I'm Going to Die (eventually)
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- Опубликовано: 29 фев 2024
- we're all going to die, and I'm not sure what to do about that. if you'd like to read more of my stories, more musings about death, endings, and finding hope somewhere in between, then pick up my book here linktr.ee/timhickson
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“Be ashamed to die until you have accomplished some victory for humanity” you have accomplished a victory for humanity
Nietzsche says the greatest medicine for the soul is Victory
@@adamyoung6797 what dose that have to do here?
@@rebelcommander7starwarsjur922 what
@@adamyoung6797nietzche says a lot of things 😆
@@adamyoung6797 sorry I meant what dose that have to do here idk why there is the word size instead of the word dose
For me, short dialogue in Calvin and Hobbes gives something like a peace of mind:
" - you know, I will die someday.
- yes. But on every other day you will not."
I talked with my dad about grief a while ago. His wife died before he married my mom, he had a lot to say about it. Easily the wisest man I know.
That’s amazing. Was there anything he said that stuck out to you?
@hkm7664 when he remembers his first wife he used to feel sad and angry that she wasn't here anymore. But all the time they had together was so wonderful. He didn't want to be reminded every year about one tragic event in a life of joy. So he cherished those happy memories.
I can see it in other parts of his life too. His Dad died on the streets from an alcohol addiction. But my dad still loves him and still remembers him.
I'm not sure I'll see my grandad up in heaven, but I'm happy I'll get to see my dad's first wife.
@@quagsiremcgee1647 Thank you for sharing this with us.
@@liminallilac that would be pretty cool. It would be the first time meeting him.
Tolkien very much helped me come to terms with the inevitability of death and how NOT to cope with it through the Numenoreans and their incredibly unhealthy obsession with obtaining immortality. They forsook the beauties and pleasures of living and experiencing what it means to be mortal and started closing themselves off to everyone and grew to resent and truly hate the elves for their immortality. Some Elves in fact spoke of how they envied Men because once they have experienced all the beauty of Arda they can depart and not linger on eternally and persist through all of the ages. Eru Illuvatar speaks of mortality as the Gift Of Men, and i truly believe that mortality is our greatest gift, and to some, the cruelest prank.
I heard this quote once, and it is amazing. "Don't take life too seriously. No one gets out alive." So do what makes you happy until that final crescendo.
Okay that's a *hilarious* quote and I love it. XD
There was a barber I used to regularly go to who had that quote imprinted onto wood and hung up on their wall. I never forgot it since, so glad to have it recognised somewhere else.
3:02 "We can loose dignity, we can only inherits death." Very profound insight!
My sister died 2 days ago she was 19 and I know that she been sick for a while now but I still miss but one day I will see her again and Dogs better go to heaven!
@@Moebz818 I'm glad they do!
[virtual hug]
@hansolochewbacca4260 Thankyou!
Dogs go to heaven and cats open portals to heaven from whatever dimension gods try to trap them in when they die.
I just recently started having panic attacks regarding the fear of oblivion in the face of a finite existance. Thanks for making me feel less alone in the struggle of thinking way too much about death
Oh yeah, the concept of total non-existence is typically anathema to the human mind. It takes either a strong mind, or the ability to fully let go of one's ego to come to terms with it.
I do hope you manage it eventually. :) Life feels better when you don't fear the end of the story.
I'm gonna be honest: I thought this was going to just be a video on your new book (and it is, but also more) and I had put it on in the background to do chores. But then I stood in the kitchen for 10 min because I couldn't focus on anything but what you were talking about.
My coworker recently passed - it was unexpected - and the worst part is that even though our supervisors were also grieving and trying to give us grace, none of us could really stop working. Deadlines still had to be met, meetings had to be scheduled, life moved on. (Capitalism (derogatory))
It's not the first death that's hit close to home, but it was the first that made me really question my mortality since I was a kid. I used to be obsessed with fearing when I was going to die - to the point that when I was more religious I would always pray that I would die peacefully or in my sleep because that seemed like the least scary option. For the last decade or so, though, I really haven't thought about it in regard to myself because instead of this unknown thing, it's my mom deteriorating from dementia before passing as literally a shell of herself, it's not hearing from my best friend in months and wondering if she's mad at me or just busy with school only to hear she's been in and out of the hospital with illnesses that I will never understand as she literally fights for her life because her body wants to make things as hard as possible, it's my other best friend's constant battle with that permanent escape route while myself and our friends try to remind them why life is worth living despite the pain, it's in the posts and tweets online about strangers I'll never know across the world losing their lives to things beyond their control and not being able to help besides reposting in the hopes that it never happens again. It's all around me every day because of the world we live in and it really, really sucks.
When I was in school, I thought about my legacy and the mark I would leave on the world. The ambitious part of me thought I would be a writer or a reporter, someone to tell stories that would change the world for the better. But as I've gotten older, the more I'm okay with just quietly affecting the people and world I can reach. It felt almost cowardly at one point to not reach for the stars and try to be that person who makes all the big changes, but after my mom, I realized that I can keep chasing those stars, but will I have anything left on earth after I reach them?
So much of my existential thoughts and talks with friends are on how much time we have and what we want to do with our lives. Most of us just want to be happy, have enough money for food and housing and maybe a silly, frivolous thing, and help out the people around us when we can. And a younger me might have thought that was boring, but current me is okay with that. If it's a life you enjoyed living and you did your best to make the world, even if it's just the limited world around you, a better place, then it was worth it - or at least that's what I tell myself.
I honestly don't know if there's a point to this comment, but I feel the same way, Tim. I try to remember that tomorrow or even 10 min from now is not guaranteed, so be present and don't forget why life is worth living through the little things. But more often than not, that's hard to remember because of how easy it is to doomscroll on your phone or life will oh so easily remind you that death comes for all of us eventually.
I guess I'm just trying to say that I hear you and I know so many of us who watched this also hear you. I hope you know how awesome you are and how much joy people get from your stories and your videos. Thank you for all you do; I hope you know how appreciated you are, whether it's talking about Avatar or writing things or existential videos like this. And to the person reading this comment, I hope you know how loved and appreciated you are as well - it will get easier and it will get better ❤
The only thing I have to add to this beautiful, painful, grief filled comment is to always always always, tell but more importantly show those you love that you love them as often as you can. Death can take us, but if we or they go into the wherever after knowing and feeling loved then although the journey may be alone, we at least won't feel alone
You sir, knew what you were doing with that thumbnail and title! And it worked in just the right way and I like it!
>:/
I fr thought he had like a terminal illness or smth
It seriously terrified me!
@LuisSierra42 me especially as I've just been getting caught up on Isekai DND and found out Daniel Greene had a cancer scare recently (he doesn't thankfully)
My puppy died a few weeks ago ( i say puppy, she was 4 and a mother, she hardly was puppy). She got a very fast and aggressive cancer, she was put down. Ive been thinking a lot about death lately. I'm glad that other people are thinking about it at the moment. I need to know other people think about it.
God bless you and your puppy
I shared your Mental Illness in Video Games video from 3 years ago with my therapist last week. Been thinking about death a lot, too, if I'm honest. Watching the hands spin around the clock.
Psychiatry is the hôlôcost. Don't trust your therapist, they will kidnap and torture you.
I approach the inevitability of death by embracing it as a constant reminder of the preciousness of life. This realization empowers me to ask myself: 'If I know my time is limited, what will I do with my time on this planet?' While I haven't studied existentialism in-depth, certain aspects resonate with me - this awareness of my mortality motivates me to Live.
Memento Mori
exactly!!
1) GNU Terry Pratchett
2) Everyone is always dying - the trick to life is to slow that down to an acceptable rate. Your own death is not something to be feared - either there is something after death, in which case you will discover what that is then, and there's no more reason in advance to expect it to be bad than there is to expect it to be good; or there is nothing after death, and you won't have any opinion on it since you will not be. My mind doesn't accept "someday I will not be" as a valid thought but "someday I will not be as I am" is almost trivial - and embraces every possible outcome.
3) The pain associated with death (as distinct from the pain associated with the leadup) is entirely to do with other people - either our pain at losing contact with friends and family for the foreseeable future, or their pain at losing us (and our pain at contemplating their pain). As has been said: "Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell" - Emily Dickinson.
Unexpected death scares us, because it's a reminder of our own mortality. Death is a door one person wide. It's a release. Dying is what people are afraid of.
That's why living each day the best we can is so important, and helping those around us matters. Focusing on that helps relieve the pressure and anxiety that we aren't 'enough'.
Thank you for reaching out. It's appreciated.
Truth be told, I'm still trying to come to terms with it. I was forced to come face to face with mortality about 7 years ago when my best friend took his own life. The suddenness of it was shocking and I have spent the years since then struggling with the feeling that I don't have enough time, because I could die at literally any moment and that thought terrifies me to my core. It paralyzes me when I'm trying to decide what to do. It makes it feel like any wrong choice I make is time wasted and time wasted is my life wasted. I don't know how to push past it.
I've never heard anyone talk about ideation in a way that clicked. It always felt like something was missing or that other people seemed to have it worse than I have. But what you discussed here has put words to thoughts I've had for as long as I can remember. Thank you for that. Really.
I've also never heard death discussed with respect to memory the way I've thought of it. Just forgetting one thing at a time until there's nothing left. But it is good to know that I'm not the only one that has seen it like that. Again, thank you for that.
I noticed I was writing a whole essay
So instead my philosophy is simple, "We Live, until we Stop Living. Just try to leave this place better than you found it."
I don't fear death anymore. I have a confidence that death has been overcome. And that that confidence is available to all who ask for it.
Existential dread and fear of death is the primary reason I write most of my poetry about time, decay, and death. Somewhat cathartic.
Just know that you are absolutely killing it when it comes to reminding me of John Greens the format
I think one of the easiest ways to deal with death is to just acknowledge that its gonna happen one day, but to not let that impact you negatively, dont fear it, just enjoy the time you have and not let opportunities for happiness pass you by
This video came out at the perfect time for me. Everything was going really well for me until last night where I was thrown back into a very big episode, cause by a fight with my parents, where I did really worry and believe I was falling back into a suicidal relapse.
For me, the reason I have ever wanted or thought about ending my life was when I felt if I died my family would be happier off without me. (I am the oldest daughter of multiple children.) Ever since I was eleven I have had many nightmares where my siblings or parents would die and I would wake up believing it should have been me or that I should have saved them. I am neurodivergent and have always felt like the disappoint or the failure within my family on top of the responsibility I have as the oldest.
I love your stories and your videos. You are part of the reason I believe that maybe I can impact the world with my own paintings and books. And you helped save me, from, un-aliving. So thanks :>
Ps. This adds you amongst 'peanutbutter' in the list of why I haven't killed myself. It's honeslty just become a stupid story now but the first and thankfully only time I tried to kill myself (in the kitchen with a knife) the only reason I didn't is because I decided to eat peanutbutter instead. So yeah. I just that it was too funny not to share.
As someone who only escaped a deep dark depression because I saw in a gaming magazine that Golden Sun 2 got announced, and went "I almost missed out on that!!" I can relate.
I am glad to see that The Format is spreading to other channels
I think one of the most powerful pieces of fiction to ever tackle the inevitability of death and what to do about it is Final Fantasy XIV
Same tbh. Which is kind of funny given how long lived some of the antagonists are (and how one basically cheats death temporarily lol).
Thanks for the wonderful video (and the heart attack lol). It resonated a lot with me as someone who, although getting a bit better, has a lot of existential crisis’. Like how there’s only so much time I get and I fear I’m wasting it when everyone around me isn’t. Everyone else is doing *something* and I’m just kinda here, going through the motions. And it’s harder still because… I don’t know how either. I just feel stuck while everything moves on without me
I used to get extremely existential and depressed at night, but I kept thinking of a way to not fear death and non existence. My solution was to just think of death as if it is running away from you, or as if death is trying it’s hardest to reach you but it just can’t yet, or maybe it’s afraid of you, and once you’ll get to the realization that you are in your final stages of life, it’s not death that is creeping up on you but life that is creeping up on death . You are an honor to death, you are what death has been looking for all this time. And finally you aren’t taken by it, you let it take you. Maybe this is a little childish, but it kinda helps me out at night and helps me go through daily life a lot better. Hope it does to you too.
This is a really beautiful way to think about death! "You are an honor to death, what it has been looking for all this time" is such a cool perspective. Like the life you lived was a legend that death is grateful to accept, no matter how many tragedies or hardships you experienced.
I've dealt with depression at various points in my life and navel-gazing about the nature of death has often been part of that. I've never really feared it though, it just has always seemed like a step (admittedly one of the largest ones) in the process of life. Reading Neil Gaiman's The Sandman long ago crystallized it for me. To paraphrase Death of The Endless, I'll get what everyone gets, a lifetime. Dying sounds like it would be potentially painful and certainly scary but death just sounds like peace, just one final page in the book of life.
This is a powerful video. As someone who survived cancer in my mid-thirties, I have danced with death and I have known it intimately.
In July 2021, my best friend took his own life. The last thing we did together was have a huge fight, and I'll never be able to change that. I let my pride keep me from reaching back out and let my sadness keep me from asking if he even wanted me to. It's starting to get easier; sometimes I can talk about him without tearing up. But his death sits on my shoulders as a reminder of something, I couldn't even tell you what most days. Some days it's reminding me to curb my pride. Some days it's reminding me that I used to have someone I could talk to about anything.
But some days, it just plays memories through my mind, and I can laugh and remember. He took one of those pictures with the old man filter on it about a year before he died, so in a funny way when I'm old I'll still be able to see what he would've looked like.
Love you Gavin
The horror for death is, for me, not in the ending but the decay leading up to it. Watching this meat prison in which I am trapped slowly crumble around me unsettles me to my core. The thought of the same taking my mind is much worse.
I have always had a rather interesting relationship with death. Ever since I can remember, I have been fascinated by it. Death from Sir Pratchett's Discworld had been my favourite character since I was a child. Grim reapers, Morana, Shinigami, all of them, endlessly fascinating.
Nothing, however, drove the point to me quite as much as Dad being diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, and dying because of it several months ago. I have lived with Death for years. It is palpable, and you can fight it, you can scream at it, but in the end.. it always comes. It leaves you powerless, and watching him fight it was enlightening in a way.
My fascination didn't go away, it just evolved. It doesn't choose. It is not merciful. It just *IS* and there is nothing you can do about it.
We are mortal, and Death always comes for us. Which is why stories about Deaths themselves and people trying to fight death itself are the best there are.
My own views on this are vastly more complicated and personal than I would ever leave in a youtube comment, obviously, but a large part of my understanding of death comes from mourning. After my gran died (and I was present with my mother for the deathwatch) before her funeral I did a vigil in the Church the night before with the coffin. It was a very profound experience. It may sound macabre, but it wasn't. It gave me space to sort some stuff out. It reminds me of that wonderful exchange betwen G'Kar and Garibaldi in B5 when G'Kar is in jail: "Everything out there has only one purpose, to distract us from ourselves, what is truly important. There are no distractions in here. We can learn much from silence."
Or to put it another way, I think Tolkien was seriously onto something with the character and concept of Nienna and the grace she bestowed.
Death is water’s close companion. The two cannot be separated from us, for they are what we are ultimately made of: the versatility of water, and the closeness of death. Water has no beginning and no end, but death has both. Death is both. Sometimes death travels hidden in water, and sometimes water will chase death away, but they go together always, in the world and in us.
- Emmi Itarante, Memory of Water
I feel like I'm always struggling to find that balance between obsessing with the concept of death and functionally ignoring it as an eventual reality. It's all the harder since the cultural West (my culture) has largely abandoned its grief rituals; death has become institutionalized in hospitals and nursing care facilities. I don't mean these as criticisms, but it means that many people are separated from the reality of death. I cling to the ancient practice of momento mori: remembering that I will die. It helps me acknowledge death's reality without letting this reality control me through obsession or worry. Though, many days I keep on living as if death is this distant thing. Perhaps I'm merely a fish too used to the water I've lived in for so long.
Death was something far off in the periphery of my life, until I cared for my grandmother in her final days. It was a harsh reality to be confronted with, and since then I've had a borderline phobia of my inevitable end. But I've had some excellent therapy, and I've started writing a Speculative Fiction where I can explore the subject. And it's really helping.
I come to your videos often when I'm prepping to write. Your insights are invaluable and I know I'm not alone in wanting to thank you for all the effort you put in. 😊
The Funeralists was the story from this book that really hit me with the weight of it all ❤ superbly well written, friend.
Haven't read the book but I deal with it very badly. before i started going to a psychiatrist last autumn, I used to have almost daily thought spirals where just looking at my cat being cute would spiral to the thought of non-existence.
It would keep me up at night, and has drained me of any real drive or passion (tho i considered myself pretty passive even before).
I don't think I personally have a strong need to be remembered or leave my mark on this world, for me my fear of death was always about... not existing. that sort of un-imagineable void that lasts forever. It makes me sick to think about. But I've had days where all I wanted to do was sleep and not deal with anything. My only hope is that... once I'm older, I will be able to be feel like I've had enough, so to speak.
It's tough because I feel a twisted sense of guilt wasting the time I do have. Whether that is with my depressive mood swings, my existential spirals, my job or my hobbies; and even including just feeling guilt in the first place. Any time spent on having or trying to lessen those feelings is just time I can never get back...
It's unimagineable to me that my conciousness exists. it feels like trying to imagine endless space. some sort of cosmic horror that I cannot comprehend.
Yet here we are.
Infinity is the present moment. The "now" is always moving forward, thus it can have no end. And yet somehow it is moving forward towards the end of the lived experience. An infinite void that will not be perceived.
That was a big ramble moment but... yeah. its tough. keep fighting everyone... its the only thing we can do.
I have been scared of dying since i was aroud 10. At least, that was when I told my dad about it. I'm not scared of dying, I'm scared of what happens after it. Thanotofobia, though not formerly diagnosed as far as I know, but then again I have not read my therapists journals on me.
It even made me have panic attacks. When I was 17 it got really bad, as my panic attacks are short, a few seconds only, but it's a few seconds of pure panic where I loose complete control over myself. It's pure survival, which makes sense if you're actually in danger, but when all you're doing is peacefully making desserts in the kitchen and the next moment you're screaming while running towards the door trying to outrun a danger that's only a thought inside your own head, things get complicated. It only made me more scared. What if I was next to the road when having a panic attack? Or holding a knife in the kitchen?
Loosing control over yourself because of the thought of something you can't control. Nothing is scarier.
What helped me in therapy is giving it a name. My fear, the one who makes me loose control, that is not me, that is Veronica. By seperating me and her, it was easier to take back control. I still have panic attacks, but I don't loose control anymore, and if I do it's not for seconds, but short moment. A shake here, a yelp there. By personifying her, she gets easier to comprehend and manage.
We have personafied death for ages. In Norway the black plague was personified as an old lady named "Pesta", and you can find images and stories about her. I never understood why they created her as a child, but now I finally understand. It gets so much easier to deal with and accept death once you give her a name and a face. The unknown is scary, give it a name and a face and it gets a little more manageable.
One last quote form my therapist I hung up on my wall to always remember when I am feeling down about the inevitable end of everything:
"If everything lasted forever, would you still cherish it?"
I lost my mother at nine and death was suddenly all too real, very fast and very young. I'm 30 now and I'm still dealing with the fallout of her death as the support wasn't there in the aftermath. I'm getting help and frequently attending therapy, but before, during my teens and into my early twenties, I viewed or rather reframed death as a mercy to one's suffering. I still struggle with suicidal thoughts from time to time, and I still kind of view it as a release, but I know it would only be to myself and not the ones I would leave behind, and that knowledge coupled with highly emotional talks with my therapist has swayed me from such action.
The event of "me" coming to be again after I die as "myself" in whatever time or form is unlikely, but becomes inevitable in the context of infinity. That idea gives me comfort.
i bought your book recently. loved every story. best money i've spent in a while. thank you so much.
I look at death the same way I look at every situation: What can I do about it? Nothing? Then there's no sense in giving it any true worry. I love theorizing about death, what goes on beyond the veil, what truly happens at that juncture of life, but it's hard to actually get concrete answers. Shocking, I know, though there's been a lot of.... questionable happenings that just don't add up. Though off that subject, I actually had to pull my husband out of suicidal ideation when I met him. It took years, over a decade of working, undermining at that idea, countering every point, and showing him once and for all that things change, they can get better, and we can force our situation into a better position. And it's worked. He's now dead set on us getting a home, him getting an orchard, garden, and green house of his own, and us living outside the city away from the drama and headache.
I deal with death by staring at it straight and the eye and making a conscious decision to live every time. It's hard, but it got easier after i sought help. You helped me find help, Tim.
as far is YT videos go this is a work of art in a wonderful way.
I think i really really needed this rn
Thank You so much Tim
I think about my death a lot and all I keep telling myself is that I hope when it's my time, I'm ready to go. I want to feel like it's ok and that its time.
Here's something I tell myself regarding death. It may just be cope, but it's comforting to me, as it provides for a "life after death" without souls.
Essentially, take two precepts:
1. Materialism is correct. Our consciousness is nothing more than a finite collection of matter and energy, structured in a certain manner.
2. The universe/multiverse is infinite. The jury is still out on this, but lots of physicists believe this is likely.
Given those two starting points, I do not see how we ever experience the end of consciousness. This is because in an infinite universe, there is a small but finite chance that the proper organization of matter and energy to provide for continuation of our consciousness will come into being after our death. Finite chances in an infinite universe, in fact, happen an infinite number of times. So you will just be somewhere else after death. A Boltzmann brain floating in space? In a new 3D printed body? A digital upload? Could be any one of those things. Even the eventual heat death of the universe might not mean the end, because there's no reason why your subjective experience of consciousness couldn't happen earlier, rather than later (as under some understandings, the forward flow of time is just an illusion caused by our brain).
Of course, this gets back to the whole transporter paradox. People raise that a "copy" is not the same thing as the original. But I find this unpersuasive. On an atomic level, there's no difference between the hydrogen atoms in your body and my own. Essentially all of the atoms in our body get recycled from year to year, making us a real-life Ship of Theseus. Even the new instance being in a different physical location should not matter, because there's no such thing as absolute position in the universe, only relative position. The only way to get around this is to posit something unique to your body which cannot be copied, which is, in effect, a soul. Something materialists should not believe in.
It's also worth noting - given the Ship of Theseus issue - that a copy wouldn't really need to be perfect. We're changing in small ways constantly, and sometimes dramatically. People can lose a limb without becoming a new person. I've never experienced traumatic brain injury, but I also presume that people who do so (or who get amnesia) don't suddenly become a new consciousness, with the old one undergoing oblivion. This means that there's only a subset of our physical/mental state that divides "usness" from the experience of another person.
Thus - at least providing the universe is infinite - I do not think conscious experience needs to end upon death. I don't know what may come next. It could be great, or awful. I could lose all my memories in the process. But I am inclined to think that even in a universe without souls, the qualia of consciousness will, in some manner, continue on.
If the universe is infinite in the right way for everything that could happen to eventually happen somewhere/when, then there will also be a very large number of variants of you out there. Which counts as "you" is an interesting question...
Right. And this gets to one of the issues in quantum mechanics related to the observer paradox.
To boil down simply, particles don't seem to behave "properly" on the subatomic level unless they're being "observed" by a person. They work more as probability waves. The two classic interpretations of this are either there's something special about consciousness that can alter physical reality, or that we're seeing interference patterns from alternative universes.
Let's say it's a bit of both. If the universe is infinite, that means there are alternative Earths out there, in identical galaxies, even identical bubbles of the observable universe - just unimaginably far away. On a macroscopic level, everything would look identical. But on a quantum level, it would not.
Thus, if we don't directly observe something, it's "fuzzy" because we're not just one "I" but a superposition of countless selves. But if we directly observe a thing, it crystalizes us down to a much smaller subset of being.
@@Karl.Zimmerman A better description of the observer effect in quantum mechanics is that interacting with a quantum system merges your system with that system, and your possible states are then correlated with its possible states.
So in the case of Schrodinger's Cat, before I open the box, if I try to guess the cat's state, the whole setup has four possible states: "the cat is alive and I think the cat is alive"; "the cat is dead and I think the cat is alive"; "the cat is alive and I think the cat is dead"; and "the cat is dead and I think the cat is dead". Further, those four states can be broken down into "the cat is alive" or "the cat is dead" and "I think the cat is alive" or "I think the cat is dead", with the two being completely independent of each other - my beliefs and the cat's actual state have no influence on each other in any way.
Once I open the box and look inside, two of the four states go away and we're left with "the cat is alive and I know the cat is alive" and "the cat is dead and I know the cat is dead" and you can no longer separate my beliefs and the cat's actual state.
From your perspective, knowing that I was doing the experiment, and when I was to open the box, before I open the box, you know that the cat and myself are independently in superpositions of our two possible states, giving the four possible states overall. After the moment passes, you still have us in a superposition, but now it's a single superposition of the two correlated states. When I then text you the outcome of the experiment, you join our superposition, and your guess as to the cat's state becomes correlated with its actual state, so the version of you that believes the cat is alive only exists in the scenario where the cat is alive, and similarly for the cat being dead.
But there's nothing about that process that requires consciousness - within the box, the radioactive sample, the geiger counter, and the canister of poison gas each exists in a superposition of possible states, renewing their correlations each time they interact, bringing them into the same superposition from my perspective outside the box, and, if they had perspectives, knowing each other's states from their own perspectives.
@@rmsgrey Yes, all of that is true. That said, I've read enough regarding quantum physics to know the question of whether an "observer" needs to be a conscious entity or not is subject to debate. Some argue that any number of things, from computers to totally inanimate objects - can technically be observers, while others disagree.
My math brain is weak, so I'll just wait out that debate, thank you very much.
I lost my mother on the 10th of last month to sepsis. It was so fast and so sudden, I'm still trying to process it. But the most important thing is that we remember her in joy. Regardless, I still miss her.
I'm going to die(depressed)
vs
I'm going to die (smiles at you with sunglasses on)
I'll live my life how I want to live it moment to moment and when the time comes, it'll come. I made paces with death when I was like 12 for some reason lmao.
Writing the NATLA review video has you exploring the very nature of humanity and death! Keep up the good work, dont overdo it!
I got your book as for my own request for christmas and having watched your videos for years, I feel that I can really tell that you have put your heart and soul into each story. I especially liked the one about the beach where all lost and forgotten things get washed up, I thought the interaction of the lighthouse keeper and the girl were delightfully strange and sweet and the ending (no spoilers here) made my tear up a little bit.
Dealing with thoughts about death is a bit of a rough topic for me personally, having dealt with suicidal thoughts in my teenage years. I still feel that it is sometimes too easy on a bad day to catch myself glimpsing into the abyss again and being uncomfortably calm about these sorts of thoughts.
Most of the time, I am good now though. I am not a religious person (not anymore at least), but I find comfort in thinking about how nothing ever truly goes away and it's all a big cycle. Once I am no more, I would like to be placed in a forest so a tree or something else can grow there, so my atoms may be part of a new living being. Being a very nature-loving person, I find this thought somehow very nice.
I think im going to buy one if your books and give it a read. Your ideas and thoughts hit pretty deep. Sounds interesting
Cried on the bus reading it, on of my favorites!
“All men die, not all men die complaining.” -Marcus Aurelius
Said a man with more power and comfort than the rest of the world.
@@SEPR2 to quote Charles Bukowski
“for those readers now
sick at heart
believing that I’m a contented
man--please have some
cheer: agony sometimes changes
form
but
it never ceases for
anybody.”
No amount of wealth or power will save you from the human experience. To ignore Aurelius’ words simply because he was the most powerful man in the world (they thought) at the time would be foolish. It doesn’t disqualify him from being human.
Hey Tim, since this raises your spirits I will tell you that your videos on fight scenes really helped me. ☺️
To answer your question, I'm not really afraid of death, at least not my death, and not at this moment. In all honesty, I'm afraid of life. It's unpredictable and things just happen, but from what I believe everything involving death just stops.
I felt the same way until I had a heart attack and needed surgery. Actually facing death changes how you look at life.
There was an interesting shift in my reaction to death thought spiralling that since the age of 5 or 6 used to result in a panic attack every week or so, and that happened when I found myself in a war zone, facing the much increased risk of premature death. I'd tell myself that the only way to deal with the inevitability of death is sticking it to it with a life as full of possible of, well, life, but I only *felt* that when I was in constant danger about average. Everything I did or see or feel became the most important thing in the world, totally eclipsing the usual death thoughts trying to encrouch down the usual route. The prospect of non-existance stopped mattering, not because I rationalized it to be less frightening or found a way out, but because I had no room in my mind and heart for it. Now that I'm out of there the panic attacks seem to be slowly creeping back, and finding myself back at square one yet fucking again on my life path at 31 while facing medical stuff that might or might not turn out to be cancer makes me pretty desperate.
This is not advice to go find yourself a dangerous situation obvs, but rather if you find it hard to escape these thoughts or doesn't know what to do with them, while people around keep saying how it helps them value life or something and you don't find that helpful, it's not your fault and it apparently doesn't work like that. Coming to a reluctantly satisfying conclusion about metaphorical immortality or life fulfillment does not automatically mean you've dealt with the going-to-die fact. It took me some extraordinary circumstances to *feel* that readiness rather than reach it in words, and it wasn't permanent either.
I have some anxiety from time to time, and tonight was a nice time to see this video
*gives hug*
You definitely don't feel that at the moment, but having your existential crisis earlier in life is actually extremely beneficial. Until you wholly accept and comprehend the limits of your own existence you'll always live in unconscious fear of the edges. Once you know your existence's limits you realize... There aren't so many to begun with. You'll be alive for all times that you can perceive. An existential crisis is extremely hard, but it's certainly worth it. Nearly anyone who's had to face it early because of a terminal disease would agree.
All this time I had no idea you had a published novel out in the world! How exciting, especially considering it's always-relevant subject matter. I'm sure it'll find its people.
I deal with death by striving to live without regrets and sharing life with others. I know neither the form or time of death, and I know fear will always be there in my mind. But I can control how I decide to live my life, and I decided to enjoy it to the very last, in all its shades and forms.
This video feeds right into my on-and-off existential crisis that I'm having for about half a year now. Life really is weird because it's so intimately connected to death. We need that feeling of something continuing on even after we're gone, because otherwise what's it all been for?
I'd love to read your stories, but I don't think I can yet. Thinking about death is driving me mad.
I’ve struggled with this a lot. When I can feel days slipping away from me, and when I’m trying to sleep, I keep repeating “I’m gonna die, oh god I’m gonna die.” I find that I feel this most acutely when I haven’t made the most of that day; when I haven’t actually been living.
To avoid this, whenever I’m with friends, when I achieve a goal or milestone, or whenever I’m walking and listening to a song I enjoy, I will say to myself “I’m alive, oh god I’m alive.”
The fact that in a universe that began billions of years ago with a bunch of circulating gas, we have this time to live and the potential to have such beautiful experiences is an astronomical coincidence. Even if we have to return to the nothingness which we came from, we are alive now, and we always will have been alive now.
wonderful video!
I'm at a bit of a low point in my life, wondering just what in the world to do with it, and i do find my thoughts drifting to death every now and then, making me all the more frustrated with myself that i'm not getting a move on and doing something with it. Being so young myself death is something really hard to wrap my head around but even then it makes me realize just how priceless time really is and how important it is to spend it well. I'd like to think I'm not so much afraid of dying as i am afraid of wasting my life to make me afraid of it. In any case, I just hope to not take my life for granted.
I've been dealing with my sense of mortality lately ever since I got into my career and felt complete in my professional life, more or less. That's also bled into thinking about the mortality of my friends and especially my family. As a 28 year old (at the time of writing this), and think about my inevitable end, it terrifies me more than it did when I was in my teens and early 20's because I had this sense of invincibility and death didn't feel real or scary to me. Now that I'm getting older and becoming more of an adult, and have more responsibilities and friends who care about me, it terrifies me because I think about how others will go on without me. I think about the impact my existence has on others and the despair that would bring to them when I'm not physically here with them anymore. The pain that will cause them, and how they will move on from me because I care about them. That, and dying eventually personally freaks me out because of how it might feel, and because there is so much unknown, and the thought of possibly becoming nothing (if no afterlife exists) freaks me out because I simply don't understand that. Ultimately, I've come to the conclusion that as someone who is young and has their whole life ahead of them, I'm not meant to accept death or dying yet so young. I think it's something that gets better with age and time as we become wiser and more experienced seeing and living through death from our friends and loved ones. It doesn't eliminate the fear entirely, it may even get worse. We are hardwired to want to live and survive. But it does become easier to to accept within ourself as we grow older in this wild, treacherous, but surprisingly fun journey in the little bits of happiness, weird randomness, and monotony we call life 🤷🏽♂️
I've come to see life as a story, death is just the end of the story. After you're gone people will share their favorite memories of the story we were and be sad that it's over. We all touch the lives of other as they touch ours. Those interactions are immortality as we've changed the stories of others.
I stopped worrying and thinking about death when I realised it was the only certainty
Honestly death doesn't scare me at all. Probably too little. My spouse dying on the other hand - that I am very sure I could not survive. This possibility and the aftermath haunt me more than I'd like to admit.
My cat died two weeks ago, so I've been thinking about death a lot recently too. This video really helped recontextualize what I've been feeling. So thank you.
Nice knowing I’m not only one constantly thinking about it
This video came at a good time, ive developed an obsessive fear of death after growing up religious and not yet able to unpack my thoughts on the afterlife
Thinking about saying my final goodbye to life, hopefully I can enjoy eternal peace in the afterlife.
I came to terms with death at a very young age, around when I was 5 or 6. The aspect I've yet to come to terms with is how that seriously affects my interactions with others when death is involved; I come across as detached to others, when the truth is I just internalize it differently.
It’s not that we fear death, but facing what is on the other side. If we all look inside ourselves, I think we can feel that our actions in life will have consequences. Not one of us is a saint. We are all flawed. I used to lie awake fearing what the consequences of my actions would be when I died. But now I’ve finally found peace, knowing that Jesus Christ has paid the fine of my sin. He alone saves.
I kind of agree with Ecclesiastes’ view on the subject. It’s all smoke, so why continue trying to grasp what we can never hold? It’s an understanding I will never achieve so I’ll just be content to live along side it. When it comes I’ll grieve and in between I’ll enjoy what I have. There’s no point in getting lost in the smoke when I can just let it pass me by.
This video was surprisingly what I need at the moment and it summarised perhaps every thought I've ever had about death. I relate so much to everything that was said, I realised the horror of death and an inevitable end when I was quite young 6 or 7 I think it was and I've struggled with that realisation and a deep rooted nihilism ever since. But something that helped me was realising that at the end of the day death comes for us all, it's the one thing we are all equal in. I can't do anything to stop it, and pondering what comes after just leads to madness. The only thing I can do, I can control is how I live my life and how I great death in the end which I hope I'll greet peacefully, as a friend and with no regrets.
On his deathbed, my dad struggled through the cancer and the medications to relay his last words to me: "don't worry about me, I'm going to a better place...
...and even if I'm not, I've still had a good life."
My family and I are religious, but it doesn't always help. And I think that's okay. I believe in a life after death, but it doesn't remove the sting of death, of loss, of grief. And that's okay.
Even though I believe in life after death, I still find value in thinking about life as if this earthly life is all we have. Cuz then I can think about what to do with my time here, how to positively impact the people around me. How even if I'm not going to a better place, I can still have a pretty good life.
Whenever I think about death I honestly am reminded of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest story in the world. Not necessarily the story itself (tho that does hold some pretty interesting lessons of life and death) but rather the nature and history of the story itself. The Epic of Gilgamesh was kinda forgotten about for many centuries. It was only in the late 1800s that the tablets of the story were found and then like 50 more years (I think) until it would be translated. But when I first read it, I couldn’t help but compare the epic to modern day stories. Not only does it have the oldest known tales of (basically) Noah’s Ark and also a concept of the underworld/godly-realm/whatever-you-wanna-call-it (tho both of those things are also present in the Atrahasis, which is technically even older than Gilgamesh but not counted as the oldest story since it’s referred to as a religious text), but the Epic also displays similar themes and characters that you would find later in Ancient Greece and Persia, and then even later to today. Gilgamesh himself is quite literally the definition of a "manly man," something VERY present in many Eurasian and Mediterranean mythologies, and then also in stuff like comic books today. Then there’s the relationship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu, a ‘brotherly’ bond that surpasses all other bonds, which can be seen with Achilles and Patroclus, and then in the modern day with Sam and Frodo. I even wrote an entire essay on how the nature of these themes/tropes may not have served as direct inspiration for certain stories, but you can see the influence carry on through time and space. Basically, what I’m trying to get at is that your name is not immortal. Even with the Internet, everyone will be forgotten at some point. But just because your name is forgotten doesn’t mean that your influence stops carrying on. Gilgamesh was forgotten for millennia, and even if we hadn’t rediscovered him, his influence still would have been important because we can see it even in the modern day. Your name will die, but I don’t think that really matters as much as we think it does. Your influence, however, will carry on forever even if people don’t realize it.
I've been thinking about death a lot lately. I lost my mom in November and its been an echo in everything I see, everywhere I go, in everything I feel and I have no idea where to go or what to do now. Its very strange.
Sounds a bit reminiscent of 100 Years of Solitude (to be clear, i mean that as a compliment 😊). I just finished it and I'm still sitting with it. There's something extraordinarily poignant about the end of a community, however troubled or twisted. The end of that book encapsulated it so well. The sense of dying 100 little deaths until suddenly the last remnants are blown away by a strong wind.
Almost exactly a year ago, I encountered a similar feeling from Children of Memory. In retrospect, I think it took some inspiration from 100 Years of Solitude. I don't really want to spoil the book because it is truly excellent, but again it hit that note of death, of being worn inevitably away to nothing. I think that book was even more poignant and tragic in its way. Again, I don't want to spoil it. But it was a fabulous read that I'll never forget.
I look forward to reading your book.
This is the greatest way to sell me on a book I've ever seen
I think that, for me, reading history has been my greatest aid for hangling death. Realizing that I'm not so much a protagonist but a witnes,. To know that I belong to a long line of creatures that lived their lifes just like I do, makes me feel less alone.
I’ve long accepted death and my eventual non-existence. Not sure where exactly I found it as a teen but the core philosophy stems from “Existence is better than non-existence”.
My life will amount to nothing in the grand scheme and that let’s me focus on My Purpose. Because my purpose has nothing to do with the expansive universe, the big planet, my navigable country, my sprawling city. It has everything to do with me. What do I WANT from my life because in the end we all return to dust.
And I want to experience stories. Feel big feelings. Love and laugh with my Whanau - those of blood and water. To experience everyday, grateful it isn’t yet time for my non-existence, but knowing when the time comes that I enjoyed my life and it was good. I can’t ask more of a life.
I've found myself re-evaluating how I think of death in recent years.
I first started grappling with the idea of mortality at the unusually young age of five. I don't remember what prompted it exactly, but for some reason I became consumed with the idea of my parents dying (perhaps due to the prevalence of orphaned protagonists in kids media I grew up with) or even myself. I would wake up scared in the night and go check on my parents to see if they were still alive. It got so bad that my Mum desperately resorted to the bare faced lie of "You're not going to die." Somehow that worked for a while and I was able to put my fears over mortality behind me and be a normal kid again (at least until my late teens/early 20s).
For a long time I was (to an extent I still am) your typical twenty-something anxious that he won't ever be successful in life and that he would be a disappointment to his parents. Needless to say suicidal thoughts are nothing new to me. I think of ending it all on a near daily basis and I used to wallow in that despair. When my grandmother on my Dad's side passed away around four years ago she wasn't the first family member I'd lost. I had lost my other grandmother well over a decade before that, but was not close enough for her loss to bother me too much. I had also lost some uncles on my mother's side but, again, none so close that I was devastated. My main concern with those deaths was being there to support my Mum. But with my paternal grandmother it was different. She had been my regular babysitter since infancy and, after our parents, was the next most significant adult in my life. We saw her decline with COPD and visited her in the hospice where she spent her last months. But weirdly, when it actually happened, I was surprised by how little grief I felt. Not that there was none, but it was overridden by concern for my siblings and parents. For myself, this didn't shake my suicidal thoughts. My personal fear of death remained what it was. The next loss did though.
My Dad, passed away following a stroke brought on by lung cancer a little over two years ago. I miss him more than I ever imagined I would. But even so I don't want him back. I saw how much my Dad suffered from the cancer (he only ever received palliative care as it wasn't discovered until it was too late to do anything). I saw how that suffering was compounded by the stroke, which robbed him of his ability to focus, read, or even take himself to the bathroom. Robbing him of the personal independence which he had prized. He lasted another three weeks after the stroke, and he knew how utterly fucked his situation was. His first words to my Mum (in front of all of us) on being brought home from the hospital to his deathbed were "Shoot me." The nurses and doctors did what they could with morphine to make his last days bearable, but I know for a fact that my Dad was suffering. And that suffering is why I don't really want my Dad back. All he had left in life at that point was pain. Wanting him back would be pure selfishness.
In grieving my Dad, the rest of us have grown closer as a family, leaning on each other to get through. For my part, I have made a kind of peace with my suicidal thoughts. Sure, part of me still wants to die, but after seeing my Mum grieve for my Dad, I know better than to put her through that.
I also have come to see death in a new light. For my Dad at the end, death wasn't the enemy; life was. Life kept heaping suffering on suffering and death was his release from that suffering. I'm an atheist, as was my Dad, I don't belive he has gone to some paradise to make up for that suffering. He has instead returned to that oblivion of pre-life that we were all born from. His every thought and feeling, gone as if they had never existed.
Eventually, we will all end up in that same position my Dad was, when life has nothing left to offer but pain and at that point all of us will welcome death. In the meantime, wring as much joy as you possibly can out of that bastard, Life. Make time for your loved ones above all else, because all the rest of it: work, politics, religion, societal expectation, is just bullshit that gets in the way of joy. Sure you can't ignore them completely, but ultimately none of it will matter in the least when you die. It's just as fleeting as the good stuff so why waste more time than you absolutely have to on it? You weren't put on this earth for any purpose, life isn't about proving shit to some likely non-existant deity (and frankly if God even did exist, I'd have some choice words for that cunt). Nor is it about proving yourself to everyone else who are all too preoccupied with their own anxieties to really give a fuck. Live in whatever way makes you happy, and when Death inevitably comes knocking, open the door and give them a big hug.
I take solace in the fact that, when I'm dead, the idea of death won't bother me anymore. I will embrace oblivion.
This is the video I needed to watch, it's Been a tough time as of late, but seeing someone else Frame it from a different light has helped a lot. I'm definitely going to buy the novel when I get the chance.
Keep up the great work mate, the content you make is bloody amazing. Been here since the sub-furries days and watching your videos always brings me back to reality.
Love your work mate 🤘
I've had this conversation with my mother often after my dad died. I didn't like him at all so for me his death kind of felt like this ancient tree that was unintentionally depriving my bud of the sunlight it needed to grow was finally felled. My mom, the fearful person she is, became hyper aware of her own mortality and started preparing for it in case something were to happen to her. And both my sisters (1 from each of my parents previous marriage) reacted differently as well. But ultimately the way I look at it is that if you look for death around every corner you will find it and you will not be more prepared for it than when you started searching. But if you live not thinking of it as this huge end point of everything, you will still run into it suddenly past a street corner or something but you will have lived your life not running away from it! The world will continue and I can find solace that I, somewhere and somehow, had my undeniable butterfly effect on the world. It is a fact of life that this happens when you exist. There is no need for grand destiny, great wealth or unending fame in life. The way I picture dealing with death is the same way I deal with life. If I stress about whatever time I have left and what I'd want to accomplish and do I will forever run with death on my heels, while if I act as and when things happen and do not hurry when I do not need to all that pressure disappears (for me at least). My dad ran from death, clasping at lifesaving procedures that had a small chance of saving him, but that ended up costing him. I refuse to cling onto life like he did, and I don't think I've been scared of dying a single day since then. I will get there when I'm older and I notice that backwards slide, but until then I will enjoy my time! It is my time after all!
Hey you really helped me!
Seriously tho, for me it's best put by Catch-22 quote that goes something like that: "I was making all the problems for her and kids like her who come after me, just like everyone who came before me is the source of my problems". So education and care for future generations is the only certain constant thing for me
Have you ever read Everybody? It's a play that modernized Everyman, its heavy, but its gimmick is that every show, five of the actors roles are chosen via a lottery that happens on stage in the second scene. It travels through what connections we make and what we do with life and how that is framed in the end. One scene is just pure catharsis, even if it feels so raw and painful to read and watch. It feels so weird to read as someone who has been dealing with suicidal ideation for 11 years. Ive been trying to straighten out my thoughts on it for months now, pages of writing, sketchbooks of thumbnails, recordings of speaking through it, its been a time
I’ve been thinking about the end more than I probably should for someone in their mid 20’s, mostly because I can’t fight back the ultimate futility I feel with everything I do, especially when I have a job I have no passion for. But surrounding myself with people who have a passion and pursue it and equally encourage me to do the same has been the one thing that really makes that futility shrink down. Because more than death, I worry about not doing something meaningful and fulfilling with my life while I have the chance because just trying to survive at all is such a challenge. But I know that passion is buried deep within me under layers of futility, and I’m slowly digging it back up because I know I what I want to share with the world and what skills I have that I can do that through. I don’t care if I live forever, as long as I can make someone’s life a little bit brighter with what I make and then they in turn can do the same for someone else, that’s enough for me.
As I've gotten older over the years death comes to mind every now and again. One of the things about human beings and death I find interesting is our perspective: people are often afraid to die because they're afraid they'll miss what's next. It's all about the continuity. No one I've encountered has ever said anything about *what they've already missed.* Years, and centuries, and millenia of history - of continuity - pass us by before we're born and we don't miss it. Tomorrow is just as emphemeral and non-existant as yesterday, but we value one over the other.
It probably says something about the human animal, but I'll be damned if I know what. 😁
No one gets a pretty death where we get to say our final piece then face it, it's always too fast or too slow
Eternity has been written on the hearts of men. - Ecclesiastes 3:11 Death is the most powerful force in the world. It was unstoppable until one person did. When thinking on these topics Ecclesiastes is a great book to read. Outside of that the book Orthodoxy by G.K Chesterton is also great.
My dad got in an accident on his way to the hospital my mom told me he died as she was giving birth to me. I told her that maybe I had part of his soul and she just kind of cry laughed and she said "You had better hope god scrubbed all the sexy memories out then" because my mom is the best.
My way of dealing with death is accepting the temporary, but still putting value on what I do and who I am.
One story has to end to make room for a new one. While I might be forgotten, hopefully my attempts at being a positive influence on those around me hopefully causes a wave that lasts for much longer than my life.
The wave will stop and crash at some point too, but I can use whatever time I have to shape it and give it a good story. I'm okay with mine ending whenever because I'm always working towards things I want to do and to support those I love, trying to inspire others to do the same.
Even if I don't get to hit every goal, maybe I don't get to die a legend with decades and centuries of impact, if I go out I at least know I tried to forge that path I wanted any way possible.
I lost my best friend to suicide 5 years ago, he was 18. he inspired my entire career path, what I do as a hobby and I can still see his wave going strong not only in me, but plenty of others as well, specifically because he was just very passionate about the things he loved, tech, videogames and programming.
I hate that he didn't see the impact he had, but I'm just glad knowing that even when you don't see it yourself, others will do and carry it on for ages.
As a religious person who likes philosphy (mainly socrates) it genuinely baffles me how more people who are not religious do NOT simply turn to nihilism.
Because without any kind of higher purpose, any progress, achievements, or really…. anything, will be simply lost to time, eaten by the death of a star and completely meaningless.
Progress for the sake of progress without any end goal is fairly meaningless. What does it matter if someone dies today or tomorrow, what does anything they did in between matter?
The conclusion I have come to, especially after watching this, is most people either choose to ignore that burning question, or they don’t even consider it entirely. Because when the question is considered, something like this video emerges.
My one-year-old sister died of cancer, and she inly made it to one year of age because my mother kept her alive. I have also contemplated and attempted suicide a few times, but the self-defense mechanisms of my body are too strong and I am not miserable enough to overcome those defenses. I have never thought living is a blessing. Even though i have had a blessed life. I was born in venezuela but was blessed with a father that got us out to immigrate legally into USA. I got a B.S. and an M.A. in Hawaii and became a US citizen and I now live in Japan doing my ideal job, and I still don’t think life is a blessing. I live knowing that one day it all may or may not blow up and knowing death is coming gives me comfort that there is a way out into permanent oblivion. No worries, no problems, no bullshit. No chronic health problems, no psychological problems. No taxes or debt or insurance, no crime or war or accidents. Death will one day come to save me, but i worry it might be a slow, painful and dragging death. Damn, life sucks, and all we have to live for are moments of joy. Do not recommend.
I dunno, maybe I'm a lil broken? I find the concept of death immensely comforting. there's an epicurean concept that I like so much I got it as my first tattoo: "non fui, fui, non sum, non curo" - "I was not, I was, I am not, it does not matter." basically, equating the time before you're born with the time after you die. you didn't exist for billions of years of the universe, you won't exist for billions more. there is no onus of responsibility innate to your current existence, you have to go about creating your own meaning & one day it stops; the time before you were born didn't hurt or have any particular influence upon your life, the time after you die should be treated the same way.