I spent a lot of time today thinking about consciousness and it ending in a semi-asleep state of mind. Maybe it seems really really obvious, but I've just realized I really really don't want to die. Like, I considered that my life would eventually end before with a degree of ambivalence, but I only now fully grasp the horror of not existing.
Don't fear death. Instead, make the most of your life. It's pretty much inevitable that you're going to die, but you have good while to live. Do something awe-inspiring with your life, and people will remember you for years to come, and you'll never truly 'not exist'. That is why my personal ultimate life goal is to get into history books.
And no, non-existence doesn't hurt either, since you'd not be around to feel it.
See, here's the thing: I used to think that way too. I mean, heck, I haven't been around for over 13 billion years already! And I only exist in and am confined to a tiny sliver of a spec of dust in space!
But then thinking about that more, I realized something:
I'm actually kinda sad at not getting to see any of that. It's like stumbling across a massive webcomic of absurdly good quality, getting to read one page of it, knowing that before and after it are a vast quantity of unseen pages, the links to which have all gone 404. There are forums of people talking about even the most minute details; but you will never get to see those, nor will you even hear about those details which happened to not be noticed by those people at the time you're looking.
All we get is fragmentary bits and pieces of these past great story arcs; nearly inscrutable hints at future story arcs. We will never get to see the formation of galaxies, the rise of life on earth. Nor in our lifetime will we even know where else life arose, apart from perhaps the faintest glimmer of discovery on a small number of other specs of dust, if we're very very lucky. We will never see humans spreading out to more than one or two of those specs of dust, let alone the long-scale migration across the cosmos which may or may not come. We won't see others who may or may not be doing the same. We won't see whether life still persists as the universe itself winds down; or whether life itself finds a way to stabilize the very universe it resides in in a way that allows life to continue living in it indefinitely.
And dangit, that's a whole lotta cool stories we're missing out on. :<
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9775214 times)