How do we know we only live once? We might just get 'reset' and live our lives again differently, we might die and be born someone else or some thing or something like that.
[QUOTE=killover;31024955]How do we know we only live once? We might just get 'reset' and live our lives again differently, we might die and be born someone else or some thing or something like that.[/QUOTE]
Yeah that's called reincarnation.
Something which has no evidence to support it even happens.
[QUOTE=archangel125;31004382]
Also I love each and every one of you.[/QUOTE]
No homo.
Nah that was amazing.
I love you too.
I have to say, this really spoke to me, genuinely amazing.
I've been feeling the same way recently. I always used to worry about the world's problems, how the government is shitty, how things are so expensive, how my internet has such a low bandwidth cap. But lately I've noticed my self just laughing at how insignificant all of these things are in the eyes of the universe. Politics, society, money, all of the things that drive our everyday life are all just a massive jokes. Everything we do is just a goddamn game.
Your post really spoke to me archangel, it's changed my perspective on a lot of things.
[quote]I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood, in every spring, there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.[/quote]
How have I never heard of this? The whole thing brought a tear to my eye ;(
OP basically answered the question; 'what is the meaning of life?'
[QUOTE=Pusekatt;31019313]Hahaha, NO![/QUOTE]
You're just jealous because you're going to die.
Congrats you realized how insignificant each and every single one of us are.
[QUOTE=Marbalo;31028508]Not everything needs evidence or our verification to exist in this world.[/QUOTE]
When we die our consciousness turns into dickbutt. Alright, you can't disprove it.
What you say is true, but I hope you aren't going to delve further than that.
[QUOTE=archangel125;30999161]
[B]The relevant part begins here:[/B]
[/QUOTE]
nuh uh
[QUOTE=The Epidemic;31033317]Congrats you realized how insignificant each and every single one of us are.[/QUOTE]
Since we make up our world I say we're important as a whole. Not to the universe, but that shouldn't matter.
I think like this also but you have explained these same feelings and thoughts better than I can ever in my lifetime.
This was by far the best, most inspirational post i've ever seen during my 2 years at Facepunch. I have a feeling that a lot of the internet-dwellers feel like this, just like you and me. Have a heart
[QUOTE=The Epidemic;31033317]Congrats you realized how insignificant each and every single one of us are.[/QUOTE]
Significance is relative.
But yeah, on the grand scheme of things our existence is inconsequential.
I had a nirvana while reading this.
Fuck, I want to make a short film out of this.
Get a blog. Seriously, I bet we'd all read it.
I've thought most of that OP out myself, it's a lot of fun thinking like that, it's actually what made me inspired to try harder in life, because of the feeling of insignificance. I'm not entirely sure how to think of myself in comparison to most people, be it I'm smarter or that I just think more than others, so thinking of everyone as one makes me feel better, like I am just another person, a part of a whole. I like that, and it makes me feel like I need to actually test myself in order to stick out that much more in the scope of things.
That was a great read, and i thoroughly agree with you.
[QUOTE=carcarcargo;31017606]Since I have no intention of dying this entire philosophy is quite void to me.[/QUOTE]
You may not intend to die, and would logically aim for life extension and immortality and things like that, but how do you know something won't happen and will ruin your chances at reaching your goal? You're still as mortal as the rest of us.
Playing video games makes me happy. So yeah, I'm going to continue to do that.
Everything else was pretty awesome though, I often have moments like that myself.
wow, why so many people got butthurt at the Videogames part? Sure, Videogames are fun to play and I enjoy them as much as the next guy, but if you think about it, you could be doing way more useful things than that.
write a book man
That post is beautiful, OP. You should be proud and do some more writing
[QUOTE=archangel125;30999161]I'm an atheist, and a rationalist. I hold no spiritual beliefs at all. Still, I came as close today to a 'religious' experience as I'm ever likely to have, and I wanted to share this absurd feeling.
I've been struggling with depression lately. Much in life is going wrong. My family is struggling financially. My father, who is fifty-six years old, is in a state of deteriorating health, mentally and physically. Both he and my mother have been out of a good job for some time, and they're losing hope.
My own face was recently marred by a genetic skin condition that an attack of seasonal allergies triggered - Eczema darkens the skin around my eyes dramatically and discolors random patches of skin on my forehead and around my mouth. My lips are blackened worse than any smoker's, and I've smoked just one cigarette my whole life. The funniest part (That I don't really feel much like laughing at) is that stress worsens the problem - And my life is not stress-free by any stretch of the imagination.
I went to the offices of a security company in Toronto today to fill out an application and submit my resume. I've got absolutely no money in my bank account and I need to settle a credit card bill - something the bank makes sure I don't forget. I shudder to think of what this is doing to my credit rating. Borrowed some money from my folks for the trip. Now the problem is that the trip there takes three and a half hours - and the trip back takes longer, because the bus I need to catch is notoriously infrequent. Two buses, two subway trains each way. I fell asleep a total of three times on a bus or train today, which tends to leave one cranky. Bitching about all this on Facepunch is bringing back the bad mood I was in, so I'll get to the good part.
[B]The relevant part begins here:[/B]
I tend to take something to read along with me when I travel to the city, because the trip is goddamn boring. This time it was Tolkien's [I]The Fellowship of the Ring.[/I] I've read it a few times before, but I can't afford to buy any new books, so there I was again, on my way back from Toronto, reading on the bus (Which had showed up ten minutes late). I was tired, irritated by the fact I'd blown seven hours of my day applying for one job, and trying to distract myself with the book so I'd keep from dozing off again. I reached the part in the book where Frodo receives Sting and the mithril undercoat from Bilbo before the Fellowship departs from Rivendell. Bilbo, who is known for his ability to compose songs and poems, and is generally well-read, turns toward the window and looks out at the valley, and murmurs to himself a snippet of song:
[I]I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood, in every spring, there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.[/I]
These lines I'd read four or five times before, but this time, for some reason, they struck a chord within me. Almost without realizing it, I closed the book and glanced out of a window. The bus, at this time, was traveling on a highway overpass. I saw the westering sun, still fairly high in the sky (a deep blue with wisps of white cloud), shining on fields of a rich green, with rolling, grassy plains and clumps of trees that stretched as far as I could see. Here and there farmland homesteads or clumps of suburban roofs were visible, and I could see - because I suddenly found myself looking for it - The gentle curvature of the earth's surface. Directly before me stretched a straight highway, along which hundreds of cars marched in neat lines like ants, fading into the distance - People trying to get home from work. Each of those cars contained at least one other human life - Each life had its own crises, its own tragedies, its own hopes, dreams, joys, sorrows, dark and shameful secrets, weird sexual kinks, and worldview built on the sum of years of experience that particular life had. Some would be people more intelligent than I - More would have less active minds. How many in those cars ever stepped back and looked at the big picture, as I suddenly felt compelled to? I would never fully understand a single one of those people, or see the world as they do, not if I spent the rest of my life in that person's company. The world has a population of seven billion people. Everyone has a story, and no two stories are the same. Everyone sees him or herself as the protagonist of his or her own personal drama.
I seemed to see, superimposed over the view from that bus window, two other vistas in my mind's eye. The same beautiful landscape - One with no signs of humanity - wilder, greener, more primeval. The other image showed that landscape further developed, with factories and a wider highway, and the lights of a sprawling silver city stretched like a spider's web over it all. A possible future that had not yet come to pass, and one that I would probably never see. How many people who lived before the renaissance could ever have pictured, in their wildest fantasies, the towering monoliths of steel and glass that make up our cities, those wonders of engineering we never glance twice at - Or the aircraft that leave trails of vapor across the skies? Who could ever have pictured something like the internet, practically all the world's information accessible from anywhere? To quote Doctor Breen: For the first time, as a species, immortality is within our reach. Scientists are toying with the aging gene. I'm certain that if they crack it, I'll either be dead or too old by then for it to comfort me. What wonders will future generations discover and create? How far and how fast will humanity advance before we look back at the 21st century and wonder how humanity ever managed to get by?
for an instant, I could *feel* all those other lives, like white noise. And I began to wonder how many were born, grew up, and died, without ever asking themselves these questions - without ever looking beyond themselves to laugh at the absurdity of the big picture. Then my thoughts stretched beyond our solar system into our galaxy, into our universe. Who can say how many other intelligent species began, flourished, and died out there before the first Homo Sapiens opened its eyes? How many lives have come and gone since this universe began? How many exist now? How many are still to come? How the hell do we know this is the only universe? These numbers are so large that no analogy could even scratch the surface, and the mind can not picture them all. I have spent - wasted - 21 years of my life. At most I'll live to be a hundred. I'll more likely die at seventy or eighty. A flash - a completely imperceptible instant in time - Until the temperature of the universe cools, equalizes, and fades into the background. That's all I get. That's all you get.
All of history and time - every drama, comedy, and love story in the entire universe, let alone our pale blue dot - is playing itself out over the duration of a single explosion.
And we kill. People extinguish the lives of other people out of a sense of righteous entitlement, or because they believe they're the only people who are real, who matter - and that their personal worldviews are the only right ones. Isn't that simply absurd? Religious sects beyond counting, each claiming that they have knowledge beyond all doubt that the divine figure they imagine is the only one that is real. We go through our lives so goddamn selfishly, always caught up in our own troubles, envious and resentful of other people we imagine have perfect lives, never stopping to wonder what demons haunt [I]them.[/I] There's so much about this world, let alone others, that I'll never know. So many people worth knowing I'll never meet. So many lovers I'll never find. I have another sixty years at most - So little time.
[I]What the hell are we doing with our lives?[/I]
Why do we play video games, or spend so long online? We're trying to escape ourselves, live lives that seem better than our own, by living through characters with great prowess in combat, more sex appeal, better social standing, more money. Or pretending on internet forums to be the people we want to be, rather than facing the truth of who we are.
All the while, we're wasting time we could be using to follow our own dreams, or attain those goals. We've lost the big picture completely, and we're stuck in a rut.
For the first time in years, I feel at peace with the universe, my fatigue has disappeared, and I know how I need to proceed. May I never forget this feeling.
We only live once, and we live only for an instant.
Damn it, make it count.
Not to the universe at large. Not necessarily to the world, or to your parents, but for yourself.
So that when you get old, you can look at the big picture and not regret a wasted life, or missed opportunities.
I'm going out for a walk.[/QUOTE]Ok WOW! I'm impressed.
[quote]Or pretending on internet forums to be the people we want to be, rather than facing the truth of who we are.[/quote]
God I hope not, I don't really want to be a massive cunt.
[editline]25th August 2011[/editline]
OP was hit by a car during his walk.
Most of my philosophical thought is based on the idea of everything being ultimately objectively meaningless and absurd. Most of the time when I discuss my thoughts on morality (or just generally what we ought to be doing with our lives, not doing, etc), people interpret what I'm saying as abject, amoral (which is strictly speaking true) and depressing, but when you follow the idea passed the initial intuitive rejection, you realise that understanding the universe as objectively meaningless and absurd is possibly the most liberating of all ideas.
If you like stuff in the vein of op's writing but much more succinct and inspiring, read Tao Te Ching. Honestly, the night I read this through, it changed my life.
[url]http://www.free-books.us/Others/693517/Tao-Te-Ching-J-H-McDonald[/url]
This shit doesn't matter to me as I have no friends and my family disown me.
Man did this affect me.
I've had that glimpse of nirvana before, quickly I forgot about it but something [B]did[/B] change.
Every time I looked almost absolutely everywhere I look outside, I couldn't help but feel how beautiful the view looks in its own unique way.
But that feeling was always a little mysterious to me as I forgot the feeling of the nirvana. Thanks to you, I now remember it.
The last post archangel made on the forum was a day after this thread, kind of weird huh?
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