Captive_Mind515
King or street sweeper, dance with grim reaper!
- Jul 18, 2023
- 799
Why did non-existence not protect us from being alive now?
Does this concern anyone else?
Are we a bit too arrogant/complacent in thinking that non-existence has this protective quality, when in fact everything bad came from there?
I'm not talking about re-incarnation here to clarify. I don't believe in it.
I was reading about the philosophical idea called "generic subjective continuity".
I really find it quite a terrifying prospect actually, that consciousness itself might always be trapped here.
We are just some random iteration of consciousness. "We" cease to exist when our brain dies, but the suffering just gets past on to the next iteration over and over forever… death is no longer a safe haven. It's merely just some kind of reset button.
Something that makes me think about this prospect, is creatures in the wild. When I consider their suffering, I'm not really thinking about individual instances of suffering so much as the collective suffering of that species.
When one gazelle is eaten alive by a lion, and it's finally dead… I don't feel any great joy or relief that this individual is finally free from the torment. Even though technically, I know that unique individual is gone forever… but I know that another gazelle is going to be forced into this pointless meat grinder right behind it. It might as well be a big conveyor belt of endless cruelty…
And we're just a mammal like that gazelle too. Is our individual death really any different to that one gazelle? I'm not sure it is…
It doesn't feel like any great victory for me as an individual to escape all of this, knowing the shear scale of the suffering.
And yet I still crave that release… to be unburdened by all of it.
Does this concern anyone else?
Are we a bit too arrogant/complacent in thinking that non-existence has this protective quality, when in fact everything bad came from there?
I'm not talking about re-incarnation here to clarify. I don't believe in it.
I was reading about the philosophical idea called "generic subjective continuity".
I really find it quite a terrifying prospect actually, that consciousness itself might always be trapped here.
We are just some random iteration of consciousness. "We" cease to exist when our brain dies, but the suffering just gets past on to the next iteration over and over forever… death is no longer a safe haven. It's merely just some kind of reset button.
Something that makes me think about this prospect, is creatures in the wild. When I consider their suffering, I'm not really thinking about individual instances of suffering so much as the collective suffering of that species.
When one gazelle is eaten alive by a lion, and it's finally dead… I don't feel any great joy or relief that this individual is finally free from the torment. Even though technically, I know that unique individual is gone forever… but I know that another gazelle is going to be forced into this pointless meat grinder right behind it. It might as well be a big conveyor belt of endless cruelty…
And we're just a mammal like that gazelle too. Is our individual death really any different to that one gazelle? I'm not sure it is…
It doesn't feel like any great victory for me as an individual to escape all of this, knowing the shear scale of the suffering.
And yet I still crave that release… to be unburdened by all of it.
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