I think about death way too often. Almost every single day. I stopped smoking weed partially due to these thoughts but that hasn’t helped.
One day you and I are going to die. Everyone you know and love is going to die. I feel like everyone knows this but they are able to ignore it because constantly thinking about it isn’t very healthy.
If everything leads to death then why do we continue to live? No matter what we accomplish or contribute to the world the end is always the same. Yes we can create temporary happiness but that will be forgotten and is basically non existent in the grand scheme of things.
I know this is essentially high school stoner dude bro whoa man stuff but it still impacts me to this day.
I find myself thinking about the end of the world due to climate change a lot. It has really diminished my ability to enjoy life and live in the moment which has damaged relationships with family especially my boomer ‘everything will be fine’ parents.
Definitely had many similar thoughts. Best thing that ever happened to me was the realization that all of my fears were correct - we are all going to die, and even if you’re a great hero or something everything you do will eventually be lost to history. Life is literally meaningless. But it doesn’t have to be scary, it can be liberating. Just because life is inherently meaningless doesn’t mean you can’t supply your own meaning.
Idk ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I just keep waking up and the program keeps rebooting so I’m going to keep going with it. There isn’t really another option other than death, and I’m going to get to be dead for a super long time, so no hurry there.
I think this is where personal situations come into play. I hate my job and hate the future outlook for my life. So if I’m going to die anyway and not really enjoying things now why wait…
I’m not going to actually kill myself but I do think about it often.
All I can say is I’ve been there and can sympathize. I hope it gets better. Weight training may have literally saved my life many years ago when I was at my lowest. It’s cliche advice, I know.
I’m writing a dissertation on this right now. Kagan is great. Can’t say much as I’m on my phone, but it isn’t at all obvious that because the universe will end life is inherently meaningless. Step one for any problem like this is to define your terms or we’re all just talking past each other.
tabb, I was thinking about you while walking with my dog.
One thing that I realized is most people are not sadists who will watch an entire online Yale course just because it’s there. So let me recommend the two episodes that will help you think through this. You may not agree with Kagan’s answers, but he will definitely help you think through this.
First is this one where he tackles not only why he would not want true immortality, but why he looks forward to death.
The gist is that most of us conceive of being “not dead” as having a persistent identity. If I told you that you would be reincarnated every hundred years, but that each time it happened, you would return as a blank slate with ZERO connection to anything that you experienced before, would you want that kind of immortality. I know I wouldn’t. That’s not the kind of immortality I’m after.
The kind of immortality I would think I’d be after is the one where I have a persistent identity. My corporeal form can shift or disappear, but whatever it is that’s ME needs to survive in perpetuity.
Now once Kagan has laid out all of that and then some, he goes through why he wouldn’t want that kind of immortality. And he has some excellent points. Because we’re not talking about a seemingly endless stream of experiences. We’re talking about an ACTUAL endless stream of experiences. And eventually, you will run out of new experiences. You will run out of new ways to have those experiences. In that kind of existence, immortality would become a kind of curse.
Of course, all that does is tell you why you might not want to live forever. For answers on why despite that, you might still want to live for whatever time you’ve got, just go to this next video.
So my grandma died of Covid. She was in her 90s and had been in a home for about a decade because of dementia. It’s sad to say but because of her mental deterioration I’ve kinda thought of her as gone long ago. We were never super close but she was always nice enough. A little aloof but I wonder if that was early dementia. I’m worried that will happen to me.
My poor dad has really struggled with the whole process of putting her in a home and dealing with everything that comes with that. I’m not sure if he never paid or stopped paying but once when we were switching nursing homes for her one of the staff came in saying he owed money to them. I’m pretty sure he let her actual house go into foreclosure too. So in a way her being gone will be less of a burden on him.
She was my last living grandparent. I’m younger than most on here so I’m guessing everyone has gone through this already and probably parents and worse too. I’ve been so extremely lucky that I haven’t lost anyone closer to me than them. But now this seems like a major landmark reminding me that it’s just a matter of time before I do. And that sucks.
