I am haunted perpetually by the fact that we have no idea what life is for, what life is about, what the purpose of life is, or if there is a purpose at all.
Why does the universe exist at all? People will tell you life does have a purpose but why not for everyone?Why Is it that some people die young in some impoverished area while filthy rich people die at age 90 in a mansion? Let's say the afterlife doesn't exist. What the hell are we for?
if you look at a newborn, do you wonder "what are you for? what are you about? what is your purpose? do you have one?"
if you look at a sunset, do you wonder "why does this exist?"
if you look at a bird eat a worm, do you wonder "why does the bird get to live and the worm die?"
Happy 15th birthday OP!
You only have the ability to wonder why you exist when you do.
Thats why you wonder.
I think the answer to why we exist can be found in this. If we didn't exist then there would be no us. So we can never obtain the position. Thats why we exist. Because its impossible not to.
The same question occurred to me at young age. Perhaps the lack of social purpose in my unblessed dragged about life forced me to confront the void prematurely and in the wrong direction. When I found out about the existence of death, I was relieved. If death were sure to be the end at least I could take solace in knowing there is an end. But the inherent uncertainty in the real possibility of a continuation frightens the shit out of me.
Did you know that Schopenhauer's mother was a cunt?
If nothing existed would 1+1 = 2?
meant to reply to OP, origiignga
>But the inherent uncertainty in the real possibility of a continuation frightens the shit out of me.
Good to know it's not just me, the thought is harrowing, death used to be my only solace. The only true gift of life.
I like to think Lovecraftian cosmological horror is the realisation that hell and heaven are inherent to existence, there's far more hell than heaven in this world and that death is not an escape. There's a lot of connotations that come with existence...
If nothing existed, there would be no 1, +, =, nor 2.
The thing about nothing is that it can't exist. There always has to be something. Because if nothing existed, nothing wouldn't exist either. Nothing is a thing itself in the fact that it is nothing.
Since nothing existing can't exist, the thing at the very end of the line is God. The very last thing that can exist. The base level of existence. Nothing itself, but the platform which everything is built on.
That is God. if you choose to see it that way at least
I have some thoughts on the matter, I will try be brief, but I know I won't be, and I will probably arrive at nothing. Consider this a warning.
The idea of unending consciousness used to terrify me. Sometimes it pops its head up to stir me, but it no longer terrifies. I believe existence, and thought, is inevitable (more on this later). Consciousness, this 'curse' as some put it, is perpetual and incessant. And yet, as we grow, and learn, we distinguish our souls from the multitudes that choose to suffer. As I went from baby to child, I did not there lament that the baby self had died, and the child was now here. As I went from child to teenager, there was small lament over this change, but only because I was now conscious of the inevitability of death and change, and the unending movement of time into the future, away from what is comfortable and into discomfort. When I went from teenager to young adult, there was much anguish. "Pah, I should have done X! I am losing my time!". There was death of the teenage self, and an emergence of the young adult. Now, as I am transitioning to adult, I realise the silly dance I was performing. I am not upset anymore, because I do not care. I grow and I change, I develop and things improve. Even when things seem to be getting worse, they are improving because I let it be so. I have grown to understand that this is how things are, and I cannot change it. Rather than lament that now I shall no longer be a child, I rejoice in the newfound truth I've discovered as an adult. I rejoice that I am no longer bound by the same shackles that once held me back as a younger person. Perhaps I may lament that I did not free myself sooner, but such regret and lament is pointless (as I quickly realise whenever such a dramatic, adolescent thought pops into my head).
(1/6)
You see, we are born and we die many times before "death". Death is just another transition, the consciousness that experiences each stage of our lives is different. It exists only in the smallest infinitesimal, and yet it is somehow our entirety. Our consciousness is a frame in a film, it's a word in a book, and it's only the grand machinations of the universe that give consciousness any sense. The laws of physics are the projector that spins the reel of film and projects the movie onto a screen; they move the electrons and cause particles to interact between neurons. And isn't that all consciousness really is? An interaction of matter? Two rocks in space collide, and go separate ways. How could this be unless one rock was conscious of the other, that is, unless the universe was aware, conscious, that two rocks were about to cohabit the same space, and so it arranged things such that this would not take place. Are we not just complicated structures of many rocks, or electrons if you will, interacting ad infinitum? Is it so hard to imagine a ranking of consciousnesses, be it continuous or discrete, that begins, perhaps, at our two rocks, or two smaller still particles, and gradually grows to contain more and more complex systems of interactions? The more interactions, the more sophisticated in their arrangements, the more 'conscious' is the given 'observer'. The Earth is, in a way, conscious. Countries, the abstract notion of a nations, is conscious, with each nation interacting and plodding along, somewhat aware of its own existence. Computers are but an arrangement of particles, at some point we can arrange them so that they are 'conscious' to the degree that many people hold to be 'true' consciousness, but I think this is a human bias.
(2/6)
So we have these, possibly, infinitely many ranks of consciousnesses. If you wish, we can simplify and just imagine a few: the baby, the child, the youth, and the adult. Understand I mean only to describe the complexity of consciousness, wherein the increase in rank corresponds to an increased awareness in truth. I need to distinguish this because Buddhist teachings talk about returning to a 'childlike' state. In the above, I am putting an explicit rank saying that the adult is a heightened and better consciousness than the youth, and the youth better than the child, and so forth. Many people live as children their whole lives, they never fully develop beyond a petty narcissism and shallow inference of the world. Those who attain 'nirvana' after managing to get to a heightened 'childlike' state would be to the right of adults, since they have a more finely attuned consciousness that is prepared for the transcendental. Confusion arises in semantics, but I mean child and baby to be those who are wholly, or mostly, unaware of truth.
(3/6)
So, there are these different stages of progression. You can see that if the child is unaware of truth, then he is mostly unable to be scared of the inevitability of consciousness. As a youth, you may be exposed to such thoughts, that existence is inevitable and infinite, and you may get scared that "I have to live forever?". But what if, what if you have been living forever already? Probabilistically, it's far more likely you're somewhere in the middle than at the extremeties, so why are you not so mortified by the idea that you could have been conscious infinitely before (and keep in mind, we have)? Because your fear is founded on lack of truth. There are infinitely many consciousnesses that succeed the other. The adult (maybe the young adult?) succeeds the youth, and he realises that there is this superposition of life and consciousness, that is unaware of itself existing outside the small container of a human that is manifesting the consciousness. It thinks of itself as a unique, isolated thought, but really it is spread out across billions, only it is unable to interact with itself on this grand scale. Think of many computers not connected to the internet, and for simplicity their specs and OS are similar, but not necessarily the same. Do you think that any one specific computer is going to be unique and isolated, or, more realistically, does the specific computer not matter? Likewise, the specific person experiencing consciousness doesn't matter in so far as they each experience similar sorts of lives.
(4/6)
So then, what keeps me awake, is that the number of lives, the quantity of consciousness is not so important. The true problem is that there is no difference between 1 person experiencing extreme horrors, torture, and anguish, and 1000000 people. The truth is that consciousness is very similar, and we should attempt to reduce the suffering inflicted upon other consciousnesses, by ourselves not inflicting pain. I've strayed from the original idea I started with, so I will try redirect myself. Going back to the different types of consciousness, when you transcend to the next level, you are leaving behind all previous modes of consciousness. Your specific soul, your specific attachment to this existence, moves up a stage. When it moves up, it becomes less susceptible to the horrors that the world has to offer. It knows truth. It is closer to divinity, it is closer to the last stage of consciousness, the highest complexity, the universe itself. You merge with all others who have come before you, you merge and you observe the universe as the universe, you observe it the same way you might observe hairs on your arm swaying in the breeze. In an essence, as you transcend, you will stop caring. The original pepe, with the glass, him not caring is akin to the highest state of consciousness. Gondola is such an awakened being. As the universe, you're merely observing, there is no 'good' or 'bad' attached to things. It merely is, and it merely flows this way because there is no other way.
(5/6)
I said at the start consciousness is inevitable, I gave no justification to this. Well, consider the universe a thought. It doesn't have to be something someone is actually thinking, it just has to be something that is possible to be thought. The possibility that the universe can be thought means that there's a possibility that thought can be carried out. The universe must exist without contradiction. When contradictions arise (see: black holes), reality is broken. Eventually these small contradictions go away, and reality is restored, albeit a little altered. But back to my thought, my thought of the possibility of a thought. Is it no so preposterous that, if empty space can exist, then empty space within empty space can exist? The alternative to this is nothing, and nothing is vastly infinite. Nothing is so infinite that you can arrange nothing inside of nothing in infinitely many ways. Then is it bizzare to think that this universe is just one such arrangement of nothings within nothings? If transistors on a motherboard can have meanings, 1's and 0's, then couldn't nothings? After all, we can do a lot with {}. We can have {{}}, and {{},{{}}}. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps this universe, at least the one with the laws it has, is the only universe that could exist. That all this is happening because it can and there's no other way it can be. Ultimately, we should strive not to care.
(6/6)
In actual fact, I do do that.
>why are you not so mortified by the idea that you could have been conscious infinitely before
I guess that's comforting, kinda... very wise anonie, I guess it's not something "I" subjectively should be afraid of, I don't feel bad for computers and I always wonder what an objective "gondola" or unhuman observer would think of human life, as suffering is not inherently bad to anything that isn't alive, merely a pusher to survive, like a machine. Human horrors are only horrible to a human. Very good read I am glad to have soaked in your wisdom
Your posts read like my thoughts when I'm tripping on acid haha
It's possible. I've never done it myself, but I've 'experienced experience'. I've heard other people's experiences, and I think I just feel that way sometimes if I think too much, so I try articulate that thought with words. But words are not a feeling, and they never can be. Words are not the things they represent.
>Did you know that Schopenhauer's mother was a cunt?
As someone who behaves as she describes I can tell you that shes only doing him a favor.
No one cares what a philosopher thinks because they have no money or status. All throughout history nothing changes.
Life has no beginning or end. All you are in the physical world is your body and mind, which is finite in form. Because the human mind has an imagination, you have a soul which has an infinite form. Since biogenesis is infinite, the physical world is always in flux in terms of forms. Your form will not exist forever, but your soul is immortal and property to Deities and higher powers that will never be observed physically. These God(s) created material existence and their own "lives" are defined by infinite causality.
>Why does the universe exist at all?
Let's find out. Collectively we'll figure it out eventually.
>your soul is immortal and property to Deities
>There's a magic ghost inside of the cluster of cells and bacteria that make up your body
>Giants who live in the sky that no one has ever seen (or ever will see) own that ghost and will send you on a fun trip when you die
At least OP is showing curiosity and critical thought. "Wizards guide me" is bronze-age cope that ought to have been discarded long ago.
>Why does the universe exist at all?
Wrong forum for it. But sure, I'll bite.
Philosophically speaking "nothing" implies the absence of "something". You can't have one without the other. Meanwhile, our very existence proves that a mathematically almost impossibly unlikely set of variables have come together to create the universe. Even a tiny little change to any of countless fundamental properties and we could not exist. This implies that whatever started the big bang, must be a recurring phenomena that is fundamental to the multiverse, existence itself. But nature is always simple. From fractal geometries to the standard model, all the mind boggling complexity of the universe itself is derived from a tiny little few simple things. Just a few forces, variables, that once given enough time and energy and repetition, creates everything we know.
Ironically, we already have a concept that explains this. Binaries. Everything you do on a computer, every software, audio, image, every complex functionality the entire internet, is all just 1's and 0's. Which takes us back to the start.
It's more than likely that the base nature of existence itself is just 1 = "something" and 0 = "nothing". Just static, if you will. And occasionally, when the static arranges itself just right, it manages to create a kind of code, that can birth time, matter, energy, and the simple physical laws that govern all of it. And that's what we are. A fluke, that will infinitely repeat itself in an infinite number of different ways, forever.
>What the hell are we for?
What is an insect for? It just is. Governed by its natural instincts it tries to eat, breed, survive. We are no different. There is no purpose. There is no reason. We exist until we don't. What you do with it is your own choice.
Some people believe in invisible God men to give them that purpose. You can make up your own if you like. But scientifically speaking it's pretty obvious there is no such thing.
Some people are NPCs and dont create their own purpose
>cluster of cells and bacteria that make up your body
These a parts of a whole. Deities have systemized the material world. There are no ghosts, the soul is beyond comprehension to simplify its existence materially. Creation comes from God(s). Man can only imitate creation. This clearly proves the existence of higher powers that can build the real world.
>At least OP is showing curiosity and critical thought
His thinking is sterile, only a primitive mind assumes existence to be finite, or that the infinite process was begun by unimaginative thinking or power.