We will all be dead soon
adambourg.com
adambourg.com
People have been living and dying on this rock for thousands of generations and no-one alive today remembers any of them. Even the most immensely successful people to have lived just a short while ago - all of the John Rockefellers and the Andrew Carnegies of the world - are remembered only insofar as their names adorn buildings today. I don’t think it would matter at all if my name was on a library after I’m gone. I’m not sure how it could.
I’m trying to prioritise more (and better) time with my kids as it really is going by in a blink and while I’ve always understood this logically it’s really hit me like a freight train lately how none of it’s guaranteed.
To be cheesy and quote Tony Stark: “No amount of money ever bought a second of time”.
I am inclined to agree - with money you can afford healthier food which in theory should make your life longer
Fishing/hunting is the cost of a license. You can fill your freezer in 1 trip.
I eat healthy organic/gluten free for $25 a week and am overweight not starving.
There's a lot of people here dismissing [caricatures of] the idea... But it's a vital truth. It has been expressed for thousands of years, by the world's greatest thinkers.
And fwiw, Rockefeller and Carnegie can suck rocks. A little philanthropy doesn't outweigh decades of robber barony.
After the third trip in a month, walking among granite cliffs and alpine lakes I realized that I wasn't feeling much awe. To have those profound breathtaking moments in nature you need the contrast of months in civilization sitting on a computer. Same thing with special moments with loved ones, or anything that seems profound and makes you think "I should be doing this all the time".
I mean, I don't disagree with the conclusion, but the argument ain't great.
I don't think it makes sense to think entirely black/white here, everyone has different things they enjoy in life.
I think a popular sentiment near the end of life for most is that they wish they’d adventured more and spent additional time with family & friends, not acquiring material goods or more wealth.
No, but that's not the argument OP makes. They say, we will all be dead and our possession gone so they have no value. Meanwhile, time with loved ones... Well it will be gone too! But somehow that's fine.
That one is better than another is not an argument OP makes.
We had a good conversation, the kind I wish we'd had more of, and part of what he said was basically "I just finally started to understand life, and now I'm dying."
The post may express this stuff a bit clumsily but I think it has a kernel of truth. We fill our days with a lot of shit that doesn't matter. You can argue nothing matters because we're all going to die. But during our brief go-around on the planet there are things that are meaningful and things that aren't.
Trying to focus more on the things that have meaning and less on things that aren't (or, worse, hurt others and make their lives worse) is a good idea. It's a pity we can't collectively get it together and agree that, for example, we could be focusing less on work and more on things that bring us joy. We could arrange society a lot differently but choose not to. And we're not better for it.
Perhaps it's easier for some to mock a reminder like this, than to reflect on it. This is one of those truths that's worth remembering, and deeper than it might seem.
"All conditioned things are impermanent — when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering." - Some 14yo I guess, idk
> In many ways he’s the archetype of I’m 14 and this is deep.
He was 29 when he set off on his quest, and in his mid 30s when he attained enlightenment.
Enlightenment, btw, is just about the polar opposite of fake or performatory 'depth'.
> He was 29
You're being very literal-minded.
However, each of us is at the center of our own universe, and from that context, a variety of things are important or unimportant. From the context of self, we derive importance.
That universe exists only as long as the self exists. In that context, what you deem important is important. What you deem unimportant is unimportant. And those states shift over time.
I'm not well read in philosophy. I imagine what I've written above is probably a pretty commonplace observation, so I'm sure someone has written more on the subject.
This is true of course, however I can't imagine living thinking that and not getting depressed/insane.
I don't understand it, but that doesn't stop me from trying to.
[1] The backwards law suggests that if you are pursuing happiness, it makes you unhappy. If you just relax, happiness is more likely to come.
It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarreled; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.
We all share a common destination. It makes me wonder why there's so much fuss about what happens on the in-between.
Akabyah ben Mahalalel said: mark well three things and you will not come into the power of sin: know from where you come, and where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning. From where do you come? From a putrid drop. Where are you going? To a place of dust, of worm and of maggot. Before whom you are destined to give an account and reckoning? Before the King of the kings of kings, the Holy One, blessed be He.
-Pirkeh Avot 3:1 (Written sometime before 200 CE)
Both are questioning how you should invest your time, and what really matters in your life. Yes, sure, PP is anchored in religion, but the sentiment is the same.
The point doesn't have to do with religion. Rather that people (many of whom were religious thinkers) have been thinking along these lines for thousands of years.
The solution is a balanced life, realizing that only examples of things that resonated beyond their time are the toils, both failed and otherwise, of humans. And there is no meaning of life other than to experience life. So toil away; and spend time enjoying your family & friends.
Some of us are rejecting the boomer bounce the check for the funeral ethos in favor of passing something on. Much as the overwhelming majority of our ancestors did, we have a very real hope that it will be our descendants who live in our houses and benefit from what we built during our lives.
The related concept of the Buxton Index (BI) is worth pondering. In short, it’s your planning horizon. So a frontend dev might have a BI of 1-2 sprints, a US president might have one of 4-8 years, and so on. Needless to say all of the wealthiest families have an intergenerational time scale BI, and so do the upper middle class ones that have persisted.
After all the simple fact is some tasks can’t be completed in a single lifetime.
Oh boy, nobody tell them about Nihilism.
Every man dies twice. The first time is at their funeral where they are buried in the ground surrounded by people who knew them. The second time is when the last person at the funeral passes and all memory of them is lost.Sure there's truth in some of what he's saying, but I think the fact that we and all of our stuff will be gone is great. I'm here to enjoy the ride! I'm gonna go fast in my fancy car - zoom zoom see ya later.
Maybe he is depressed, or in the process of trying to get over depression. At some point, most people have this epiphany. His may be now. If so, I'm happy for him.
There's a part of me that wouldn't understand the gravity of this post because I never had an unhealthy obsession with stuff in the first place. I grew up with stuff and never had to go without. I enjoy hitting the sport button in my car and going zoom zoom.
Sometimes that obsession really messes people up and they truly suffer from it. They're not always as happy-go-lucky as you or I. Maybe it's harder for them to just get by.
I know enough people who didn't grow up with running water and went hungry as a kid to know that some people's attachment to stuff and financial security is a lot more profound and rooted in something much deeper. It's a lot harder for them to just enjoy the ride because a lot of that ride has been a real struggle.
I don't know this person's story, but I hope he finds peace and balance.
I think you're projecting your own experience onto a post that is low quality and not that interesting. Judging by the fact that it's flagged, I think others agree.
But then, I remembered I have friends and family who've shared this epiphany well into their adulthood, some in their 70s and 80s.
The epiphany itself isn't very interesting, but exploring the different reasons why it takes some people so much longer than others to experience this epiphany takes one down some interesting paths. That was my point.
Is it really greed though? Or just the struggle to make ends meat?
I feel such concerns about one's legacy are quite the first world problem.
But it's still a great post.
It is an important philosophical principle that is crucial to maintaining a free society.
For myself, I think what little evidence we have to form an opinion would based around the absurdity of existence itself. If you really think about the fact that we actually and undoubtedly exist it's really quite terrifying. The argument that the initial big bang could have been driven by quantum fluctuations is meaningless as you always end up with the question of what created the laws enabling such fluctuations, the 'void' in which it happens, or or even quantum mechanics itself. Of course if one takes a deistic point of view you end up with the exact same issue. If God created everything, then what created God?
It's years of pondering this that led from atheism to agnosticism. Even intellectually appealing "answers" like the simulation hypothesis offer no real answer. Imagine you 'die', 'wake up', and pat yourself on the back upon finding out it was indeed a simulation. Well you still have no answer whatsoever because the question of creation now emerges once again in your new reality. Turtles all the way down, simulations all the way up?
*<:o)
Individuals like Ray Kurzweil intentionally lied to themselves. His argument was that human life expectancy has been increasing rapidly over the past 'xx' years, and eventually it will accelerate to a rate such that life expectancy will increase by more than a year, per year - immortality. But it's just complete and utter nonsense. Life expectancy increased largely because of reductions in infant mortality - not people living longer. And he certainly knows that. Individuals like Hippocrates (of the Hippocratic Oath) lived to their 90s 2,400 years ago. The peaks of human longevity aren't changing much at all. The only thing that's changing is that more people are able to get to them.