Is it possible for a non spiritual to think about metaphysical topics without getting depressed?
I noticed that the most down to earth, scientific minds I've met avoid metaphysical topics like the afterlife, the meaning of life, etc. Since they don't have spiritual or religious believes, thinking about it leads to emptiness, so they simply avoid it and focus on the moment.
My question is: is it possible to bypass that unpleasant feeling without some kind of spiritual theory that gives life a meaning? Like getting closure with the fact that life doesn't have meaning, that there is probably nothing in the afterlife, etc, and not feel bad about it, not lose motivation to live another day. (Whether there is something or not in the afterlife is not what I want to talk about, I'm just wondering if we could deal with the fact that there is nothing, and be happy about it).
My question is: is it possible to bypass that unpleasant feeling without some kind of spiritual theory that gives life a meaning? Like getting closure with the fact that life doesn't have meaning, that there is probably nothing in the afterlife, etc, and not feel bad about it, not lose motivation to live another day. (Whether there is something or not in the afterlife is not what I want to talk about, I'm just wondering if we could deal with the fact that there is nothing, and be happy about it).
Comments (38)
Why would we feel "bad" after thinking that there is nothing in the afterlife?
Because picturing "nothing" is scary, because death is scary? Also about the meaning of life, there isn't any, why don't we all commit mass suicide?
I don't find it leads to emptiness, and I don't think there is a particular moment on which to focus.
I will have an afterlife if you count the worms and flies and such.
Well I've done it, but I do acknowledge that the typical person has a need for that focal point. It's just human nature. I have more of a need for truth than a need for imaginary comfort, but I was surprised to find the latter (and meaning as well) anyway.
Life in general may not, but mine does. What about family and such? What's wrong with that as meaning?
This statement seems to make the assumption that there is an afterlife, but an empty one, sort of like your experience suddenly just going sensory-deprivation after your body dies. The statement makes no sense unless you believe in an afterlife.
javi2541997 seems to also make this assumption.
Quoting SkalidrisDeath is only scary if you make those 'spiritual' assumptions.
So what's your imaginary comfort on this one? That you live for your family? What if your family was dead and you didn't have any friends? Would you then still be comfortable that life has no meaning?
Quoting noAxioms
It does not indeed. "There is no afterlife" makes more sense.
Picture the nothingness is not scary at all. It gives a sense of freedom and rest. We have to face death and understand this natural process. Don't be scared and everything would be fine.
Mass suicide is worthless because suicide itself should be seen from an individualistic point of view. Killing myself could be a respectful and honourable act if I do not want keep living. I am not afraid of having this feeling when I become older.
Y: You fool, nothing is precisely what scares me!
:rofl:
Family gives meaning. Maybe leaving something behind in my career. If I have none of that, yea, life can get pretty meaningless, sort of like a guy stuck for decades on a remote island.
I get comfort from lack of belief in an afterlife. Not something to fret over. I'm also an eternalist (I actually think Einstein's theory is more likely correct than incorrect), and that means there isn't a present moment that will someday not include me, or at least what I call 'me'.
Quoting javi2541997Picturing nothingness is actually really scary, and presuming that's what you'll picture after you die drives an awful lot of people to these not-so-down-to-earth beliefs.
Agent Smith says as much just above. :up:
Mark Twain said it right, comparing the supposed afterlife to the prelife:
"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
Nothingness is pure and poetic. Life tend to be fulfilled with unpleasantness. When an individual is aware of everything around him it has more chances of suffering pain due to conciousness.
But if you say to me that there is nothing after death I would take it as the pure freedom act. No more hate, disgrace, pain, disappointments, illnesses, etc...
For me nothingness after death is the real Nirvana. No more complaining about literally everything which "fulfilled" our lives.
So you're not afraid of disappearing because you believe you'll always exist somewhere in this universe? But to you, to your consciousness, the passing of time is one directional, so when it ends, will it start again somewhere else? What is it going to feel like for you?
There are probably many ways of dealing with nothingness, yours is one of 'em. Another way would be at the very least grapple with it in an attempt to understand what it is while we still have breath in us.
Your legacy is your purpose in life, who you were and what you tried to do.
I don't understand why anyone struggles with concepts of nothingness. The vast majority of the exemplifications suggested are inaccurate. The only correct comparison is 'after death' is the same as 'before birth' as indicated by Mr Twain, as quoted by @noAxioms
Your imagination is incapable of imagining nothing so it guestimates it as something. Some form of continued awareness of self and of time passing and that imagery is simply wrong.
I think this thread will probably be merged with the 'life sucks' thread.
Quoting SkalidrisSomething like that, yes.
Per Einstein, merely "a persistent illusion". Lots of things are illusions. Some of them (this one included) very much serves a purpose, so it's there, even if it's a lie.
Will what start again? There's no spotlight, nothing that 'goes' from here to there. You're positing the thing that doesn't exist in eternalism.
Wrong question. What does it feel like? I already know that. Your wording presumes the alternate view. Of course you'll find it confusing if you mix views like that.
No, just a hopelessness guy. I would see the glass completely empty.
Quoting noAxioms
I think not. I always felt this feeling and I never had motivations to get some drugs. I just accept that is better to not make plans or "dreams". I try to survive not to live a life.
So you should focus on ways that society has manufactured your meaning.. Your employer has manufactured what you do for 40+ hours a week. Your home has determined the maintenance activities to keep it from deteriorating or making your feel discomfort. The people you must interact with, friends or otherwise, determine the sorts of entertainments, ventures, and adventures you may be missing out on.
Interesting how your life is already laid out for you...
You were never here because you wanted to be. You were never here of your own accord. You are simply a monkey with the trick of linguistic-symbolic thinking, in a situatedness of your environment. You must survive by the social milieu your environment offers, you avoid discomfort (unless you are "cool" enough to seek it out), and you pursue things to prevent boredom. Repeat this for how ever many years your genes and contingent circumstances have allowed for.
Things to look for:
Humor
Consolation in the idea of the willing nature of our animal being
Things that might help you understand the inertia of this specific repetition of keeping yourself alive:
Arthur Schopenhauer- The World as Will and Representation
His Ideas: World is ever present Will that manifests in space/time/causality from our mental framework that is intrinsically linked with the "Thing-in-Itself" (Will). This insatiable Will-in phenomenal world creates the suffering of dissatisfaction and the experience of harms in general.
E.M. Cioran- The Trouble With Being Born; The Fall into Time and others
His Ideas: There is no place to go and nothing to be. Rather, there is an inertia to existence and any direction is as insignificant as another. Insomnia reveals life's true state of extreme world-weariness.
That's only one interpretation, perhaps yours. They may avoid the topic because they know nothing meaningful can be said about such metaphysics.
Quoting Skalidris
Sounds like you may have come from a religious upbringing or culture that privileges afterlife stories. I sometimes work in palliative care and I can tell you from experience that people who are dying and hold religious beliefs and beliefs in god are as likely to be frightened at the thought of dying as anyone and are often very angry, miserable and empty before death. It seems god/s don't necessarily provide consolation.
How you feel about death will depend upon more than mere religions. I expect death to be just like it was for me two hundred, two thousand years ago. In other words, nothing. To me that sounds perfectly fine. Nothingness is not to be feared or lamented. Am I happy about it? Happiness is such a puerile term. A warthog can be happy. Put it this way - thinking of death as cessation of all things does not rob me of any joy, but probably makes me appreciate the time I have a little more.
Some atheists consider death to be an aphrodisiac for living - an intensification of pleasure in the knowledge that we only have this one life so best we make use of it. Conversely, people with spiritual beliefs may minimize their experience of an earthy life and fail to use it well because they think it is but a temporary stop before immortality when the real fun begins.
I believe that understanding is always liberating. Ignorance is not bliss, false concepts can only lead to disappointment and depression.
Life may have no meaning, but only in the false conception where meaning is something bestowed on it from without. In truth, meaning is something you invest your life with.
Eternal life of an individual, family, society, or species is a false concept that cannot be realized and so can only disappoint and depress. To understand life is too understand that it is temporally bound. This is not depressing, it is just the nature of things.
More likely, they have more to their lives than mooning over imponderables.
Yes. Though I say the following without prescription, only description. I don't know what would work for you.
Mortality is scary. "Death is nothing to us" is a mantra, not a description. A mantra that may or may not work for you, depending on . . . .
Well, what precisely is the dissatisfaction? To be attached to life is natural. But to be absorbed by death is an absurdity. Yet we do it.
I believe that this is a kind of desire that "runs away with itself" -- we like life, but its only upon reflection upon its end that we become sad. How unfair, to be granted a gift only to have it taken away! Yet, we never experience our death. Our death is always outside of us. So it's the sort of thing one can fear without experience, fear without evidence to ground the fear -- so the fear grows.
The mantra "Death is nothing to us" helps me to remember that it's me that's the root of this fear, my own little thoughts, and not death.
I mean the monks, the purposefully homeless, the hipsters who go without the comforts, etc. When you mistake pursuing discomfort for being more rugged or genuine or something. Some people do it to value signal they are environmentally more aware.
Yes, of course. I can't think of anything more "unpleasant" (i.e. enslaving) than a totalitarian "meaning of life". Besides, "the afterlife" only kicks the can by begging the question of the "meaning of the afterlife."
NB: The only ultimate answer to the ultimate Why-question that does not beg the question is that there is no ultimate answer, especially for proximate beings like us. The meaning of a song comes in losing oneself one's worries, sadness or fears while singing it and not that the song ends. The journey is the destination suffices. :fire:
edit:
Let's say there is a proven "afterlife": how does the "afterlife" "give meaning" to this life above and beyond the ways I (attempt to) make my life meaningful to myself and maybe others while I'm still alive?
I do not see how it does. :chin:
X: Where are you going?
Y: Nowhere, I just like walking.
All this fitness craze that's taken the entire world by storm, there's something to it, eh?
Buying a treadmill as soon as I can.
:snicker:
I agree with you that getting closer to the scientific materialistic view of the universe and of life and human beings can lead to feeling of emptyness and desolation. At least this is what I experienced and what I saw in books like "Chance and Necessity" by Monod.
You mention 2 points that can give unpleasant feelings: meaning of life and afterlife.
Meaning of life: it is not resolved by spiritual or religious views: the presence of god or vital forces in nature doesn't make any sense as the presence of living beings. Spiritual people just avoid thinking about the meaning, sometimes they say that "only god can understand". They solve the problem just removing it from their thought.
Afterlife: the idea of "nothing" after life is actually not supported or suggested by science or by scientific common sense, science doesn't have an account for the existence of inner feelings, according tho the scientific mechanicistic view there shouldn't be any inner feeling in the universe. Science doesn't suggest anything about the birth or the end of these feelings. It could be rational even to think that inner feelings are always everywere (panpsychism or Russellian monism) and they just change in their form together with matter.
Nothingness implies absence of any sensory information as well as the absence of (un)consciousness, so there is nothing to get unhappy about since there wont be any suffering.
Somewhat oftopic
Because of our limited perspective the concept of existence after life is just as plausible as non-existence after life, it remains unboxed until proven otherwise.
e.g when a patient awakens and claims to remember 'nothing' about being in a coma, his claim refers not to his past coma but to the fact he considers his present information to have no relevancy to the question.
From a neurological perspective, it doesn't make sense to interpret memories, or their absence, as referring to an extensional past that lives outside of the present.
It's not so much about the moment of dying itself, but dealing with existential crisis during your life. If you start thinking about these topics, if you have faith, you can use that as an escape "it's fine, I'll just go to another world, and what I'm doing here is just a step to something greater".
Quoting 180 Proof
Quoting Babbeus
It keeps you focus on one step, on the life you're living now, they probably think that they will find the meaning of the afterlife in the afterlife itself, and so on. It's like a high school student who's passionate about physics and wants to understand a specific concept for which he needs more background than he has, he's just going to wait until he goes to university. But yeah you're right, it actually prevents people from thinking too far for their own good. They "trust" whatever forces out there instead of investigating by themselves. If you think about it, the "why" questions never end, the only way to get closure with it is to know where to stop, which "why" is too far from the reality we live in to make sense. So I was wondering if we could make a rational approach of metaphysics that would get people back on track of their lives, as much as religion does. Like take the physics student, if you tell him "you'll understand at university", or if you tell him "well actually we don't understand that one, it's just a mathematical model that happens to work", one is certainly more powerful for motivation than the other. With the second one, maybe the student is going to be like "well fuck this shit, I like understanding stuff completely, so I'm gonna go for engineering instead".
Or maybe the society feeds the need to understand "completely" way too much, doesn't show the uncertainties enough, keeps saying "that's okay, scientists know", or experts or whatever. So naturally people get disappointed when they realize "no one knows", not even "god". Maybe people would naturally stop the "why" questions when they realize it's out of their reach, and it wouldn't come as a disappointment if they're used to deal with uncertainties. Maybe they wouldn't try to play the superhuman who can understand several dimensions, or multi directional times even though we only know past present future. no offense.
Quoting Tom Storm
It's more than afterlife stories (cf last paragraph I wrote on this post).
There is, potentially at least, a plethora of meanings of life. Why should there be only one? The very thought that there is only one forecloses the possibility of people finding, creating their own meanings. This is what Nietzsche meant when he spoke about the inherent nihilism in Christianity.
:up:
:up:
??
Did you miss the part where I say that people assume they're gonna find the meaning of the afterlife in the afterlife itself?
I'm assuming that's how religious people could reassure themselves, yes, why not? They basically stop thinking about it because they trust God, they trust whatever is in the afterlife. So even if someone asks them "yeah but well, what's there going to be in the afterlife and after that? They can say that they will see for themselves when they get there. I'm playing the devil's advocate here, I'm neither religious or spiritual, and I've never been either of the two.
The question is whether an oulook like yours can be arrived at deliberately.