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Here’s my perspective on life: dying is probably the whole point of your life, or perhaps coming to terms with it, and conquering your fear of it. All other for

Here’s my perspective on life: dying is probably the whole point of your life, or perhaps coming to terms with it, and conquering your fear of it. All other forms of “importance” derive from this root. - It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that weren’t just an aggregate in the wave of babies, you’ve got a worse than 1% chance of being meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what is the use in crafting a meaningful life? - you have only the present, and your unreliable recollection of the past to mark your existence. The present is ephemeral, the past is mutable, and neither carry any clear indication that the experience of either matters beyond themselves. Time is sending us all beyond the threshold of both, as best we can tell. With such imperfect information, what planning can you rationally do? To quote Stephen Covey, if it is out of your hands, why worry? - some of the largest structural entities mankind has ever built are based on the “afterlife” (ie religion), and many possess a concept of heaven and hell. In addition, there are more modern attempts to inspect the qualia of death. The notion of going to heaven or hell intersects with the notion of having a good trip or a bad trip. And of course now I have my shining Joe Rogan moment where I cite the huge DMT trip awaiting most of us (assuming your death not by complete annihilation, such as nuclear explosion, or other). Therefore, the only thing that you really need to plan for is getting to the end of your road, and not having your exit DMT trip be sponsored by the ninth circle of hell, if you can. In conclusion it really doesn’t matter. Time eternally marches forward, there are no actual stakes because everybody is damned. Include the notion that we as a society do a pretty dog job of (1) not producing fucked up people (2) not fucking people up as it all goes and (3) pledging to change that, so it’s basically just a daydream that mankind will ever transcend to be anything of transcendent/indisputable value. Don’t know how to phrase the last part.

loandbehold 4y ago
How is past mutable?
- baliex 4y ago
  It’s a reference to your memories of the past not accurately reflecting what really happened
- xyzelement 4y ago
  Probably not what the parent meant, but I think the past is "mutable" in that we can change how we see it through time. Example. A few years ago I was laid off right after my kid was born. Bad thing that happened to me, right? In retrospect, if I didn't get laid off from there, I would end up living in a different state, and my kids wouldn't live next door to their cousins. And I am fine work wise as well. So I retrospect, getting laid off from that job was the best thing that could have happened because it was a critical junction to my current life which I love.
poisonborz 4y ago
Your view of what matters is really narrow. Not everything has to have an impact in the style or singular magnitude how Aristotle, Charlemange or Muhammad did. You could edit a wiki article that inspires someone to contribute to a software that has a button that someone will push and change things. Human life has billions of nuances like this every minute. And even if most of that is ericadated by a catastrophe, some percent of this experience might continue, containing an essence of it all. We must drive life forward with such beliefs, thinking not just of ourselves.
- raydiatian 4y ago
  > You could edit a wiki article... Yeah, "doing for others" is the point of life. I would argue it is an avenue in life, a very good avenue, and I don't discredit its morality, or correctness. But it is not the point of life, per se. You do for others for your own peace of mind, so that you can live, day to day, as you approach your death bed. Your doing for others is your avenue to a clear conscience. Play the "why" game on that one for long enough and it ends in "because bad is bad, and I don't want to feel bad infinitely". This is why I argue that your death is the point of life. It's your destination, it's why people freak out about leaving a legacy. Death is the great motivator. You wouldn't "do for others" if it was established wisdom that "doing for others" meant some experiential equivalent of eternal damnation. It's not that doing for others is wrong or something, it's just that it has an ontological derivative. If we did for others despite our deaths, I think that Adam Smith would have been lambasted as a heretic, and I think communism would actually work.
bombela 4y ago
DMT trip sounds rather nice. The closest I ever was to death was a simple fall into darkness. No more fear. Peaceful. With a single regret: leaving the family around in pain.
xvilka 4y ago
> It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that weren’t just an aggregate in the wave of babies, you’ve got a worse than 1% chance of being meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what is the use in crafting a meaningful life? Forward few million years to the future. It turned nobody mattered, talented or not, recorded in history or not. High chances the whole civilization will disappear without any trace. So, essentially, nothing ever matters except now.

loandbehold 4y ago

How is past mutable?

baliex 4y ago
It’s a reference to your memories of the past not accurately reflecting what really happened
xyzelement 4y ago
Probably not what the parent meant, but I think the past is "mutable" in that we can change how we see it through time. Example. A few years ago I was laid off right after my kid was born. Bad thing that happened to me, right? In retrospect, if I didn't get laid off from there, I would end up living in a different state, and my kids wouldn't live next door to their cousins. And I am fine work wise as well. So I retrospect, getting laid off from that job was the best thing that could have happened because it was a critical junction to my current life which I love.

poisonborz 4y ago

Your view of what matters is really narrow. Not everything has to have an impact in the style or singular magnitude how Aristotle, Charlemange or Muhammad did. You could edit a wiki article that inspires someone to contribute to a software that has a button that someone will push and change things. Human life has billions of nuances like this every minute. And even if most of that is ericadated by a catastrophe, some percent of this experience might continue, containing an essence of it all. We must drive life forward with such beliefs, thinking not just of ourselves.

raydiatian 4y ago
> You could edit a wiki article... Yeah, "doing for others" is the point of life. I would argue it is an avenue in life, a very good avenue, and I don't discredit its morality, or correctness. But it is not the point of life, per se. You do for others for your own peace of mind, so that you can live, day to day, as you approach your death bed. Your doing for others is your avenue to a clear conscience. Play the "why" game on that one for long enough and it ends in "because bad is bad, and I don't want to feel bad infinitely". This is why I argue that your death is the point of life. It's your destination, it's why people freak out about leaving a legacy. Death is the great motivator. You wouldn't "do for others" if it was established wisdom that "doing for others" meant some experiential equivalent of eternal damnation. It's not that doing for others is wrong or something, it's just that it has an ontological derivative. If we did for others despite our deaths, I think that Adam Smith would have been lambasted as a heretic, and I think communism would actually work.

bombela 4y ago

DMT trip sounds rather nice. The closest I ever was to death was a simple fall into darkness. No more fear. Peaceful. With a single regret: leaving the family around in pain.

xvilka 4y ago

> It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that weren’t just an aggregate in the wave of babies, you’ve got a worse than 1% chance of being meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what is the use in crafting a meaningful life? Forward few million years to the future. It turned nobody mattered, talented or not, recorded in history or not. High chances the whole civilization will disappear without any trace. So, essentially, nothing ever matters except now.