lonegardener said:@Nea, why on earth would you actually "change your pessimism" if you were absolutely certain about eternal oblivion? What’s the logic behind "trying to find something interesting in everything"?
It feels like the exact opposite to me: if I knew for sure that eternal oblivion was a fact (and honestly, I'm about 99.5% convinced right now, lol), I’d become even more pessimistic. I certainly wouldn't feel like looking for the silver lining in anything.
That said, we should probably point out a bit of ambiguity in the Freudian question. When he asks "what would you change about your life," it isn't clear if he means changing things *now*—from the moment you "realize" eternal oblivion exists until you die—or if he means looking back retrospectively, like "if you could be reborn with that knowledge from the start." It seems like you're interpreting it in that second sense, which is why you mention "youth," but even that feels backwards to me: you can't turn back the clock. No matter how I spent my youth, my "now" remains the same. Of course, that assumes we ignore the actual consequences a certain lifestyle might have on your current situation—though I think you've overlooked that too. You seem to be focusing strictly on experiences or "missed opportunities," rather than practical things like, well, "if I had saved more money, I'd actually have some cash now," lol.
The logic is that I would be more exposed—more vulnerable, less shielded (granted, being shielded is an evolutionary illusion that serves our nervous system and is necessary for its development 😎) so that
bliss—which is the only thing in this world that justifies itself—could exist. Instead of just surrendering to negative and unwanted experiences, I would be attempting to see or invent even the tiniest glimmer of light to follow amidst the general despair...
(Because once you surrender to despair, you lose the will to follow anything or go anywhere... so pessimism is ultimately a loss of the will to live and an acquisition of the will to cease existing; will is always present, it just depends on what it’s directed toward)
It seems to me quite the opposite: if I knew for sure about eternal oblivion (though even now, I am about 99.5% convinced, lol), I would become even more pessimistic and have even less desire to find anything interesting in anything at all.
That somewhat explains your tendency toward sensationalist oddities.
😛
One has to mention a certain imprecision in the Freudian question: when he asks "what would you change in your life," it isn't clear if he means "change NOW," as in from the moment you "learn" about eternal oblivion until death, or if he means "in retrospect"—like, "if you could be born again, but with that knowledge from the start" lol.
It seems you interpreted it in the latter sense, which is why you speak of "youth," but to me, even that feels backwards: you can't turn back time.
In reality, it seems irrelevant whether we are changing something in the past or the future; it can be understood either way since it's all just a hypothesis anyway. Eternal oblivion isn't a categorical fact here, just a proposition.
And propositions and hypotheses exist to give wings to the imagination. 🙂
No matter how I "spent my youth," NOW would remain the same (assuming, of course, we ignore the actual "consequences" that a certain lifestyle in the past has on the present—but I think you ignored that too, aiming exclusively at experiences or "missed opportunities" rather than things like—well, if I had saved money, I'd actually have some cash now, lol).
I was actually aiming for that sentiment of, "...if only I had been this wise back then!" 🤣
- which is inherently absurd, considering that this very "wisdom" and these insights were forged specifically because I lacked them at the time. It’s just the standard process of learning through trial and error, isn't it?
By the way, experiences are everything we actually want and truly possess. They aren't like money, which people squirrel away just to spend again later, or leave behind for an heir to blow through shortly after. Money and material goods are strictly linear (diachronically 😁) and, as far as I can tell, don't exist outside of our 3D reality (synchronously). You can't extract wealth from the constraints of space and time, except perhaps as a conceptual idea within the mind. Experiences and lived moments, however—those are the only things capable of being shared and carried beyond the bounds of space and time (if anything can be,
).
