What is existence?

[fightclub17]

Depression collapses time. Suddenly you find your days blending in together to create one endless and suffocating loop.

I wake up every day feeling more hopeless and devastated than the day before. There's no break, no relief, no escape - just this constant suffering. And it makes me question everything about existence itself.

What even is this?
When is this?
How did any of this come to be?

Time is passing, but not in the way I used to experience it. It feels strange and distorted, like I'm watching life move while feeling detached from it.

Did we ever ask to be here?
Is existence a gift, or is it something closer to a prison?

Sometimes I wonder if we're just characters in some kind of simulation or video game. Other times I wonder if we're part of something much bigger - something we can't fully understand from where we are.

But what is this, really?
What were we before we were born?
Nothing?
But what even is 'nothing'?

Is it a peaceful, permanent non-existence - a quiet absence where the suffering and agony of existence finally disappear and are forgotten?

Because in this existence, it can feel like there's no limit to how much pain a human being can experience. Sometimes the weight of suffering in the world feels unbearable - the cruelty, the harm, the endless ways living beings can experience agony.

And when life feels this painful, non-existence starts to seem like the only true peace. A place where the torture of existing finally ends.

What actually happens when the brain stops functioning.
What happens to consciousness then?

Does awareness simply fade away?

Or does consciousness, or the soul, continue in some way we don't yet understand?

I imagine death like being put under anesthesia - a quiet drifting away into a peaceful absence of awareness.
I don't know the answers.

I'm just trying to understand what this existence is, and why we are here experiencing it at all.

 

[the_calynite]

I am afraid to not leave a mark honestly. Nobody will care in 20 years, i will never reach that potential i strive for. Going to sleep and not waking up seems fine, but being left in the dust is definitely unsettling.

 

[OnMyLast Legs]

I imagine death like being put under anesthesia

When I was put under, I experienced it as a jump forward in time. That's true unconsciousness. No relief, no rest, nothing happening. That's what scares me about death. Even if it takes a gazillion years, you might immediately wake up. The universe already spawned my consciousness once.

Eternal recurrence seems plausible to me, which is terrifying. Suicide can conclude or finalize your life, but not annihilate it. I think what we suicides hope for is "quiet heaven," some kind of sleepy state. Not overwhelming bliss, but restfulness. I highly doubt that that's it.

 

[the_calynite]

When I was put under, I experienced it as a jump forward in time. That's true unconsciousness. No relief, no rest, nothing happening. That's what scares me about death. Even if it takes a gazillion years, you might immediately wake up. The universe already spawned my consciousness once.

Eternal recurrence seems plausible to me, which is terrifying. Suicide can conclude or finalize your life, but not annihilate it. I think what we suicides hope for is "quiet heaven," some kind of sleepy state. Not overwhelming bliss, but restfulness. I highly doubt that that's it.

If what we see is what really exists, just the electricity in our brain, then dying won't end anything at all, for we never started to begin with

 

[itsgone2]

I like this post so much. It really captures the frustration of it all. Yes what is this? Life seems so pointless now. I hate it but why is it here???

 

[UserFromNowhere]

That's what scares me about death. Even if it takes a gazillion years, you might immediately wake up. The universe already spawned my consciousness once.

I'm aware of concepts like the Boltzmann brain which says this is logically possible, but admittedly, it's also a perspective to death I never considered. That there wouldn't be an "end," that we'd just wake up trillions of years in the future without any memory of the peace experienced in the meantime, possibly with no memory of ourself. I think not having memory of ourself would be more akin to reincarnation, but I do think you raise an important point, even if we die and there is a temporary "end," we would not perceive it, we'd just end up waking up elsewhere.

 

[the_calynite]

I'm aware of concepts like the Boltzmann brain which says this is logically possible, but admittedly, it's also a perspective to death I never considered. That there wouldn't be an "end," that we'd just wake up trillions of years in the future without any memory of the peace experienced in the meantime, possibly with no memory of ourself. I think not having memory of ourself would be more akin to reincarnation, but I do think you raise an important point, even if we die and there is a temporary "end," we would not perceive it, we'd just end up waking up elsewhere.

Interesting thoughts, we have no way of knowing i guess.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Existence / life is an extreme horror and abomination.

I'm just brain cells connected into a brain. a brain can create long lasting constant unbearable pain: that is an abomination an extreme horror. this unbearable pain dwarfs anything so it defines what I am and imo what life and existence is. there is pain so bad it makes everything else meaningless as if the other garbage wasn't already meaningless which it is anyway without meaning. when a human or other sentient animal is in the throughs of the worst pain nothing else matters but trying to stop it

1 microsecond after the brain dies it can never create the sense of a viewer suffering pain or torture of unbearable pain again. "me experiencing something like pain seeing something can only be created by my brain once it dies I can never exist again

Non-existence forever is the best thing by a septillion times as I can never suffer constant unbearable pain ever if I don't exist forever

I and a human is just an animal cells chemical reactions a machine. Just chemical reactions. so how can cells or chemical reactions have meaning or be something? that's why say it's a fake thing.

I'm just brain cells connected into a brain . My brain creates a fake thing. but the horror is it feels real . thre is no viewer it's just cells and brain cells . these cells have all the fundamental machines the first cell had so they are the same thing . SAME machines and things like DNA , genetic code, ribosomes , ATP, RNA, cell membrane and more

1 microsecond after the brain dies it can never create the sense of a viewer suffering pain or torture of unbearable pain again


4 billion years ago a molecule and a cell was able to replicate itself, the molecule is DNA the cell was the first cell

This is our ancestor a machine

The machine and evolution built a torture Chamber out of these cells called a Brain

 

[the_calynite]

Existence / life is an extreme horror and abomination.

I'm just brain cells connected into a brain. a brain can create long lasting constant unbearable pain: that is an abomination an extreme horror. this unbearable pain dwarfs anything so it defines what I am and imo what life and existence is. there is pain so bad it makes everything else meaningless as if the other garbage wasn't already meaningless which it is anyway without meaning. when a human or other sentient animal is in the throughs of the worst pain nothing else matters but trying to stop it

1 microsecond after the brain dies it can never create the sense of a viewer suffering pain or torture of unbearable pain again. "me experiencing something like pain seeing something can only be created by my brain once it dies I can never exist again

I and a human is just an animal cells chemical reactions a machine. Just chemical reactions. so how can cells or chemical reactions have meaning or be something? that's why say it's a fake thing.

I'm just brain cells connected into a brain . My brain creates a fake thing. but the horror is it feels real . thre is no viewer it's just cells and brain cells . these cells have all the fundamental machines the first cell had so they are the same thing . SAME machines and things like DNA , genetic code, ribosomes , ATP, RNA, cell membrane and more

1 microsecond after the brain dies it can never create the sense of a viewer suffering pain or torture of unbearable pain again


4 billion years ago a molecule and a cell was able to replicate itself, the molecule is DNA the cell was the first cell

This is our ancestor a machine

The machine znd evolution built a torture Chamber out of these cells called a Brain

Yeah i think this is most likely, although I'm not so pessimistic about it. I am living, I'm rather enjoying it. there is plenty of pain, but there's no such thing as a right or wrong decision so it doesn't matter that i exist. it is my free will that drives me to keep living(and maybe a bit of fear).