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My experience with several surgeries and going under full anesthesia every time hasn't been anything that dramatic. Sure, I could write a lot about the feelings

• 47282847 1y ago
  > All those hypothetical stories we build in our heads about what might happen after we die are just wasted time My observation is that whatever story people believe will happen after their death will deeply influence their current life in this reality, so I disagree that it is “just wasted time“. For most, it’s not simply a mind exercise but defines their values and existence. It’s arrogance and ignorance of the “West“ to assume everyone wants to “live a long life“. You very distinctively have other priorities if you believe in reincarnation and karma. Belief in rebirth strengthens dynasties and collectivism in very real ways, the belief in no afterlife or one that is not influenced by your current behavior strengthens individualism.
  • ang_cire 1y ago
    > the belief in no afterlife or one that is not influenced by your current behavior strengthens individualism. This is just another way of saying that you don't think people (meaning you) would be moral without the threat of a bad outcome (hell, bad karma, reincarnation into suffering, etc). Most avowed atheists would tell you that the finality of death is precisely why we have a responsibility to each other, because there's no one up above coming to fix our problems or right our wrongs. That humanity has to *be* better to become better. Being religious doesn't intrinsically make one more or less collectivist or individualist, it all depends on the philosophy of the religion (or non-religion).
    • 47282847 1y ago
      I am both an atheist and a strong proponent of individualism without disagreeing with your comments on how this naturally comes with responsibility, more than many spiritual constructs do where you can pass some of your responsibility to a third party such as fate or God or karma. Collectivism is a shared brain, individualism is a hivemind. To not believe in an afterlife is also a belief. We cannot know. The truth is we don’t know.
      • krageon 1y ago
        > We cannot know You are an agnostic, not an atheist.
        • IAmBroom 1y ago
          I am a strict atheist, but we cannot know. I faithfully believe that, finding no proof whatsoever, and the existence of a metaphysical/spiritual world coexisting with ours incredibly unlikely without some evidence, there is no god. But, just like my faith in the supremacy of the speed of light, that's just my opinion, man... based on the combined knowledge of the human race and thousands or millions of experiments.
          • MarkusQ 1y ago
            That's pretty much the definition of "agnostic". The gnostics literally claim to know and the agnostics say "Nope. Do not. In fact, we can't." Agnostics can play the odds and base their actions on what they find more plausible precisely _because_ they haven't pre-committed to a specific answer.
        • 47282847 1y ago
          I believe in the nonexistence of God, which in my understanding makes me an atheist, and at the same time I do not claim to know about the existence or nonexistence of an afterlife. There may well be one without necessarily including a God.
      • ang_cire 1y ago
  • N_Lens 1y ago
    I am in complete agreement. People literally carry out suicide bombings based on their belief system about the afterlife.
• TinkersW 1y ago
  When I was put under anesthesia they told me it would be like no time had passed when I woke up, but this wasn't true for me. It felt like time had passed the same way as sleeping.
  • digitalsushi 1y ago
    i wonder if they lied how long you were asleep how it would render after knowing the actual duration
  • IAmBroom 1y ago
    Odd. I feel that time hasn't passed when I am sleeping.
    • layla5alive 1y ago
      Odd. I not only feel time has passed, but I often have vague memories of it, and usually a very good estimate of what time it is if awaken at any moment.
• belter 1y ago
  “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” ― Robert Frost
• munificent 1y ago
  I've had various forms of anaesthesia, uh, five times in the year or so. > What always amazes me is how there’s absolutely no sense of time having passed once I wake up. My experience is that this depends on the med. With propofol, indeed it's like an editor took a razor, cut a few inches of memory tape out, and spliced the remains back together. I'm signing a consent form, and then a second later I have teleported to the recovery room where I'm having apple juice. What's wild about propofol is that lost time does not mean you were unconscious the whole time. With twilight anaesthesia, you are often semi-lucid and able to respond to commands from the doctors. You are aware and having an experience. It just gets erased afterwards. With midazolam, it was a much stranger experience. After the procedure, I can remember telling my wife that I remembered everything. She said I seemed totally lucid. But I no longer remember what I did remember then. Throughout the day after the procedure, memories faded out. Now it's almost all gone, including much of the time after the procedure was done. > I've never felt as much peace as I do right before going under anesthesia. It’s probably just the drugs, but honestly it felt like coming home, even though no such home exists, and no one is there to return to it. It's the drugs. Specifically, it's fentanyl. For my second surgery, the anaesthesiologist pushed the fentanyl before the propofol, and told me he was doing so. When he said we was going to, I remember telling him. "OK. Oh! OK." It feels like every worry in the world has disappeared. Everything is cozy. Everything is fine. It's like being in the womb again. I understand how people can get addicted to it.
  • rkomorn 1y ago
    > I understand how people can get addicted to it. That was my exact thought the moment it was injected as a painkiller after a surgery. World went from pain to bliss with frightening speed and ease.
  • zozbot234 1y ago
    > It feels like every worry in the world has disappeared. Everything is cozy. Everything is fine. It's like being in the womb again. > I understand how people can get addicted to it. If you really care that much about making "every worry in the world disappear" from your mind by entirely artificial means (even to the point of remarking that you understand the POV of those who get addicted!), you might benefit from learning about how to live your life with more equanimity. It's a vastly healthier approach to coping with the challenges of a stressful life than any kind of strong narcotic. The topic is explored in great depth in both Stoicism and Buddhism - and via the latter, in more generic "mindfulness" approaches. (It can of course be useful to cross-reference all of these philosophies; they tend to have complementary perspectives.) Needless to say, therapy can also have very similar benefits, and many people will derive even more benefit from that kind of highly structured approach.
• libraryofbabel 1y ago
  > What always amazes me is how there’s absolutely no sense of time having passed once I wake up. For me, general anesthesia is probably the closest thing to experiencing death, except with the difference that you get the chance to resume your existence again. I have been under general anesthesia three times, and this is the thing that sticks with me too: it’s a dress-rehearsal for death. The conclusions you come to by going through it are obvious in retrospect but nonetheless interesting: You have no conscious experience or memory of the moment when you go under and your consciousness is severed. There is only the lead-up, usually the anesthesiologist saying they’re about to start putting the drugs into your arm, or asking you to count down. The next conscious event in your life is waking up in the recovery room. It’s obvious to say, but you could die while under anesthesia and you would never know. Your conscious life up to the moment you went under would be the same. I think it was Wittgenstein who said that Death is not an event in life, and after experiencing anesthesia I suppose I get what he meant. > I've never felt as much peace as I do right before going under anesthesia. Same, but I don’t place a lot of stock in it - like you say, it’s the drugs. I asked my anesthesiologist what he’d be giving me to relax me before I went under and he said fentanyl.
  • koliber 1y ago
    It’s the same with sleep. I thought about this a lot. I tried comparing going to sleep and sleeping to being put under. The only differences I have is that after waking up sometimes I have a recollection of having dreams. But if something happened and I died in my sleep I would not know any better.
    • adastra22 1y ago
      Just because you don’t remember after doesn’t mean you aren’t experiencing in the moment.
      • koliber 1y ago
        That's right. This is true for regular sleep and for anesthesia.
• dr_eldon 1y ago
  Replies like these are a clear symptom of how terribly sick our culture is. Nietzsche truly saw it coming. > any assumed meaning of our existence only matters while we're alive. [...] The world can and will go on without us, and that includes the people closest to us at our final hour. Such a self-centered and cynical way of looking at life. The world does not go on without "us". We are the utmost expression of nature and, quite literally, the legacy of those who came before. I hope we can figure out a way to stop this self-indulging materialism. I understand that believing that nothing truly matters is quite freeing for the selfish hedonist, but it's about time we regain a sense of transcendence. > but honestly it felt like coming home, even though no such home exists, and no one is there to return to it. Truly, this is a load of non-sense. You have no way of knowing. Why be so deliberately obtuse on that we don't have answers for? Why have we stopped asking the important questions?
  • peterashford 1y ago
    Choosing to not have a mystical outlook on life is not indicative of some kind of moral sickness. Being a materialist is not wrong, either, as you clearly imply. The parent "has no way of knowing" - as you say, and I agree with you. But neither do you, so why be so strident in your denouncement?
  • IAmBroom 1y ago
    You seem very nihilist, and frankly, ugly inside. Why so critical of other's beliefs?
• kaashif 1y ago
  > any assumed meaning of our existence only matters while we're alive. What do you mean by this? It is obviously possible to have an impact that lasts after you die and that people view as meaningful long after you die. If the meaning of your life is to raise your kids well, that still matters after you die. Or if you invented calculus, or general relativity, or conquered Egypt and Persia, or wrote an epic poem read for thousands of years. The world will go on without you, but it will be different, and maybe meaningfully so to those left.
  • adastra22 1y ago
    I understood it to be a self-centered statement (meant to explain, not judge). “Meaning” is something that exists in your head. You care about the state of the world because your cares are a state of your mind. Kill the mind, and there’s nothing left to do the caring. The first objection is often “but I care about other people whom I will leave behind!” But yes, you care. Once you’re gone… there won’t be anyone left doing that caring.
    • htfu 1y ago
      Your caring will be passed on, that's the point.
      • IAmBroom 1y ago
        How? If you care about that little red-headed girl you knew as a nearly-bald kid, and you die in a cabin in the woods, how is your care passed on?
        • htfu 1y ago
          By your interactions with them. Sure, after-the-fact caring won't result in any external effects, but a lot of caring is expressed in interaction which is indeed left with people. Who in turn have other cares and interactions influenced by those who cared about them. It's a chain.
• Crontab 1y ago
  I had the same experience when under anesthesia. It feels like the time before I can remember being alive.
• peterashford 1y ago
  I don't think the article tells us how we should live. The author had a peak experience and he shared that with us. I appreciate that.
• fellowniusmonk 1y ago
  I had quite a number of procedures starting in early childhood and through my teen years. Pretty much my first memory was going into surgery. It'll probably be my last as well, being born with multiple heart defects doesn't really go away. You start looking forward to going under and start being disappointed when you wake back up. It's odd confronting mortality from your first conscious memory but it's also odd being afraid of death. It's so clear that we are evolved beings, we have self doubt and existential doubt and all these things that are clearly just evolved processes to keep us out of local maximums. It's sad to see people latch on to convoluted views, tortured logic, force themselves to justify strongly held but unevidenced beliefs just because they are afraid. It's such a waste of time, people can use their imaginations to believe whatever they like, they can theorize or speculate, but the absolute waste of time trying to ground what can't be grounded, the tortured logic, the semantic games is a tragedy. We use our brains to generate unique meaning, each one of us is a generating node in an uncomputable casual chain that stretches into the unknown future, and we are part of our collective planets random meaning walk... and then we get to stop.
• deleted 1y ago
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