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Originally Posted by TheSilentEmpath
Anyone else constantly slapped in the face by the fact that everything you do, everything you dream, everything you are.. has all been done and thought before and is utterly pointless?
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Couldn't agree less. I'm entirely and firmly convinced that all human beings, including all those who lived and died in the past, occupy entirely original personality and experience niches that never existed before and will never be copied again. We are not numbers, not clones, not robot ants. Our individuality is absolute. Is this reasonable? Think about the realities of snowflakes. And no, this is by no means some knee-jerk, defensive reaction on my part, reflecting some emotional fear of what you describe. It's a point of view I've developed only after many decades of experiencing my own and other people's internal realities.
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That the human race as a whole is disturbed, perturbed, devious, deceptive, and destructive?
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Yeah, we have those capacities. Many people choose simply not to use them. And those who don't use them are a significant percentage of the whole, quite possibly a majority for all I know. Those are natural capacities, inherited from our animal ancestors. We can choose to act otherwise. Why would we do so? Because humans also have a specific, inbred intelligence of the fact that acting as good samaritans does everybody good.
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That absolutely nothing matters in the end, no matter what importance you assign it now?
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Oh, but you're wrong! Your kindnesses can live forever in an infinite chain of individuals affected by your own goodness.
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That everything you see as beautiful is fleeting and will die?
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And will be immediately replaced by other beautiful things perhaps even more beautiful than what has passed away.
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That everyone you know will forever consider their own interests first, because to do so is human nature?
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All evolved, living beings MUST consider their own interests first, otherwise they will die. There is nothing wrong in doing so. There is no contradiction between doing what is needed to stay alive and helping others.
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Subsequently, That you should just kill yourself because there's no true point to living.
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Ah, my friend, there is EVERY point to living. Living is a celebration of a very special form of matter in which we are terribly lucky to take part, a line dance hundreds of millions of years long in which we join as the absolute elite of the universe of material things, since most matter is rock and sand and gas.
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I'm nearly constantly in a fully blank and apathetic state. I have gone years like this, interspersed with days or individual weeks of fleeting, exuberant joy, and consecutive weeks if not months or more of a crushing demotivation and depression. All the while I am quiet. All the while I observe and I learn and it is from this observation that I draw my semblance.
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That's a shame. Change is possible for many, perhaps for you too. Try to imagine a life without this awful vibration between joy and misery. No, you're quite right, there are no guarantees. But many, many people have graduated from one to the other.
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To say I hate my mind would be the gravest of understatements. I would rather be idiotic, immoral, a complete *****, and happy (or at least on the emotional norm) than intelligent, inhibited, overly forgiving, and blank or sad almost all the time.
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Again: change is possible. Find out whether that's so for you. It's intense work. Requiring the commitment of a special forces soldier. You have to want it with every molecule of your being. But then things happen. You see and feel things you've never seen or felt before. Try it. It's worth it. And take care.
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We must love one another or die.
W.H. Auden
We must love one another AND die.
Ygrec23