Why aren’t I doing it? It’s what I ask myself every morning, and whenever my mood dips during the day. If I feel this hopeless and sad, then why aren’t I killing myself? Not only am I not killing myself, I’m not even making the effort to research and obtain my methods. It probably wouldn’t be that hard. I still have enough money (I think). A few risks here and there, but then I would be out of it.
Instead of feeling like this, or worrying about getting more work, or the seemingly pointless chore of self-improvement, I could be done. Over with. If it feels so intolerably bad, then why aren’t I ending it?
I usually tell myself that it’s because I don’t want to devastate my family. And that’s true. It would crush them, and they’ve done so much for me. It would be a really shitty thing to do. But if that’s the reason, then why don’t I feel better about it? Possibly it’s because I’ve wronged them so much throughout my life, so I feel too guilty to feel good about enduring pain to preserve their wellbeing.
Or perhaps it’s because I’m too selfish for that to be the real reason, and it’s just what I tell myself to hide the truth. Maybe I’m far too attached to self and my own sense of importance to go through with suicide, no matter how miserable I feel. If I killed myself, then who would the Earth revolve around?
Possibly it’s just blind evolved instinct, and I’m simply trying to rationalize it. In which case the question becomes: should I somehow overcome it, and is that even possible? Or maybe it’s that being raised in a culture that demands that villains meet their just desserts, and knowing the reprehensible things I’ve done, I fear some kind of existential comeuppance beyond death.
It’s tricky being a human. People do tell you ‘the rules’, but they’re quite often contradictory, and then others tell you conflicting rule sets, and over time maybe you come to suspect that it’s all rather arbitrary. I don’t know what is real, what is the nature of reality. I’m often not sure what’s true about my own mind, let alone the external world. Mostly I’m just guessing, throwing darts in the dark. It would be nice to know. To have some confidence in whatever the fuck I’m doing. Perhaps the price of confidence is delusion, and I’m just not very good at it.
9 comments
Interesting how close this hits home. As if I’m reading something I could have written had I been more eloquent.
I’ll take a guess here based on my own experiences. One big reason is likely to be waiting for justification. Like finding out you have a terminal disease, or surviving a horrible accident; something to make others say “yeah I don’t judge them” when you pull the trigger yourself.
Then you realize, how would you even know? You’re just projecting, right? And we’re back to square one.
For what it’s worth, here is how my first full-intent attempt went:
Found myself in the bathroom staring at my reflection in the mirror, eyes locked, saying “that’s it, tomorrow I’m going to kill myself.”
Then immediately proceeded with the attempt right on the spot.
Make of it what you will.
I will never know why I failed.
I will never be certain I actually did fail. If you know what I mean, you know.
Here is another attempt to answer your question.
If we try to be logical about it, in the grand scheme of things we are either slaves to the laws of nature (naturalism) or precede them, somehow manifesting them into being (idealism).
The naturalistic approach leaves us completely powerless, whether we are fully deterministic just as any inanimate object or completely ruled by chaotic happenstance (see quantum physics, a fundamentally probabilistic group of theories which CHECK OUT experimentally) – or a combination of both.
Either way, we are just tiny tiny cogs in a literal machine which is the universe, and any feeling of agency is an elaborate illusion, the cruelest trick.
From that perspective, we are each only doing whatever the machine dictates. Powerless. Trapped.
The idealistic approach is a lot more hand-wavy, but bear with me.
If somehow the “trivial” sense of agency we each have actually maps onto reality (e.g. “cogito ergo sum” as your cornerstone) then it undermines the naturalistic approach: we are somehow “souls” experiencing existence in what seems to be a mostly lawful universe, but we are each a seed of chaos: Magic. In other words, our very existence is at least a shard of independence from the rules.
If you take a leap from there you might be able to construct pure idealism, where mind manifests matter, and all reality as we know it.
The more conscious beings you add to the mix, the more rigid the system becomes (having to account for the common ground “reality” manifested by the collection of minds, where each contributes just a bit according to some yet undiscovered\indescribable rules).
Considering there are almost 8 billion people on this planet alone – not to mention every other animal\plant\atom which may be conscious and contributing – Well I don’t know about you but I feel absolutely negligible.
Fuck, what an understatement. Most days I would take “negligible” over “actively harmful to the whole” which I feel almost 24/7. Even in my dreams.
So how does any of this answer your question? I’m suggesting you’re most likely feeling powerless and insignificant at best, or actively harmful (even though you don’t mean to be! Pun intended) at worst.
Somewhat like, I would imagine, a single appendix cell in the human body would feel if it can, while being able to be aware of the human it is part of and the universe at large, all the while trying to figure out if itself is actually a cancer cell.
Yeah.
Hopefully I won’t be around to read a response or any other comments…
Bon Voyage, and Godspeed.
There’s a lot I’d like to say in response, though I fear much may be beyond my grasp. Assuming you are still around to read it. Your comment was very eloquent, though perhaps a little above my level.
I do sometimes wish for a clear justification (like a terminal disease), though I also fear it. What if all it clarifies is how much, deep down, I still want to live? But it would be good to have something clear to tell my family in a note, to take away some of the bitterness and anger. Obviously I wouldn’t be there to see the effect it has on them, but it feels like less of a bad act. It sounds like you have far more conviction than I’ve ever been able to muster.
That’s a great summary of naturalism and idealism. I tend to assume naturalism, whilst being intrigued/haunted by idealism. I suppose idealism ultimately resists explanation or understanding. If you ask how immortal souls manifest the laws of reality into being, with no preceding laws/rules by which to do so, then there is no answer. There is no ‘how’. There’s just the blunt fact of it. So I guess that’s why I tend to lean toward naturalism – it seems simpler. Although I suppose if you then ask how the laws of nature came to be, you effectively end up with a chain of cause and effect stretching back infinitely, with no beginning. But that seems preferable to ‘magic’.
I don’t know if there’s any way to rationally/logically weigh up such options. Can one be said to be more probable than the other? Is it effectively a coin flip?
I can certainly relate to feeling “actively harmful to the whole”, whilst simultaneously being insignificant. “Cancerous” would also be a fair description.
I hope if you do exit you find whatever it is you’re looking for, though it would be a shame if there were one less person capable of pondering such questions.
I’m sorry, I completely failed to keep my train of thought towards the end of my comment.
The conclusion was supposed to be:
If Naturalism is the whole story (it is true + that’s all there is) then the vast majority of our human concepts are an elaborate illusion.
Think about: accountability, intent, willpower, focus, success, good\evil.
We are left with “luck”, basically.
If we are each just an observer somehow feeling oneself to “be” an arbitrary blob of matter (“I can raise this arm so that’s a part of “me”! I can’t control this cloud so it’s not a part of “me”!), then we are each just watching a movie unfold from a very particular perspective.
As for your actual question, “why”:
This is a categorical mistake.
It’s like asking about the nutritional value of the letter G. It simply makes no sense.
There is no reason for anything. It’s just a machine doing its thing according to the ultimate laws of nature, whatever they are (and I can’t stress this enough: regardless of what we think they are. I’m talking pure philosophy, leaving experimental physics side).
When you take any action instead of any other action “you could have taken”, you are only imagining – simulating by some mechanism in the brain – the other scenarios which “could have been”.
But really all you do is observe as the machine does its thing, and that’s it.
End of story.
I hope this at least is very clear.
Side notes:
1. I recommend reading Daniel
Wegner’s “The Illusion of Conscious Will” for a comprehensive take on the stance that the brain is ALWAYS a story teller (after-the-fact) rather than a casual agent.
It is littered with references to a staggering amount of research papers in this field. It was his Magnum Opus, IMHO.
2. This approach leaves us with “the hard problem of consciousness”, which in short questions how come anything at all has an experience whatever that may be; what is the mechanism by which a collection of (allegedly) unconscious atoms suddenly have a sense of “me” and experiences; where is the line drawn?
Now…
If Idealism is the whole story, then I cannot be as certain, logically, in providing a clear answer to any “why” question.
I will note that in this framework, the first chapter in most mainstream religions seems to try to address the issue.
Across religions it seems almost identical to the following image:
An awareness suddenly finds itself… Aware. Alone. In the void.
There is literally nothing else anywhere. There isn’t any place for “anywhere” to even have a meaning.
But because there is a void, there is contrast. And from binary logic we can start building… Something.
And so this being (“God”) starts flexing its metaphorical fingers and like a toddler gradually learns what it is capable of, by just doing.
Spoiler: it can do anything and everything.
(Brain tease: “Avra Kedavra” is Aramaic – I think – for “I shall create as I shall speak. Even in modern Hebrew, which borrowed a lot from Aramaic).
Give or take a few steps, which vary between religions, fast forward to the creation of humans “in God’s likeness”.
Under this interpretation this means every human is imbued with at least a spark of creative “law defying” power.
From there the divergence between religions is so whacky that I just disregard them as a “bait and switch” operation.
So my speculative answer to your “why” from the (modified) idealistic perspective would be…
Because you are God. In a sense. And you have this repressed memory of being alone. In the Void. For a loooooooooooooong time. And it fucking sucked! So much so that THIS (broadly gestures at everything) is better.
And the only way for making something marginally better is to do something – anything – that you CAN do, and really really hope that it feels justified after the fact.
And that’s why you won’t kill yourself.
Full disclosure:
Under the influence of “harmless and perfectly safe drugs” (cannabis) I’ve experienced, first-hand:
1. Being a singular awareness in the void. (imagining I am it, sure, but I FELT it. I “remembered”).
2. Full blown Solipsism.
3. Psychotic outbreaks (no visuals or voices though).
Just so you might understand where I’m coming from.
Also I’m very much not religious. Skirting the line between atheist and agnostic. Mostly leaning towards Naturalism like yourself.
Regardless, if you have any logically consistent arguments to refute any of the above… Go ahead.
You might be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for, for at least 6000 years.
Thank you for the reply. I’m not sure to what extent such human concepts are illusory under naturalism, but they certainly take on a different emphasis. Good & evil becomes less a judgement of the ultimate moral character of a person, and more an assessment of the effects of their actions on other sentient beings. There is a sense in which we are just ‘along for the ride’, but we personally experience the intent/motivation behind an action, so we feel ownership of it, and that sense of ownership in turn feeds back into and effects our actions.
I suppose in the case of naturalism, the question might be something like: ‘Why is the decision-making machine that is my brain continually making the decision not to kill itself, whilst simultaneously telling itself that continuing to live is not acceptable?’ I would say under naturalism there is a reason for everything. There may be only one decision that can be made (if we assume determinism), but there is still a reason why it is one rather than the other. It may be ultimately reducible down to physics, but there are other levels of explanation that are still useful for understanding – biology, evolutionary psychology, cultural history etc. The observation of the machine becomes part of the machine, and effects the operations of the machine – i.e. self-awareness really matters.
Thanks for the book recommendation, I may well add it to my small collection on free will (when I’m feeling brave). I’m certainly sympathetic to the idea of the brain as storyteller. When it comes to the question of consciousness, I rather like the idea of panpsychism; that it’s a natural property of all matter, like mass. So everything is ‘conscious’ in a basic sense, and the composition of the matter dictates what that consciousness comprises. The matter in my brain generates the experience of being a certain kind of highly neurotic ape, while the matter in a lump of rock presumably has a less interesting experience. I’m not sure it exactly gives you a mechanism by which consciousness happens; presumably that would be down to science, though I can’t imagine an experiment for it.
On the idealistic take, I’m not sure what contrast an awareness of ‘void’ would really get you? Awareness of nothing would presumably be like…nothing? You have no experience to compare it to or contrast it with. How do you develop anything from that?
‘God’ does seem to resist explanation. Where does it’s motivation and ability to do anything come from? Nowhere – it just has them. There is no why to it – God’s will is just brute assertion. It speaks creation into being because it wants to, and it wants to because…nope. Just because. It has it’s inscrutable motivations, and they don’t come from anywhere.
I can see why the part of me that is a social primate would be scared of being alone in a void for an eternity. I don’t really understand why a part of me that was ‘divine’ would have any preference, one way or the other. Why would it suck to be alone, if you have no prior social needs, or indeed any experience of there being anyone outside of yourself? And presumably, if I was to ‘return to the void’, it would be the part of me that doesn’t have social needs and aspirations?
I have no real experience of psychoactive drugs, so possibly there’s a level of experiential truth there that you just can’t reach from attempting to reason things out.
Not sure any of what I just said constitutes logically consistent refutation; mostly just difficulty wrapping my mind around things. Anyway, thanks for talking about this stuff with me – it helps me to clarify the bits I don’t understand.
Thank you.
The easiest shortcut to the bottom of the issue would be to reject the intuitive notion of localized submodules in the machine (My brain!).
You may view it from a holistic perspective (everything is one, dude!) or from an atomic perspective (individual particles just bumping into each other), or maybe tiny 11 dimensional strings vibrating in different ways. And so on.
If that can be achieved, then the only “why” question still relevant is “why are the laws of nature what they are?” – which you have already pointed out lead to an infinite regress, unless one wants to claim intelligent design as a “solution”.
Sensing the motivation for an action, “choosing” to act upon it (or not), all these still fall under “just along for the ride” as you pointed out.
This is pretty much the “deepest yet on the suface” lesson to be learned through mindful meditation.
For me, at least, the contrast between this “evidently true” state of things and the pillars of society – which I believe are fundamentally illusions – is a major contribution to my own despair.
But let’s put this aside for a minute.
Regarding “Why is the decision-making machine that is my brain continually making the decision not to kill itself, whilst simultaneously telling itself that continuing to live is not acceptable?”
I’ll drop the physics for a minute, and suggest a possible answer from a more “normal” POV.
This is possibly a lot like a hunger signal. The body signaling something needs to change so that the brain stops screaming “I’m hungry! I’m hungry! If you don’t feed me I’ll be dead!”.
I don’t know your circumstances so anything I might say next to justify the comparison will sound like a generic shitty advice.
But I will say that for me, at least, one thing that seems to reduce the frequency of those intrusive thoughts, is physical exercise. It just needs to be easy enough so it doesn’t become a chore to be dreaded, thus eventually avoided, and hard enough so it feels like you actually had to make some effort.
From that perspective a relatively small-cost habit would keep one in the game to contribute, whatever the contribution may be.
I have the same sentiment as you regarding Panpsychism.
It certainly gives a way to reject “the hard problem” yet replaces it with the problem of “how does it interact with matter?”.
Conscious by Annaka Harris is a short succint book covering this and more.
I also agree completely with your objection to anthropomorphizing “God”.
The only property I find remotely defensible is “doing because I can”.
I did claim that being in the initial void sucked, not necessarily a return to it after having experienced something different (I mean… Look at my username) which is an unjustified claim, but also claiming that “God” would NOT have this preference falls into the same category. Who are we to say?
Either way the idea was that “this” evidently exists so at the very least we should consider that while it still does, there is a bias towards preferring this to exist.
Which kind of explains (?) your reluctance to retire, and mine.
Plus I’m rather enjoying this discussion.
Maybe I’ll reschedule my appointment with the void, again.
;-*
Hmmm, I think I want to resist your shortcut. The decision is made at the level of the ‘localized submodule’. It’s the brain that perceives/constructs a model of reality, and calculates a response. It may do so based on natural laws, but it still seems relevant to say that the decision is a product of the specific brain, while also being a product of the universe as a whole.
I think most of the ‘pillars of society’ are to some degree salvageable, if reframed/clarified (which is weird because I’m not really a compatibilist.) I may have some sense of the kind of despair that contrast can generate, but I would be interested if you wanted to go into how it’s effected you personally.
I suppose the feeling/perception that living is unacceptable is akin to a hunger signal, related mainly to more complex social needs. These often seem impossible to fulfil, so maybe the signal gets kind of stuck/warped. Exercise sometimes helps a little, but I think I’d need to figure out something bigger to make a real impact.
Yes, I guess if there’s no way to measure consciousness, there would be no way to observe how it interacts with matter. You just have to assume that it’s a property that matter/energy/whatever intrinsically has. Nice as a theory though – Annaka Harris’ book is actually where I came across it 🙂
So, if I’m understanding this right…being in the void before life sucked? And because of a subconscious memory of that, we resist death? But returning to the void wouldn’t actually suck? So…why would the experience be any different the second time? If the void is still the void, is it that ‘we’ are different? Do we carry our life experiences/personality/memories back to the void in this model?
True, not saying it’s impossible (or even unlikely) that a supreme being with no prior experience or need should have a preference for something rather than nothing. Just that it defies explanation; the preference just exists, for no reason. There is no why to it. The answer to “Why do I prefer to continue exist in spite of overwhelming feelings that it’s futile?” effectively becomes “Because you have an inherent preference for existence.”
The void can wait – it’s got nothing planned.
I’m so used to this impasse it barely fazes me anymore…
It’s a clear indication I’m either still missing something, or failing to connect the dots for my partner in conversation.
Shortly put I’m championing Reductionism because I find find it succint and consistent, while considering Holism as an alternative.
To me, “… the decision is a product of the specific brain, while also being a product of the universe as a whole” is problematic:
The first part is redundant, because one of my axioms is: The universe contains every thing (brains included).
I do understand what you mean, and please correct me if I’m wrong. You mean that if we keep everything else exactly the same and only replace one brain with another, the same set of inputs would produce different outputs.
I completely agree.
But the fact that each brain is exactly where it is in space and time, is a result of the evolution of the universe according to natural laws, right?
Our “what would happen if things were otherwise?” is just a thought, in other words an ongoing shifting configuration of the universe as a whole (our brains included), somehow resulting – among other things – in my consciousness noting the experience of running this “thought process”.
“But how does an event far far away affect the part of the machine that seems to be responsible for this thought process?”
That’ll throw us into Special Relativity (propagation of causation is hard limited by C) and Quantum Physics (specifically entanglement) so let’s not go there…
The point is, from a holistic view we just assert the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts, and from a reductionist view we assert equality.
For me it is easier to mentally “zoom in” as close as possible, to the level of atoms \ fields \ strings etc., and “see” each of those irreducible components interact with each other according to immutable laws.
That’s enough, although I’m not nearly complex or intelligent enough to understand how this language can be used to describe a carbon atom, a biological cell, an owl, happiness, love.
The fact that by zooming out I can “see” patterns in different levels (chemistry, biology, psychology, etc.) only indicates that the level of complexity is sufficient for things to look interesting in very different resolutions. That’s all.
And before you say it, yes, maybe Atomism is wrong, and it’s fractals all the way down. Or Up. Or both.
But that’s a serious trip, I’m trying to actively avoid thinking about it.
As for my despair…
I have a strong tendency to look for inconsistencies in my own thinking and try to regain consistency by surgical pruning.
In my view the pillars of society (such as accountability) are based on the illusion of agency, and it frustrates me to no end; At least until I step out of my “consistent” sandbox, trying to ignore said conclusions.
The point you make regarding social needs hits the nail on its head.
In my case the cognitive dissonance I’m experiencing makes me obsessed with the crusade to rid my thinking of said inconsistencies, and you can imagine the positive influence it has on social interactions…
About the “God in the void” sandbox, yes that’s kind of the idea. I did say before it’s hand-wavy…
As stated it’s very alien to my default sandbox, but allegedly the vast majority of psychnauts from all walks of life describe an experience along those lines.
So allegedly I could just pop a few grams of certain mushrooms into my mouth, and see what happens.
The universe permitting, it’s in my plans.
The idea of having a preference for “this” over “the void” is based on the observation that this exists.
1. This was brought into being at some point (because boredom? Curiosity? Idk).
2. “God” could erase all this any time, and I wouldn’t be having an experience then.
The return to the void may or may not be preferable under certain conditions, and who is to say how many times it’s been done before?
“God” might be having its own doubts and insecurities about who it is and how it came to be.
Maybe “God” come from a society which wiped its memories and trapped it in a “void”?
Or maybe being in the void is bliss, but God just starts a new game after a while for some contrast?
You can go many ways with this, and that’s how we get religions, I suppose.
Please forgive me, I’ve started to repeat myself which I now realize.
You justifiably pointed out we end up with a circular argument:
“The answer to ‘Why do I prefer to continue exist in spite of overwhelming feelings that it’s futile?’ effectively becomes ‘Because you have an inherent preference for existence.’”
I agree.
That didn’t help at all.
It may simply be my bias toward history over physics (which I’m too slow/lazy to comprehend.) I can’t seem to let go of motivation as key to the ‘why’ of a decision. And motivation isn’t really something you can observe at the micro scale of the atom, or at the macro scale of reality as a whole (at least under a naturalist account.)
If we ask why Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, there are numerous levels of answer I could give, ranging from personal psychology to national politics to global economic forces. And they would all give you relevant information about the conditions that caused that decision. I could say “Because the universe is what it is, and natural laws are what they are”. Or (theoretically?), I could give you a precise breakdown of the physics of what was taking place in Napoleon’s brain in the moment the decision was reached. But I don’t see how either of those would give useful insight into why one decision was made over the (hypothetical) alternative.
Yes, I think it may just come down to what kind of explanation you find relevant/useful. For me, understanding seems to be seeing which parts of the machine led to an outcome, but zoomed out/simplified enough that I can still conceptualize it in my small primate brain. If I could see and understand the precise physics that led to a particular decision, while simultaneously comparing it to the precise conditions of (hypothetical) alternatives, then perhaps that would seem like some kind of understanding to me.
The way concepts like agency are socially framed can be incoherent and inconsistent. I also find it frustrating/isolating when listening to others discuss it, and often distressing when a part of me tries to integrate such views and apply them to myself. I think in order to cope over time I’ve come to see such ideas through the frame of societal need. As social animals we need to be able to rely on those around us, and in order to do that we need them to be bound by their past behaviour and answerable for it. So to justify/simplify that we tell each other the story of ultimate responsibility. Sometimes we even bypass the individual entirely and tell a story of collective responsibility. It can still be a very lonely view to look on it from the outside though.
That level of dissonance sounds difficult to handle. I think I’m probably more forgiving of my own inconsistencies, at least in some contexts. There are times when I want to see things as clearly/accurately as I can, and there are times when I’m more or less content to be passively absorbed in the story. I might find myself rolling my eyes or keeping particularly quiet when someone opines, but on the rare occasions I’m in ‘social mode’, I somewhat detach from the more analytic parts of myself. I think my own social difficulties largely stem from crippling neuroticism (among other personal flaws).
I’ve likewise heard many intelligent people mention such experiences of a more ‘fundamental reality’, which does lead me to worry that I’m missing something crucial. Such accounts don’t seem to bring me any closer to an understanding though. Maybe it is something you just have to experience. I’ve also thought about trying psychedelics, but the possibility of a ‘bad trip’ and the risk of my personal demons being exposed puts me off. Some say you can reach similar realisations through meditation, though I imagine it takes much work. I hope it goes well for you anyway (apparently mushrooms are also an effective treatment for depression in some contexts?)
So the void may suck, or it may be bliss. And God may have memories, & doubts (which may be subject to the actions of outside entities), or it may not. Stripped of the religious speculation, I’m not sure what the actual substance of the theory is? That there is void (which is no thing), and God (which is some indeterminate thing)? I suppose God has to have preferences/motivations, to prevent return to the void? And that preference has to be (presently) not to return to the void? But there is no way of knowing why that is the preference, and there may be no why to it. Which kind of makes it difficult to take on board. If true, then…what follows? It sort of seems like a bit of a dead end (to me). There is a thing that is part of you that doesn’t wish to go back to nothingness…