Do you (any of y’all) ever get into that zone of thinking about yourself thinking? Realizing you’re the only point-of-view of the entire cosmos? You, yourself, unique, out of all the trillion galaxies, all the billions of years, all the billions of people. You start feeling the “selfness of self.”
This happens to me every so often, and it feels…weird. Upsetting, distressing, even eerie. And when that happens…you’re right: the only way around it is to “change the channel.” Find something else to think about.
(I’ve heard it attributed to the workings of the various layers of the human brain, as Carl Sagan alluded to in “The Dragons of Eden.” Our brains are kinda kludgy that way.)
Yeah, occasionally. I don’t find it unpleasant, exactly, though it is unsettling and eerie. To some extent I can explain things “anthropically”: Why am I this particular brain? Because someone had to be this brain and it may as well be me. Nevertheless it’s easy to lose yourself in the vastness of time and space. Even our entire universe seems like it’s probably an infinitesimal speck in all of reality. And yet… here I am.
5 more days. I’m now fully comfortable with death. I have convinced myself I am utter genetic trash from head to toe. I’m also pretty stupid too, as verified by many members of this forum. A merciful death awaits me and I couldn’t be more content with this fact.
No one here has said any such thing. We think you’re wrong, but not that you’re stupid. Smart people are wrong, darn near as often as stupid people. Nobel prize winning scientists have been wrong about an amazing number of things.
Talk to a doctor about depression.
Talk to us about the nature of reality, the existence of the unique self, the meaning of continuity in the context of selfhood, and what the meaning of “is” is. These are things we know how to talk about!
Have you got anyone to help with your recovery after surgery? I don’t remember if you mentioned what kind of surgery you were having, but if nothing else it takes awhile for your digestion to come back online after the general anesthesia.
Have they said how long you’ll need to take it easy and whether you’ll need physical therapy?
Just think; in the Star Trek universe, with replicators, I just ate the same piece of bacon you ate two weeks ago!
(Ew!)
(In our own real world, the piece of bacon I just ate had trillions of water molecules that were once in the urine of the Emperor Napoleon! I’ve lieued his waterplace!)
The end is nigh. All these weeks of worrying and I’m finally in my last days. Those episodes where my heart starts racing upon thinking of the termination of my string of consciousness have been more frequent recently. I have also been listening to songs that remind me of certain good times.
How cruel it is for life to have brought me into this world where I am fully aware of my existence, only for it to make me fully aware that it will forever end one day.
If I make it out of this alive, I think I’ll learn how to appreciate life more.
Or, at least some guy that looks like you will appreciate life more. Hopefully, he will also appreciate your sacrifice so he could be spontaneously created.
Seems unlikely. This one hasn’t shown the slightest appreciation for the countless versions of himself who died so that he could spontaneously exist in this instant. And most of those people squandered their own gift by moping or else trying to poison the existence of their future successors by convincing them that life is miserable just to ease their own fleeting and entirely voluntary pain.
Just had a long and complicated hospital stay. Open fracture of tib/fib, multiple organ failure, sepsis, and some other fun stuff (well on the mend now, thanks). Had possibly ten procedures that required a GA.
(strange part is, after months in hospital, a trip downstairs to theatre is almost like a fun day out).
Anyway, no probs under GA. Seems a lot better than last time, nearly 25 years ago: woke up back then with no sensation of time having passed, and was waiting for them to give me another shot because the first one hadn’t “taken”, but realised it was over, and I was being wheeled to Post Op. Then I threw up. This time, a normal sense of time having passed (just like sleep) and no nausea.
No, GA was fine. The REALLY weird shit was the weeks in Intensive Care Unit when I was out of my skull on morphine, and I visited some very far away planets.
Now, if they ever invent teleporting, THAT is some shit I’d be wary of. Having my body possibly deconstructed and re-assembled elsewhere. Is it still me? But a general anaesthetic, naaah, cool with that.
I’m having it done in two days now as it happens. I’m so scared. So, so scared.
Consciousness DIES. It completely goes out. Not like sleep where you know how much time has passed, or where you move into a more comfortable position if you’re in an awkward position, or where you dream. No. This is the CLOSEST thing to death you will ever “experience”.
How is this COMPLETE cessation of consciousness any different from the teleporter scenario? I don’t get it. And yes, I know the brain still WORKS, but that’s only to maintain bodily functions, NOT consciousness.
These are my last two days in the universe. I will be dead forever, and when my replacement ultimately comes on here to say “oh, everything went fine, I’m alive”, there will be no way of knowing if that was truly ME. The me that is experiencing the world right now.