…a temporary solution to a permanent problem.
I can’t separate the things i want, from the things i can’t stand, or handle, or accomplish.
Everything i do want, is attached to enough of something i don’t, to invalidate pursuit.
I can’t find anything that is both available to me, and also worth my efforts to gain it, which are inevitably and irrevocably connected to conditions and/or consequences i can’t, or won’t, endure.
I can’t find, even with all i know and the capacity of my mind to “imagine,” anything… that fills me with both belief and motivation to achieve, accomplish, or attain it… but that is also available, and can be gained without causing a disproportionate amount of unmitigated damage.
There is very little i actually want. None of it is available. I cannot even “not hurt myself,” without hurting myself… and others… and i cannot gain anything i feel is worthwhile, by any of the inevitably severely damaging and painful ways, which are the only available ways, by which to gain anything at all.
I want to throw my hands up, and drop my arms, and lay down my “weapons,” and surrender; the torture from my would-be captors cannot possibly surpass that which originates inside myself.
Life as a temporary solution to non-existence, has become more problematic than the problem it was seemingly meant to oppose.
Life is losing the war. But we never should have expected, never should have been taught to expect, otherwise; but it’s too late to fix that, or any of the problems caused by that misguidance. All we can do is accept it and perish… knowing there was never anything we could have done, and that all this striving and strife, was irrelevant from the beginning, even through all the times we had to tolerate the incessant insistence that it mattered.
It only matters because it’s nice to be comfortable, while we’re alive to feel or do anything at all. That requirement, that desire, directly resulting from the woefully inadequate and temporary solution of “life,” will cease when life expires. What a relief that will be… if tragically ruined by the included loss of the ability to experience that relief.
And then right back to “the problem;” which only those participating in an inexplicable and inadequate, temporary solution, have any semblance of a chance to even attempt to solve.
You can’t solve the problem of non-existence, if you don’t exist. Then again, without existing, nonexistence can’t really be a problem.
So… can anyone or anything, solve the problem of nonexistence being a problem? Or of nonexistence Not being a problem?
I have to say… i doubt it.
33 comments
lol. i like it
I added some… “some,” lol.
oh i made that comment when it was just the one line. i apologize my attention span will not support the rest at this time. i will report back later.
some…lol. understatement of the year
don’t take this as an insult clever, but i tend to read your stuff bottom to top. you make a lot of points at the bottom. it’s fun too when you make points and one leads to the other. it’s a puzzle this way
i wrote it as a comment at first, then decided to append it to the topic instead… then edited a couple things, and left most of it how it was.
I’m not insulted; people can read or not, at their own discretion. I actually found it “interesting,” possibly “constructive,” that you claim to read my stuff from bottom to top.
My first thought in response, was that it’s like you’re choosing to swim upstream, against the current of my fluid consciousness.
But i will admit, i have a regrettable tendency to over-preface, or get too technical too soon, but it’s always due to the desire to sufficiently “set the stage” for whatever “point” sent my fluid consciousness flowing.
I don’t think i think like “most people,” and i have indeed received criticism from some people who seem to dislike my “fluid consciousness.” IDK, i just have thoughts i want to share sometimes, and i try to walk through them and come out with an adequate verbalization. Sometimes it doesn’t work out too well.
when there are large bodies of text i generally pick out pieces and the best way to do it is bottom to top. to get the meat of what you’re reading. tho sometimes i flip thru magazines back to front too so maybe it’s a theme. i think that’s diff tho. it just feels natural in the way you hold a magazine.
regrettalbe tendency haha no worries, man. it’s how you talk. and ppl can choose to like it or not. i’m just lazy at 6am when i should have been sleeping like 4 hrs ago i guess…
i’m pretty wordy sometimes too. but i cannot hold a candle to clever name haha.
oo a point i was gonna make, is when i pick out random middle paragraphs. if i like what i read i keep going and then decider o read the whole way thru. it’s better to me than just reading like 3 blocks in for some reason. i can get more of a feel for if i wanna read on, by seeing where it goes further down the argument/idea
after all the noise i’ve hacked slashed and skimmed my way through on the internet… i have to agree that skimming and jumping as an initial “preview” tactic, is quite valid. Instead of just blindly committing information to the brain, figure out if there’s anything there worth reading first. Not to say “my stuff is worth reading…” but it’s good to have an idea of what you’re getting into, before you stuff a bunch of new information into your brain and alter its patterns.
I had to learn the skim-preview approach because i have very mildly impaired vision, and so i read slowly and uncomfortably… and also because i like to read something Once, and not have to read it again, so i “read slower.” It’s kinda like reducing your WPM, in order to make less mistakes, so you spend less “wasted” strokes on corrections, and improve your overall typing experience/performance.
I say “very mildly impaired,” but compared to a fighter pilot, i’m practically blind… but compared to a blind person, i’m practically a fighter pilot. lol. Without my glasses (which need to be updated), i squint at the screen with a menacing scowl… even when i’m not mad.
haha, that’s how all my “solutions” keep getting born and die in my mind. i must say i have now kind of lost, or maybe given up, my will to find solutions. i am actually lost now. i don’t “selfishly” want anything any longer. not that i don’t want anything, but there are layers of want. now they are of deeper kind. patient ones. it looks like they can wait all the life. “i”, the immediate doer, don’t want anything. it doesn’t even want to accomplish those deeper wants. these layers are like oil and water – mutually exclusive. it seems my ego is gone. i am getting hazy, dizzy, fuzzy. earlier i was trying to find ‘reasons’ to run away, but now i am almost sure that if i do this i will do it out of, kind of, intoxication of dreaminess. my mind always surprises me.
i need a new vocabulary now.
there is one thing that is getting clear to me day by day – i have trust in existence; i have trust in… life. that it is not meaningless. that it cannot be meaningless. maybe this is what people call God. they need a name, an image, a reason of this trust – so they call it God. the point is not its rationality or irrationality, or its truth or false; the point is this feeling of trust. i can clearly see that this feeling is deeper than atleast the first layer of selfishness i.e. ego. i am not sure about other ones. as i said, i need a new vocabulary to think more clearly about it.
it was a pointless comment btw.
It all depends on how you look at it. To non-exist in one place is to exist in another. And as long as I exist in another I can possibly fix and or change my non-existence in one place. You also are viewing/assuming death or the absence of life set the boundaries of existence. Everyone in the world once thought nothing existed beyond the horizons of the oceans as well, until the other side was discovered. Perhaps there is another side to life. So perhaps to non-exist here is to exist there. And perhaps we can still yet experience that relief there whether by no remembrance or other means. Who knows my friend. I like the way you systematically process things though. I really do. It’s a quality thought process or thinking pattern to properly discern facts and truth and then accurately correlate these facts and truths together to bring logic and understanding as best one can.
And I suck at skimming, so sadly I still just buckle down and commit to the entirety of things when reading to decide if there is anything worth reading. I often find myself dumber by the end rather then intellectually stimulated or enlightened.
hm quaero i get what you mean about the wants dissipating a little. they are still there but it’s easier to put it all on the back burner for me at least. and nothing i could not live without. having trust in life is a wonderful thing. what i’m struggling with is learning to trust myself after i’ve let myself sink this low. who’s to say i wouldn’t just do it all over again in another time in place, i guess?
lol clever that was…clever 🙂
sometimes i go back and forth whether i want to exist or not. i think i do tho, because to not exist would be the end of all. and i’m still not sure i want that yet. it so final. nothing. ever again. i still want to pet my cats and listen to nice music. i just don’t want to deal with all the other shit, like picking the pieces of my life back up and putting them together.
I appreciate your comments (because i actually liked them, not just because anyone said anything at all; i have standards! ;))
My stance on existence is entirely conditional. With a ruined life that cannot sufficiently improve in the most important ways, i would rather not exist; but i know “this” won’t exist anymore, all by itself, whether i invite it or not. But with favorable conditions, i honestly wouldn’t mind “living,” or rather, remaining as a conscious sentient entity, indefinitely (until the heat death of the universe? Past the crunch and rebound, into the next iteration of “universe?”).
I’m pretty solid in my atheism, for various reasons i consider quite valid, but of course, i can’t absolutely rule out any possibility of some sort of “beyond,” because the whole point is that we can’t know what we can’t test, and we can’t test what we can’t observe; all we can do is observe whether something is or isn’t observable, and work forward from there. It’s been a Very long time since claims of god’s existence began, and with no discernibly valid evidence to support or substantiate, let alone validate any such claim. So… we probably just stop existing. This is just some bizarre temporal anomaly, filled with strife and confusion for most, and immeasurable bliss for the few lucky ones who are born into a set of favorable conditions, which aren’t significantly disrupted by other beings.
Still… i can’t help but fantasize about an “after” of some kind… because at least that would make my ruined life less important. I just don’t see any valid evidence to suggest such a thing is real, so my agonizingly ruined life is torturously important, in the meantime.
My senses tell my i exist, and i have no reason to doubt them enough to disbelieve in my own existence, even if i know my senses can sometimes deliver strange information that doesn’t seem to fit the rest. Usually, i can test what my senses tell me, so i know when the senses or the sensors are malfunctioning, or simply producing anomalies. Experimenting with perception filters helps hone that ability. ^^
Sounds shitty but do you think when we die theres the possibilty of reliving our exact lifetime with the exact circumstances and consequences all over again?
Like a song on repeat?
Just a question. I personally dont believe it but its kinda fun to ponder the question.
Clever, do you believe in the existence of free will or do we live in a pre determined existence?
@koji:
look up the concept of “boltzmann brain.”
I do “believe” we have free will, but that many of our choices are “made for us,” due to having so many other choosers influencing what is available for each individual to choose.
I’m pretty sure “all this” only happens once, ever, and that if, allowing for the persistence of individual consciousness, we were to “reincarnate,” then we would have no, or virtually-no, recollection of any of this life, and would manifest in an entirely different set of parameters… and since the universe is so astronomically huge (pun accidental but endorsed), it’s “statistically impossible” that we would be this-self again, and highly implausible that we would even be on earth at all, even if we were reincarnated… unless there is some reason for our consciousness to manifest from, and remain connected to, earth, and its particular organisms.
TL;DR: no, on repetition, and a conditional yes on free will.
Then again, maybe it’s like that Jet Li movie, “The One,” and when one of our “branches” dies, that energy just gets redistributed to our remaining branches, and the other us-es become a little more powerful. But, you know… probably not. 😛
The only reason that I’m still here is because of my lack of knowledge about what awaits us when we die. Even though I don’t really believe in heaven, hell, reincarnation, or whatever else, my not believing in it won’t matter if they are real.
What if committing suicide really is a sin? Or doing so carries bad karma on to your next life? Well then I’ll just be stuck in my next existence dealing with this same pain or even worse. It kind of defeats the purpose of killing myself in this life.
If I knew that eternal nothingness is what happens after death (which is what I think really happens), then I would’ve taken myself out awhile ago. A whole lot of nothing is favorable to a whole lot of misery, in my opinion at least.
So basically it’s my fear of inadvertently putting myself in an even worse spot than I’m in right now that’s keeping me alive.
A friend of mine is apparently living in a tent, in the middle of the Amazon jungle. And she didn’t bother to come kidnap me so I could come along for the ride. Did you know that there are over 30,000,000 insect species in the Amazon? On a single tree, over 700 unique species of beetles were identified, at one point. I’d say life is winning the damn war, but it’s mostly creepy shit that I’d rather not have crawling on me.
Hmm… the beetles is like life winning some battles… but i don’t think beetles can win the war. Beetles die just like everything else.
Life itself has an insurmountable flaw: it inevitably ends. It is a temporary solution, to the permanent problem of nonexistence. It might make a good showing, for a while, in certain circumstances and conditions… but it’s… innately “destined” to lose.
Even that reasoning assumes that the inanimate gasses that were formed following the big bang, which gradually coalesced into matter and all things large and small, had some objective in mind to consciously aim for when the first amoeba assembled itself in some promethean goop. I mean, it’s only a flaw if there’s a plan of some kind. Life is fucking weird, and it’s kept existing for several billion years or more, give or take.
i will refer again to the boltzmann brain. All that exists is merely the natural process of materials intersecting and interacting amidst apparent chaos. It’s all just stuff doing whatever it does.
But on a purely “metaphysical” level, there seems to be a “war” between existence and nonexistence… which seems to have naturally manifested out of… well, everything and nothing, all at once.
The only “plan” is that matter has a duty to participate in the natural universal “laws” and/or “constraints.” Matter does what it does, because it is what and where and how it is.
Also: “several billion years” isn’t that long on a universal time scale.
correction: it’s not “everything versus nothing,” it’s “everything versus entropy.”
Things try to coalesce, and entropy “tries” to disintegrate.
Certain forces are trying to “create,” while others are trying to “destroy.”
And amidst this “eternal” universal conflict, along the nexus of the intersection of that conflict, along the linear progression of “time,” we somehow manifest organically to be temporarily, temporally aware of some of it.
It’s all very strange indeed.
What are we arguing about again? The only two things I can really disagree with in all that is the idea that existence and non-existence are at war; the one is defined by the other, and that several billion years isn’t that long in terms of the age of the universe. I mean, if the universe is 6 billion years old, several billion is a biggish part of that second number. But that’s mostly just nit-picking definitions. Otherwise, I do think you’ve given this a lot of thought and come to a fair number of reasonable conclusions about the facts (in re: the last comment).
Too late 😮 Your last comment mitigated my first objection. lol I agree.
so, i guess what i was getting at, in more simple terms, is that life cannot sustain itself indefinitely; organic material always decays, and entropy will always win, even if it takes a while.
So it’s like… i have a hard time staying interested, now that feel i already know how the story ends.
Try to imagine how long it will take to exhaust ALL possible energy producing reactions in all the matter that can interact, in the entire universe. “Several billion (earth) years” is almost nothing. And then… how long will it take for the “dead” universe to even begin folding back into itself? And, if “space” can only exist due to a “live” universe… what is outside of “space?” What exists that “space” displaced, in order to create an absence of matter in the nothing, and vacuous expanses of distance between celestial bodies?
Meanwhile, i have to figure out how to motivate myself to live agonizingly and unfulfilled, as a modern slave, who is free to opt-out and die, if i’d rather not participate and contribute to the system that seems determined to reject me.
it’s one of those unanswerable questions: if “space” came from the big bang… what did the vacuous nothingness displace? “Nothing” can’t displace “nothing.” Nothings would overlap, seamlessly. If it’s not “space,” but is “sheer nothingness,” then… how can sheer nothingness exist, without that being the literal definition of “space?” “Space” is where there isn’t anything. IMO, that is the same definition as “nothing.”
So… logically speaking, either “space” came from the big bang and displaced something else… or “space” was already there, and a singularity somehow existed within some unknowable expanse of nothingness, or not-anything-ness, prior to erupting and creating the different type of nothingness we now call “space,” in the post-big-bang universe.
I don’t understand how “space” can NOT exist. Nothing is nothing, big bang or not. Maybe it just wasn’t vacuous? Maybe it was not filled with innumerable and varied “waves.” Maybe “outer space” is supposed to include all that invisible radiation and stuff, even though there isn’t any discernible physical material in it (generally speaking… there are particles everywhere, but… you know what i mean).
Idk why i’m even on this tangent. I guess i’m just agitated and trying to distract myself and waste my energy on something interesting, instead of hating everything.
Knowing the ultimate, unavoidable, universal end of the whole story really doesn’t do justice to the contents of the story itself. It’s like saying at the end of every movie, there are credits, then the DVD menu appears. Although some directors put the credits first and annoy everyone who’s watching the film. Yeah, it’ll keep going until it finally comes to rest in a flattened, motionless stasis; that may or may not be a change for the better, depending on how noisy the place you live happens to be.
I think there are more options than convention might dictate, though, and for every option, there’s an endless cascade of shades, each of which might contribute to the eventual direction of an outcome. Conventions have a lot of weight when it comes to personal fulfillment, but conventions are merely axioms built on collective experiences; there are other ways of finding fulfillment, and they’re not always apparent. For instance, if I ever manage to get to a rainforest, I’ll probably feel fulfilled in that moment in time, grounded in experiencing that insane eruption of life gathered there. I doubt everybody would see it the same way I do. As I mentioned earlier, there are a whole damn lot of bugs in rainforests. What’s more, that fulfillment won’t follow me home and stick around indefinitely, and the fleeting nature of it is what would make it special in my mind. It’s a kind of yearning for an unmediated experience that I think everyone has, though everyone expresses it differently.
The system – social, economic, political – and the world at large, even, isn’t determined to reject you, though. That system depends implicitly on the will of its subjects, while also being utterly oblivious to the existence of its subjects. I do know how it feels to get caught in the flywheels of that machinery, however, and it’s not a fun experience. I don’t know if there are any simple solutions to recover from that, but I do know that one can recover. I’m still trying to figure that all out, myself.
I hope you don’t take any of that the wrong way – I get where you’re coming from, and I’m not trying to be antagonistic. I can relate to the feeling you’re expressing because it’s something I wrestle with a lot, myself. Get a broken fucking tail-light, and the next thing you know, you’re caught in an avalanche of absurd consequence that completely blind-sides you. I think the machinery’s just got far more flywheels than it reasonably needs.
Life is: there’s a big puerto rican dude walking around my house at 3:15am saying, “My nicka,” after every sentence he speaks.
Yep, I need more booze for that to stop being weird.
you two.. =)
I’m glad everyone’s still ok. I don’t mean it sarcastically or in a mean way. TTYL
lol… sounds familiar.
oh, hey ifmay. ^^