills you.
tl;dr
By realizing that death is the best thing that will ever happen to you, it wipes clean all the negatives of existence without leaving any wants. Being born is a tragedy, eternal existence would literally be an absolute nightmare and death is the only acceptable outcome.
>>834565
Is it wrong to prefer an existence of pain and suffering over a lack of any existence at all?
>its another person raised in a Abrahamic-religion dominated culture that raises them with the promise of eternal life trying to cope with the reality that they've been lied to this entire time
There's a reason the Asians don't even have a word for existentialism
>>834712
I should clarify that while I was raised in a religious family, I was always exposed to these other ideas and concepts. I don't think I believed in eternal life past the age of 5.
My attempt to cope doesn't come from any sort of religious disenchantment, I just thought it best to give you some background on myself.
>>834889
Seriously try to name one Asian existentialist (that isn't some crazy Japanese Occidental-phile)
>>834712
When you think your dead ancestors are watching your every move.....and that you're going to join them, and watch your descendants' every move.....
>>834916
>thinking every asian fully buys into the whole "MUH ANCESTURS" scphiel
das raycis anon
>>834220
>Who we are disappears, completely, never to be resumed or recovered.
Nope. Who we are lives on in others and in our children/creations. And everything returns, eternally. If one lives for the future in this way, the future becomes your strength, your life force; you become immortalized by this understanding.
Also, you are looking at things the wrong way. Life is a song. All songs end... but do we fear the approaching end to a song? No; we listen to the music as it plays. The end of the song and the silence after is nothing to us, it plays no role in the joy of listening.
>>834288
He's scared of death. Why would that lead him to suicide?
OP, I feel the same way. Life is a bizarre cosmic mishap and we have a very limited time to enjoy it before it ends. Use your time wisely , and try not to dwell on the end.
All things have a beginning and an end. Everything.
Why wouldn't death?
>>835550
I think the point that the OP was trying to make was just that. There's definitely an end to everything, and it's depressing.
>>835499
It's rather upsetting that this is the answer, but it really is.
Just don't think about it, and life your life until then.
OP, I was raised Catholic also.
I'm STILL Catholic. I trust that death is not the end. If the universe is just at all, there is life after death. And if it is not just, there is no point in living after one dies.
I choose to believe that things are right and true. I choose to believe that we live in a beautiful universe, a universe of grandeur and elegance. I choose to believe that there is life beyond our life.
>>834208
I would rather just die than continue living in the afterlife.
>>836278
But that guy is saying that death, too, has an end. So death is not permanent either.
Really, death is a misinterpretation of life. There is really no birth or death. There is only transformation. All notions of permanence are erroneous, naive. Change alone is unchanging.
But also, nigga, the eternal recurrence is real. Imagine if the moment you "died" you returned to your moment of conception in the womb? "Death" i.e. a subjectively timeless condition means in a universe of eternal recurrence, returning to life would be instantaneous. There is no wait at all.
>>837445
You don't have the power to make that happen.
It's not going to happen.
You're going to be resurrected either to shame and destruction, or to glory, depending on whether or not you believe Jesus.
>>838458
Death to you is a cessation of life.
Death to God is a separation from Him. Hell, the separation of you from your Creator, is as eternal as eternal life is to those who believe.
>>838480
I'm a pantheistic psychologist. God is the universe itself, but it also isn't God, because the attribution of God to anything requires praise of the thing, so you may also find the universe cruel and deem it as the Devil, or you can be indifferent to it. You can also find that you are never separate from the universe, meaning that if you praise the universe as God, then you are God too...
And in my view, the eternal recurrence is real. We are always in the universe. All things beyond the universe, beyond life, including the "cessation of life" as you referred to it, are merely a naive interpretation of things. "This life" is all there is, and it always is, and it gives rise to all things—even notions of death/unlife. Unlife is within life, not without.
>>834246
>I was 'not alive' for billions of years before I was born without it bothering me in the slightest, the same will be true after I die.
Sure, you won't have awareness or consciousness, so you won't be bothered by it, but I think that's exactly the point. You didn't exist for so long, and now you're here, and you can do so much. The world is at your fingertips. And then, it's gone again. That consciousness and control, this life and your thoughts, all fade from existence.
You gain so much. You gain everything. Just to have it taken away. Does that notion not disturb you?
>>834225
I just deal, I guess. You have to dwell on it long enough until you finally accept it
What's scary isn't eternal nothingness, but the fact that evil does exist and that your actions have eternal ramifications.
Step up, nigga.
>>838499
The Creator is not the creation, nor do I praise the creation for creating itself, but the Creator for creating the universe.
In God's Word, it is appointed once for a man to die, and then the judgment.
>>839574
It makes perfect sense to me, because I agree with God.
You are in rebellion against God, so you cannot make any sense out of life.
When you surrender, you will find that life makes perfect sense to God, and trust Him to carry you through.
>muh existential crisis
The point of life is to fuck and die, only one of which is guaranteed. If there is nothing after death, why worry about it? You won't be aware of it. It may as well NOT exist, because you'll never experience it.
Enjoy your life while you're here, it's the only thing you can do. Or whine and mope about it like a bitch, I don't care.
>>834663
Nothing is normatively one way or another but I think it's highly animalitistic.
>>839591
You agree with God because he's your psyche.
>>You are in rebellion against God
No. The idea of God just makes no sense. To rebel against God I have to believe in God.
.
>one day it will all end
Good fucking riddance.
>>834712
thanks mom and dad
>there are literally billions of people unable to enjoy worldly pleasures without the fear of a magical sky-daddy punishing them
What a shit way to live.
>>839604
Nope. Your rebellion can be in the form of a willful ignorance.
For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
>>839606
Pleasure for a season, then nothing but pain, sorrow, and hopelessness.
>>839624
Nope. A new season, a new pleasure. Probably your mom this spring.
Pleasure and sorrow are choices faggot. I choose pleasure.
>>839618
>Nope. Your rebellion can be in the form of a willful ignorance.
It's not willful ignorance if your "evidences" for god are invalid and still make no sense. But trying to reason with a cultist is like trying to beat down a brick wall, so I'm wasting my time. You'll never honestly think about it, because you need your belief.
>>839633
You must be young. I'm old. Pleasure wanes, novelty wears off, habituation sets in, and when you're tired of pleasure, you're tired of life.
>>839635
You stand before God without excuse.
You have convinced yourself that you have an excuse. God already told you what awaits you when you try to pull that crap on Him.
>>839396
This tbqh.
I kinda got bored of it all. I even got bored of all those depressing thoughts. Just start doing something and stop thinking about it. Work out, read, fuck, study... who cares if it's meaningless?
Sometimes, it's really liberating to be able to tell yourself to shut the fuck up.
>>839656
Interesting, because you have the mind of a child.
Genuinely superior people--not those autistic atheistic edgelords, mind you, can derive pleasure consistently throughout their lives. If pain, sorrow, or hopelessness serves as their live's afternoon and evening, then they didn't think far enough ahead, so sucks for them.
>>839635
>For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
>without excuse...
>>839688
They cannot, actually, and die trying.
>living your life in fear of the end of it
Christfags, everybody. Big pussies hiding from life and the bountiful joy it brings. If you accept and hold dear a set of beliefs that prohibits joy in any form, fucking kill yourself. At the very least just keep your dogshit world-views away from me, you're literally cancerous.
>>839587
In God's word, the eternal recurrence is real.
>>839900
Why would I care about his non-existence?
>>839656
take your anti-depressants.
>>839914
Without God, there is no life, there is no joy. There is only death.
>>840247
None of you should be taking these. There's no research to say they do what they claim to do. Only the side-effects and the withdrawal symptoms are real.
Just like your worldview, they have no upside, and death as the downside.
>>840004
Purple unicorn leap, toads run curbside ribbon.
>>839410
this is how i priest
>>839914
>being this mad about someone voicing a philosophical viewpoint on a humanities board
>>839914
>At the very least just keep your dogshit world-views away from me
But anon, that would prohibit joy.
>>839914
>>839914
I'm a Muslim but your post includes me, so go fuck yourself. You will burn in hell and I hope you get there fast so I don't have to hear your shit opinions on the Internet.
At least the Koran says Christians that do well go to heaven, your fucking retarded ass is going to be burned for eternity for not getting the picture screaming in your face. I get it, you're being born into the end of a paradigm, it's sinful these next couple of years should convince you God is real
>>841253
you are cucking yourself my man, don't you get that sprituality=good religion=bad ? please don't reproduce and push your shitty beliefs onto the world
>>841458
Spirituality as an ideology is a joke, and so are you.
Back to r-ddit, faggot.
>>841253
>At least the Koran says Christians that do well go to heaven
Really? Where? Enlighten me, I don't know enough.
There are many actions you can take when faced with death:
Laugh. Because all your actions,all your emoticons will not matter post mortem and in 20 years none will remember you even existed.
Don't think about it. Apathy and occupy yourself with hedony or anything else that brings you pleasure.
Fall for metaphysics. This is the norm. No explanation needed.
Etc...
What you are going to choose doesn't matter. But try to live a dignifiable and happy life.
It's sad seeing you so preoccupied with death and the material life instead of focusing your existence on feelings, God's existence has nothing to do with it, you may die one day and that's a shame but it's in avoidable, accept it, live every day like your time here is limited and this might be your last day on alive, and you'll enjoy your existence, what happens after death?
that is something you'll find out..
I personally find the two options great either you rest for ever and become one with the objective universe or come back both sounds awesome, stop taking your own life so seriously, you're not that important, learn to let go of your self.
>>839410
>that pic
Also, in what way do you mean that evil does exist? Isn't that a given?
Bumping for more morbid discussion.
>Who we are disappears, completely, never to be resumed or recovered. That complex arrangement of information we've constructed and grown into, lived with our entire lives, WAS our entire lives, dies with us.
I think this is wrong. There really is no persistent subject of experience, or "me", that has my experiences, and does my thinking. It just doesn't really exist. There is no stable self, something which stays the same through the constant change of your immediate experience. What you are is always in change, or motion. I don't mean you change from a self that likes icecream, to a self that doesn't. What I mean is the change is more fundamental in that what you exist as, is the sum of what's being consciously experienced. So you're always here presently, and what's presently known is what's being experienced. So you exist AS what's presently being experienced. So there's nothing stable in there which could persist through the constant change of experience. The present is always changing or in motion, and because all you know is what's present (and that includes your present memories, your conception of your past, your ideas about the future - they all exist presently i.e. you don't exist in the past, you just have memories in the present about the past), and the present is in perpetual motion, so to are "you". So there is no stable persistent self.
Which means that death is not the death of a stable persistent entity that "had a life", rather death is just the presence of experience stopping.
When your experience stops, it isn't 'blackness', you don't miss out on life, or become separate from your loved ones alone in another realm, you aren't deprived of life, and it wont be a bad thing for you in ANY way. Because you exist as experience, and death is the experience stopping. So when it stops, there is nothing to speak of. There is no 'you' to miss out on anything. There is literally not any sort of subject or noun to say things about. It's just unspeakable.
As disturbing as death is, the thought of eternity is in a way even worse. Imagine living until the end of the universe and then just- continuing. You're there for the next world, and the one after, and the one after that, and on and on. Over billions and trillions of years, you collect the knowledge and technology necessary to alter the fabric of reality- to make every fantasy and daydream you ever had into a reality as concrete as the one you were born into. You live countless lives in the shoes of other people, trying to lose yourself in their experiences. You reave warpaths across entire realms of existence, you sit in silence in intergalactic space for the lifespan of a universe just to see what it's like. And after all that, you still have eternity to go. Unceasing cycles of repetition curling in on themselves.
I'm still trying for it anyway, because to hell with dying.
>>834225
Well I tend to go by what the wisest humans throughout history have said:
life is a phase of existence, death is a transition into another
all living beings have souls and enter an ecology of souls upon death
the purpose of life is to overcome life by mastering life
god is home, as well as a force, a dimension, satori, nibbana, heaven, union, transcendence, ultimate reality, etc.
the universe is merely a web of evolving life, seen and unseen.
So while people like you shudder to think life is merely an empty void, people like me think that life is an upwards climb to godhood and are obligated to comport themselves in excellence and honor, as is the proper to the heavenly animal, the being made in the image of that which is without name
>>846680
If your mind remained finite perhaps you would go through reincarnations without memory and be none the wiser.
If your mind was infinite, then the infinite of experiences would not tax your sanity.
>>839618
>what I have been taught not to like is willful ignorance
>>845842
>>846680
This is a more realistic viewpoint than a rote acceptance of oblivion or non-existence.
You need a brain (consciousness) to perceive time. Upon death there can be no perception of the void, because perception is qualia tied to time.
You all might be interested in the concept of Boltzmann brains and the Poincare Recurrence Theorem. That "complex arrangement of information", as you put it, can very much recur when we're looking at timescales of 10^100 years. The universe will end and begin again, eternities within eternities. What conclusions we can draw from that mathematical information is up for debate. But the conclusion of a "void", of total experiential senescence upon death, is both unscientific and arbitrary. What happens beyond death is ineffable, no matter how many negativist or positivist conclusions we try to draw about it. It is a great supernatural mystery that we all will eventually solve, or at least "experience".
And until then, you have your life. Another great supernatural mystery so complex that in the course of it you will forget the majority of what you learn, and still have much more to learn and discover. While we're alive we barely scratch the surface of reality, and what experiences we do have are rich with meaning and discovery. Enjoy it. We are matter that is capable of conscious experience. You can attach whatever spiritual or secular meanings you want to it, but never forget that life is an extraordinary phenomenon.
>>846735
>If your mind was infinite, then the infinite of experiences would not tax your sanity.
I really do hope that's how it'll work. Maybe gods can go insane too, though.
>>834266
Until he reveals himself to me I have no reason to believe in god or heaven. It's a cruel meme you have to force yourself into believing.
>>846833
>Maybe gods can go insane too
>>834208
Thread theme:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eh9WayN7R-s
Its just your last dying thoughts driven by the ending of oxygen supply in the brain
>>834208
Read some Zen stuff. Alan Watts is good to start with. It'll break down some of your illusions, like 'self' and 'exist'.
>>841253
I guess muslims don't do the whole turn the other cheek thing, huh
>>841479
You just don't understand enough about the Koran or anything that is currently happening these days do you? The Koran says you go to heaven if you do what is well and not to war against infidels if they have not warred upon you.
Essentially it says if you do what is right and are a Jew or Christian you go to heaven, even if you do not grasp the full picture of Gods greatness
>>841253
Dude fuck off. Muslim anthropology is wrong and pleb as shit to boot.
>>852806
OP here. I actually have heard/read a lot of Allen Watts work
>>849645
Listening to this made me cry, though I'm not sure why.
>>834225
That's the very reason people invented religions and afterlife. The thought of death is absolutely unbearable for any conscious being. You ridicule the concept of heaven and eternal happiness but this is what allowed generations of Westerners to live through their lives without having to deal with extreme existential crisis and severe depression.
