Ok… I assume some of you have been here before. I know I have.
I can’t get existential questions out of my head and I can’t sleep as a result.
Any suggestions?
Solve 'em. That way, not only can you get a decent night’s sleep, you’ll also be able to become a rich and famous philosopher.
Failing that, I suggest reading or watching something really, really shallow and stupid.
Hey, look, I’ve covered that with this post too!
Yeah, that’s the reason I’ve come on here.
I figure either I’ll find the answers or get caught up in a silly conversation.
I know it sounds superficial, but take up your favorite fantasy and let it lull you to sleep.
Han Solo has fed me many a chocolate on nights like yours.
Best of luck. As for existance: do the best with what you’ve got and don’t try to explain it away.
Cough Syrup. It’s the way to go. I’m currently solving all of the problems, but will forget the solutions by morning, so I can get up and do it again tomorrow night. And I’m not coughing.
Oh dear…Well, I’ve been there. Pondering one’s existence is the insomniac’s worst nightmare. The SDMB usually works for me. I can relax and get my mind off my own nutsy thoughts.
How about some music to lull you to sleep? Not Megadeath or anything like that…Something Enya-like?
Get out of bed and write downyour thoughts. If when you read them back they don’t bore you to sleep, then perhaps you should keep writing and try to submit it to Teemings or something.
I’ve had a few late night struggles with seemingly unanswerable questions, but mostly they dealt with questions like, “Who sang ‘Mandy?’” Here’s a few suggestions:
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Watching infomercials. Nothing surpasses them in terms of shallowness and stupidity.
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Reading. Gets your mind on something else.
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A nice glass of warm milk.
If all else fails, try walking around to tire yourself out.
How can you be sure that you aren’t simply a script running on a PC that is clever enough to think it’s complex, when it’s really just executing a predefined set of instructions? Maybe you’re just an NPC executing in someone else’s game. Maybe you’ll never meet this player, and go through the simulation never having a clue about what kind of game it really is.
Or, how can you be sure of the continuity of time and existence? Maybe the only time is the present, the past being an illusion and the future being nonexistent. Maybe all that exists is what you can immediately see and hear and feel. Maybe not even that much.
I’ll stop. You’ve probably thought of that one anyway.
The best way out of these nights is to just get your mind going on something else. Read a book or watch some junk TV. This is what light comedy and potboilers are made for, as far as I’m concerned.
Big ideas aren’t emergencies. Honestly. Complex questions, just by their nature, won’t be answered, no matter the demand or need, right now, by gnawing over them. One good thing about important questions: They’re patient.
Important questions don’t go away. They’re gifts that last a lifetime. An over-anxious, tired mind falls into traps of its own devising. Take a few deliberate steps back and just rest for now. You won’t figure out anything worthwhile by pressing; you’ll be blind yourself, in fact.
Veb
I suggest getting a LiveJournal and braindumping there regularly.
It works for me.
nitek, I have the answers to your questions and will send them to you in email. Put you have to promise not to tell anyone. Clue: They have very little to do with peanut butter.
Well, I finally fell asleep. And according to Zoe, help with debt is the answer… or is it enlarging my member?
You are what you (choose to) do.
I agree with BuckleberryFerry; employ a favourite fantasy scenario. Nothing gets the big questions all my mind faster than when I’m in my own movie about being a starship captain-assassin-rock star.
I agree with writing down your troubled thoughts, especially if it’s in the form of a letter to someone. Hey, why not tell us exactly what you’re thinking?
I used to struggle over my existence. Then someone told me that most “existential crisis” is nonsense; what most people want is pretty simple: food, money, love, sex, television. But then I realized that was nonsense too. So I struggled with more existential angst until I realized that I did not, in fact, exist.
So whenever I question my existence now, I know that there isn’t anyone asking the question, and I get out of the house and try to get laid.
I can’t remember a lot of it now because my mind was racing at a mile a minute but I remember having lots of anxiety because of it.
A lot of what I was thinking about revovled around self-awareness, free-will as an illusion, and paradigms. For a while I considered the thought that I was actually insane and my life as I knew it was just crazy hallucinations. I’ve considered things like this before but what really freaked me out is how “into” the idea I was. It seemed perfectly plausible and of course there’s no way to validate your awareness (especially when you’re alone in a dark sleeping house).
Also, as silly as it sounds, the idea that I was in a matrix-type deal crossed my mind. I felt like I was VERY close to rejecting reality as I knew it and that if I did then I would wake up to something else and I could never get back. That really scared me. It seems so superficial now, even writing it, but it was VERY convincing last night. I don’t know why.
I remember deciding that the level of self-awareness and life purpose that I experience is directly related to the amount of control I want over my philosophical existence. … not quite sure what that means now.
I desperately wanted to embrace religion or just some answer to give me some anchor in my awareness and life but I knew that I couldn’t fully accept and believe it. I thought about Bhuddism (spelling?) and it’s philosophy of “remove desire to remove suffering” but even if I accepted that I wouldn’t find answers to those boggling ideas that would still be another subjective “truth” that I’d be putting stock in.
So it wasn’t any ground-breaking stuff and it’s nothing I haven’t thought about before but it was WAY too real and uncontrollable.
Probably didn’t help that I had just finished watching Adaptation which was good but quite weird.
I hope some of that made sense.
I listen to the BBC World Service every night to prevent just such existential problems. The voices burble away in my headphones, either sending me to sleep with their reassuring tones, or keeping me interested if I am indeed unable to drift off.
Thus no point in losing sleep over it.
Well, if in this existence you are losing sleep over reality, why wouldn’t that be better - so no point in losing sleep over it.
So by your losing sleep over it, you are giving up control over your philosophical existence. In other words go to sleep and gain control.
For what it’s worth, basically what I just spouted was dime-store Bhuddism.
Probably the best direction is like your mother said when she tucked you in. “Now, close you eyes and think happy thoughts.” Or what your older brother would have said, “Hey, close your eyes and think about Brittany Spears naked.” The second may not help you sleep, but it makes the waking hours more pleasant (this presupposes that you are either male or a lesbian).
Both in their way, are very zen. My final suggestion is also rather zen. Count backward by 2s from 4,999. Take a measured breath each time (saying to yourself mentally with each breath, “I am a little more tired.”).
TV