this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?

Rant: This has been keeping me up at night for way too long and every time I think about it I feel like am literally choking on my own thoughts. I have other shit to do but everything seems so inconsequential next to this. I just can't comprehend why or how the universe even exists or how a bunch of atoms can think or that quantum mechanics literally revealed that the world is not loaded when you are not looking like how tf do you know that I am observing something.

Btw I am not looking for a purpose in life although this may be interpreted as me asking for that.

If anyone has the same problem as me good luck my friend just know that you are not alone.

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[–] UdeRecife@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

What works for me may not work for you. I've found comfort and freedom from my existential dread on Epicurus' Four Remedies (tetrapharmakos), especially the second one. These are:

Don't fear gods;
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get;
What is terrible is easy to endure.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus writes:

Get used to believing that death is nothing to us. For all good and bad consists in sense-experience, and death is the privation of sense-experience. Hence, a correct knowledge of the fact that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life a matter for contentment, not by adding a limitless time [to life] but by removing the longing for immortality. For there is nothing fearful in life for one who has grasped that there is nothing fearful in the absence of life. Thus, he is a fool who says that he fears death not because it will be painful when present but because it is painful when it is still to come. For that which while present causes no distress causes unnecessary pain when merely anticipated. So death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist. Therefore, it is relevant neither to the living nor to the dead, since it does not affect the former, and the latter do not exist.

The gist of this passage is that worrying about death is misguided. Death is not a state of being. As such, our sense of self only exists while we're alive. In this Principle Doctrines, Epicurus says:

Death is nothing to us. For what has been dissolved has no sense-experience, and what has no sense-experience is nothing to us.

To be you have to experience. And death marks when we no longer have any sense-experience. This understanding of death is like a dreamless night from which we never awake, says Socrates in Plato's Apology. Seen in this light, Epicurus is right that it is a bit foolish to suffer in life from fearing a state of being where there won't be anybody to suffer whatsoever. The existential dread is precisely this misguided fear.

Once you recognize the truth of this statement, just like magic, poof, that existential dread disappears. Of course, if you have a religious view that postulates life after death, with all the subsequent very human drama entailed by that belief, you're now dealing with a different kind of fear. And that fear is precisely what Epicurus addresses in his first remedy, Don't fear gods. His reasoning is also clear cut here.

By definition a God is perfect. It's immortal and has no needs. Because of this, any god has no worries. As such, gods, by definition, don't care about us. Caring about us implies they have some sort of need, thus rendering them less godlike.

This ties with the second remedy. The cherry on top is to simply remember this: just as we never worry with the time before we were born, it's also silly to worry about the time after we are gone.

[–] Godric@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Beautiful, even if I disagree with some of it.

[–] UdeRecife@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago

Thank you. As an Epicurean myself, I'm pretty aware that Epicureanism is not for everybody. I would argue that some people have a natural disposition that predisposes them to find solutions like this approachable.

[–] BolsheWitch@hexbear.net 2 points 2 years ago

Personally? I transitioned but everyone has a different reason for an existential crisis.

[–] ThePac@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Repress repress repress!

[–] Barndog53@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago

I had an existential crisis when I was probably 11. It haunted me and I didn't sleep for days because I was contemplating, constantly.

My belief now, after many psychedelic trips is very akin to the short novel "The Egg" by Andy Weir. Even if I have no idea what the truth could be, I take comfort in that fun read. It seems right to me

I've always been a fan of, we're the universe experiencing itself.

[–] BilboBargains@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

An existential crisis can only occur if we believe that we know what will happen in the future. It's safe to assume that we will one day die and there is no meaning in the universe. However, there is very little utility in dwelling on these thoughts. The important part of life is happening right now, in this moment. Distracting ourselves from this moment robs our lives of meaning and eventually delivers it to the abyss whence nothing returns.

I became a bit of an absurdist.

[–] heisenbug4242@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

A bit of clarification about the quantum might help calm your nerves: to observe something means something such as light must interact with the particle you try to observe, and that very interaction changes the result of the observation. It collapses the wave function, and what you observe is just one of the possible outcomes. It's not as crazy as you may think, but it's very understandable that it may at first seem magical.

[–] 1984@lemmy.today 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I had a conversation with my girlfriend a few days ago about this. We are fine, everything is good, but if an asteroid would come in a few days, we would both be OK with it.

I guess that's weird to most people.

[–] PaulSmackage@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

"Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name."

As long as i am remembered, i exist. While my physical form may be rotting, i will hope that i made as much of an impact in this world as i did to me, and hope that my memory will never fade. It is for that reason that i keep soldiering on, never looking back, and trying to contribute to a better world.

[–] Braindead@programming.dev 1 points 2 years ago

You keep on existing (at least for now)

[–] xilliah@beehaw.org 1 points 2 years ago

I think it's a positive thing because you've found another perspective.

[–] JK1348@hexbear.net 1 points 2 years ago

I do Shrooms, LSD, or DMT if I don't want to commit to all those hours.

Honestly not well.

I've come to terms with the fact that I will one day die, and it could happen at any moment. The hard part is knowing that's true for everyone I love too.

[–] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I take comfort from the Good Book. And by that, I mean Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five. The Tralfamadorean take is comforting. My conscious experience may its reach endpoint, but my existence will still have been, so to speak, embedded in the mountain range of time. The calypsos of Bokononism in Cat’s Cradle are good, too. Think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and look around.

Furthermore, there’s a parable about the mountain, the one that a little bird comes along once every 100 years and scrapes its beak upon. When that mountain is worn away, only the first instant of eternity will have passed. Do we ever stop to think about what it would actually mean to exist forever? If it were infinite life, then once you’ve done everything that you enjoy for the billionth time and gotten so thoroughly bored of it, hey, you still have infinite time to go! After the Sun goes supernova and consumes the Earth, what will you do while floating in space for a few trillion years? If it’s existence after death, then a century or so of life will be as nothing compared to the vast sweep of eternity in the afterlife. Any number divided by infinity, and all.

Honestly, I figure that the urge to “live forever” is in actuality a desire to put off the existential crises to an indefinite time in the future. Cosmic procrastination. But living literally forever has its own (probably worse) existential horror. Everything has to end, especially in a universe that will end or at least cease being interesting, and that’s the only way that life can have any meaning.

The existential crisis comes no matter how long the Fates trim your strand, eventually you stare down the end. It’s just the price of admission.

[–] 0_0j@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Swipe ⬅️

[–] Aux@lemmy.world -1 points 2 years ago

I don't have a crisis, problem solved.

[–] PenguinJuice@kbin.social -1 points 2 years ago

Watch some near death experience videos on YouTube. It's comforting.

[–] Touching_Grass@lemmy.world -3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Why do you care if you exist. Are you the Queen of england or something.

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