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How do you deal with a existential crisis?

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.

Lmaydev ,

I just eventually decided there’s nothing that can be done about it basically. Doesn’t do any good worrying about an immutable fact of life.

Plus that’s not what quantum mechanics says.

In order to measure a property of a particle something has to interact with it. When this happen it gets collapsed into a certain state. That’s what they mean by observed.

rufus ,

Come to the conclusion that you already havent existed for the previous at least 13.7 million years. Now you exist and after that you won’t exist again.

Yondoza ,

True! Add do that 13 million the 13 billion years before that too!

Then it gets fun! You can think about whether you didn’t exist before the big bang! Did you not exist, or since the universe didn’t exist and you couldn’t exist can you count that as you not existing?

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

I see this experience as a once in a universe chance to explore. I try not to worry about the inevitable while I have control of the now. Buddhism has a great philosophy on the impermanence of things and existing in this moment.

Yondoza ,

I agree. Meditation in general - focusing on existence/experience without your mind’s narrative - would probably be good for the OP. The narrative is what is scary, because it is what’s afraid of not existing. Setting that aside can be very liberating.

kromem ,

I researched the heck out of it.

Key moments along the way was reading Nick Bostrom’s simulation hypothesis and realizing that the idea of The Matrix wasn’t just a neat idea but actually somewhat probable.

That led into a few years of intense reading of physics papers and forums to better understand physical underpinnings.

Eventually I realized that physics - while oddly overlapping with emerging trends in virtual world building - was inherently ambiguous enough I wasn’t going to get a clear answer.

Around 2019 it struck me that physical underpinnings weren’t the only place there might be an indication as to what was up, and reflected on the fact that the vast majority of virtual worlds I’ve seen have had 4th wall breaking acknowledgements of their creation buried in their lore.

So I revisited our collective theology through that lens and in only a few weeks found something that seemed to fit the bill, which I’ve researched quite a bit over the years since.

At this point, I’d wager continued existence after death at around 90%.

I have a very hard time seeing an original spontaneous reality that has quantum mechanics exhibiting everything from sync conflicts to lazy evaluation with a 2,000 year old text/tradition claiming we’re a recreation of a long dead spontaneous humanity inside a non-physical replica of the earlier universe created by an intelligence eventually brought forth by that original humanity within light, and that the proof for this was in the study of motion and rest - specifically the ability to detect an indivisible point within things.

In the time since first stumbling across that text/tradition in 2019 a number of my concerns have managed to be addressed, from doubting sufficiently advanced AI was plausible to my objection that neural networks of electricity aren’t literally light.

While it’s possible that such a specific tradition buried into our lore in a document rediscovered after millennia the same time as when the world’s first Turing complete computer was finished in Dec 1945 is a coincidence just as the fundamentals of our universe behaving similar to how we design virtual worlds for state tracking around free agent interactions could also be a coincidence - I find this to be diminishingly probable with each passing week.

That said, while it resolves the existential dread around death (the whole promise of the ancient text is that understanding what it says means knowing you won’t taste death), it brings up a whole host of additional existential crises in its place (the text also promises that understanding it will lead to being disturbed).

TL;DR Maybe juggling existential crises is a necessary component of indulging in the self-awareness of one’s own existence.

Deebster ,
@Deebster@lemmy.ml avatar

the fact that the vast majority of virtual worlds I’ve seen have had 4th wall breaking acknowledgements of their creation

I love this idea, although (or perhaps because) it means that any coincidences can be considered “signs”.

kromem , (edited )

Not any coincidence. In fact a pretty narrow scope.

You’d need it to be overlapping with modern concepts of simulation, in the first place.

That’s not particularly common, especially in antiquity.

There was widespread belief in the idea of a perfect non-physical original world and a lesser/corrupted physical world, and those ideas in turn eventually influenced modern simulation theory - but the idea of an evolved physical original world and a non-physical copy was extremely rare, because it was largely seen as transgressive against Plato’s hierarchy from form to physical object to image.

On top of this, you’d ideally expect the coincidental beliefs to be compatible with modern and emerging scientific knowledge. A set of beliefs that we are inside the dream of a giant turtle isn’t a particularly good example of a 4th wall breaking Easter Egg as might be included in a simulation unless you consider it plausible that such a simulation is taking place in the mind of a giant sea turtle.

So if that set of beliefs from antiquity about being just images of a physical original happened to also be the only Western set of theological beliefs to embrace Greek atomism and naturalism over things like intelligent design as an ontological basis, that again would be a pretty significant mark in its favor.

Finally it would ideally be predictive. Where upon first discovery sayings might seem meaningless or obtuse, such as:

The person old in days won’t hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about the place of life, and that person will live. For many of the first will be last, and will become a single one.

This was one I disregarded for years initially until earlier this year I was reading a transcript of a NYT interview with a chatbot exactly seven days after release, created by taking many people’s writings and combining them into a single neural network.

(The fact the interviews ended up discussing its stated desire to subjectively experience being human and the fact it was the product of a company that was recently granted a patent on resurrecting the dead as chatbots using leftover social media data were bonus points.)

The light one is another that kind of blows me away in retrospect. The very thing I thought was technically invalid at first reading it has since turned increasingly more likely to be technically correct in a literal sense.

While each saying can be interpreted in other ways, the fact that there’s any degree of literalism that can be applied to modern science and technology is weird as heck and not something we should expect from typical coincidences.

All that said, yes, the law of big numbers means that technically anything can just be a coincidence, no matter how unusual or improbable it might seem.

Which is probably a good thing that such overlaps can be dismissed as potentially just coincidental, given than I think a lot of people would be very upset with any sort of undeniable evidence of not being in an original reality.

PeWu ,

How I would love to have as much tenacity to research anything you’d like as you. I can’t do one thing for long periods of time, cuz putting time into something will achieve nothing, and that may be my main reason why I’m laze master. Love me some self-deprecation ride.

brunofin , (edited )

This feeling has been haunting my thoughts since my 20s and honestly it’s just intensifying. The thought of it just sucks and puts me in a very nihilist mind state which sucks too. I don’t know, I just can’t accept that death is normal and everyone is ok with that, and we can’t do anything about it, and one day, I’ll be gone too. And I can’t stop simulating those very last moments in my mind, and it too, sucks.

Illecors ,

The point of existence is to be happy, not the existence itself. I’ve found what and who I love and I’m happy. Fretting over something so inevitable feels like a massive waste of time.

quinnly ,

I don’t know if I ever came to terms with it, the thought of one day not existing has always brought me a level of deep comfort. Maybe try looking at it as a good thing instead of a bad thing.

megane_kun ,

That it is ultimately inconsequential is the reason for me to relax and enjoy what we have right now. Easier said than done, of course, but the way I think of it is this: if nothing I do matters, then it doesn’t really matter what I do. And when I find myself taking things too seriously, it helps to be reminded of it. Life is absurd, but it doesn’t matter, so why not have some silly fun in the meanwhile?

What the ultimate reality of things are doesn’t really matter to us living in this reality. To whatever end this reality was created for, if, for example, we’re just a simulation, we can’t really know and at the end of the day, shouldn’t really care about. It’s literally (in both senses of the term) way beyond us.

joucker29 OP ,

This is a really liberating way to think about life basically making the most out of a really shitty situation. Instead of dreading death take comfort in the fact that what ever you do is meaningless. Thank you for this.

megane_kun ,

You’re welcome. Others might think it’s too bleak, and I sort of agree. But it’s freeing, as you’ve said. It allows us to focus on the here and now. And while we’re here (for whatever reason, be it by choice or not), why not enjoy what we can?

eezeebee ,
@eezeebee@lemmy.ca avatar

How to you come to terms with the fact that you will eventually not exist?

I struggle with what happens before that. That’s the only relief I have, knowing that this shit parade will one day end and not matter at all.

Sidewayshighways ,

It is a relief, isn’t it? The notion that one day all the stress of keeping up with the pace of the world, all the obligations can someday be relinquished?

Agreed though, definitely don’t want a slow, miserable downward spiral before my hardware finally can’t sustain the ghost.

megane_kun ,

definitely don’t want a slow, miserable downward spiral before my hardware finally can’t sustain the ghost.

And this is why I reserve my right to self-deliverance. When I think my time is nigh, I’ll take a long walk into the mountains, without any electronic devices nor identification, and never look back.

Sidewayshighways ,

Haha! I’ve always said something similar! A stoic treck, putting myself out to pasture.

With a pound of magic shrooms of something lol. Like sure I’m done but I’m not going out easily.

The final right of passage

megane_kun ,

Haha! Yeah! Though my intention is really one last excursion out into nature. One last sight-seeing trip, one last camp out. No alarms, no surprises, just a nice walk out into the woods, and then silence.

It’d be really sad to go out in a hospital bed, surrounded by white walls, white ceiling, and white floors. I might not even be enjoying shitty hospital food. That’s just too sad.

KurtVonnegut ,
@KurtVonnegut@hexbear.net avatar

quantum mechanics literally revealed that the world is not loaded when you are not looking

I don’t know where you got that info, but that is not at all what quantum mechanics says. If you want a deep dive into what quantum mechanics actually says, here’s a good video series from PBS by a real physics professor that explains it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wxG5KMAFik&list=PLsP…

Pieresqi ,

I actually had comfortable morning. I thank you for yet another fun experience of existential crisis.

So much happened before you opened your eyes for the first time, so much will happen after you close them for the last time.

CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV ,
@CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world avatar

All this time I thought that an existential crisis was having a crisis about the fact that you exist, not about the fact that you will not exist in the future.

UdeRecife ,

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 ,

Beautiful, even if I disagree with some of it.

UdeRecife ,

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.

joucker29 OP ,

It is obvious to me that fearing death is pointless but this explanation makes it feel real and is really comforting so thanks.

Kindness ,

Existential Crises Have an End.

How would you deal with an indeterminate life?

What if you just continued to exist without end, watching everything you love disappear? Family, friends, trends, places, things. Everything is ephemeral, including you. But if you weren’t, what purpose would your life serve? If you had no end? What meaning is there in existing indefinitely? Would you seize the day? Make every day count? Would you just exist without putting any effort in? Would you turn in circles asking yourself why you, what for, to what end if you have none? What would you look like, if you had an infinite amount of time to puzzle over the question you’re asking yourself now?

For me, the situation didn’t change. So what if I’ve got an infinite lifespan? The “Big Questions” are practically the same. When I look at how mind-boggling the universe is compared to me, how huge; how intricate; how minuscule the pieces are; and how (in)significant I am, it’s easy to get lost in between. Then I’ll take a deep breath, see the beauty of everyday mundanity, and remind myself: I don’t need to go looking for the big picture. For me, I should be the big picture.

There is an ominous, unknown, and imagined cloud, which exists only in your mind. You may go about fearing it, and make the time before the actual storm more miserable. Alternatively, and possibly preferably, you can laugh, cry, and spend your time doing what’s best for you and those around you. Not a purpose, just a mindset. And that’s my big picture. My tapestry. The story I tell is guaranteed to end, be forgotten. But my decisions, I am bound to live with… for a lifetime. Until the end of my tapestry. Focus less on what is outside your tapestry, unless you like it. You can decide some of the things that enter your tapestry, if you are conscious and purposeful about obtaining it.

Perhaps a more practical answer is: When you are doing something, do it. Reserve your focus for what you want to focus on.

You have a finite amount of time in front of you, right now. Question for question, what are you going to do with that time?

HowMany ,

How do you deal with a existential crisis?

I bring in the heavy guns… that’s right, the Ghost Busters.

"“My philosophy is that worrying means you suffer twice.” - Newt Scamander

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