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I am nothing

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

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Re: I am nothing

#91

Post by pygorex »

> But I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself.

But if I am nothing what entity is contemplating my nothingness? I most definitely must be a something - thinking of myself as a non-something is necessarily a delusion. It's illogical to engage in identity denial - instead I should try to engage in identity variation, approaching myself (and others!) with a different set of assumptions from time to time (which I believe was the spirit of the original post). It's silly to start a process of self-actualization by denying the very thing I am trying to actualize.

Or, as follows: I exist as a unique locus of space and time and so do you. I can share a room, a table, a meal, a conversation, even a lifetime with you but I can't be you - I can only be myself experiencing you. Your identity is yours and yours alone and you are always free to be yourself. In fact you are required to be yourself - after all who else could you be?

I intend to own my identity for the brief flickering moment that it exists. The mindless and momentous machinations of the universe have create the fragile consciousness that I am, and very soon these same machinations will erase me to nothingness. I see no reason to get a head start on being nothing.

Re: I am nothing

#92

Post by DanielBMarkham »

This is good. Reminds me of my observations on Hugh Everett's life and my conclusion to believe in anti-solipsism. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_first_ant...

I'd encourage Paul to take the next step, and realize that not only are you nothing, what you do really doesn't matter at all (Perhaps very difficult for Paul to believe, given his accomplishments! But true anyway)

Once you realize you're nothing, and what you do in life won't really matter -- life is fundamentally and irrevocably absurd -- then you can really be free to make the most with what you have. Because just realizing you transcend labels doesn't take the existential pressure off until you realize you also transcend existence itself -- you are truly and deeply nothing. At that point, you realize that the decisions a person makes is the only thing they truly own. This is the beginning of freedom.

It all sounds a lot like existentialism 101. Good stuff!

Re: I am nothing

#93

Post by pygorex »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #92

This is good. Reminds me of my observations on Hugh Everett's life and my conclusion to believe in anti-solipsism. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_first_ant... I'd encourage Paul to take the next step, and realize that not only are you nothing, what you do really doesn't matter at all (Perhaps very difficult for Paul to believe, given his accomplishments! But true anyway) Once you realize you're no…

If a person is "truly and deeply nothing" then how is that person making decisions? I can understand feeling like nothing - but something has to exist to have a feeling of nothingness in the first place.

Re: I am nothing

#94

Post by [deleted] »

pygorex wrote: post #91

> But I am nothing, and so I am finally free to be myself. But if I am nothing what entity is contemplating my nothingness? I most definitely must be a something - thinking of myself as a non-something is necessarily a delusion. It's illogical to engage in identity denial - instead I should try to engage in identity variation, approaching myself (and others!) with a different set of assumptions from time to time (whi…

[deleted]

Re: I am nothing

#95

Post by alnayyir »

pygorex wrote: post #93
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #92

This is good. Reminds me of my observations on Hugh Everett's life and my conclusion to believe in anti-solipsism. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_first_ant... I'd encourage Paul to take the next step, and realize that not only are you nothing, what you do really doesn't matter at all (Perhaps very difficult for Paul to believe, given his accomplishments! But true anyway) Once you realize you're no…

If a person is "truly and deeply nothing" then how is that person making decisions? I can understand feeling like nothing - but something has to exist to have a feeling of nothingness in the first place.

Pop philosophy doesn't stand up to that kind of logical scrutiny. It's usually bike shed painting rationalized by ego or emotion.

I love the near-perfect unintentional parody of the Jewish tale of three old men arguing over who was most unworthy.

Re: I am nothing

#96

Post by DanielBMarkham »

pygorex wrote: post #93
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #92

This is good. Reminds me of my observations on Hugh Everett's life and my conclusion to believe in anti-solipsism. http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2007/11/the_first_ant... I'd encourage Paul to take the next step, and realize that not only are you nothing, what you do really doesn't matter at all (Perhaps very difficult for Paul to believe, given his accomplishments! But true anyway) Once you realize you're no…

If a person is "truly and deeply nothing" then how is that person making decisions? I can understand feeling like nothing - but something has to exist to have a feeling of nothingness in the first place.

I do not mean "truly and deeply nothing" in some sort of sense that it is impossible to perceive you, or in the sense that somehow you should be depressed. I meant "nothing" in the sense that in the cosmic scale of things, no matter what you do, nobody will ever remember it and it will make no significant difference ten thousand years after you are gone. Yes, in a very temporary way, you have the properties of existence, but the time-frame is so narrow, your impact so minuscule, that the limit approaches zero. I'm not sure if there is some other word for it -- nothing seemed the most appropriate.

This is not nihilism. As I said, understanding the astonishingly small (and basically non-existent) nature of your life is one of the necessary steps to understand what it really means to exist in the first place. That is, as Paul says, if you think you are X or Y, then you are never freed to be a better version of yourself. This is because you are comparing yourself to some external standard that you can never be. Likewise, if you think that somehow "being a better person" is a journey that leads you somewhere that has lasting consequences you are also lying to yourself -- it really doesn't matter. What you need to understand that it is the daily decisions to be a better person that matter, not the comparison between yourself today and some future state that you are headed towards. This is the same mistake that Paul describes, only he is talking about comparing yourself to some label, while I am talking about comparing yourself to some future version of yourself that you are headed towards.

Does that make sense?

Re: I am nothing

#97

Post by rytis »

mjijackson wrote: post #62
paul wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you think you know, there's a risk that you stop learning, that you discard other possibilities.

I absolutely agree with this sentiment. This is the "box" that I was referring to above. It represents the limit of that which you are willing to believe, in many cases because you believe that you have already reached some level of understanding which cannot possibly be eclipsed by further investigation. I also believe that it is at least as important to recognize that there are certain characteristics (for lack of…

Totally agree. However interesting and inspiring these posts and toughs might be, the ideas can be really applied verbatim only by people in their 20's - no family, no commitments, and so on.

Similarly to @mjijackson I'm a husband and a father. If I made a decision to become 'nothing' I might benefit myself, but that would be a disaster to others that depend on me.

Somehow I find most of these Zen-like thoughts quite selfish, but I'm open to suggestions, perhaps I'm missing an important point here...

Re: I am nothing

#99

Post by brok3nmachine »

This post is great, and from reading the comments, I'm happy to see plenty of people being touch. So not having read the Zen Buddhist book on my shelf, I do have this to say... I am not nothing, I'm amazing. While I may disagree with others, they are beautiful and I have much love for them. Nobody is nothing.

Re: I am nothing

#100

Post by vacri »

zupatol wrote: post #87

Thirty or forty years ago, people apparently had much stronger identities, according to an old french psychologist I heard on the radio. People were much more inclined to think of themselves as 'a communist' or 'an artist'. It's true that these thoughts are prisons, but not having them sends people to the psychologist for other reasons. Unfortunately I don't remember what he said about these new problems. I guess one…

I once had a lecturer who asked us which particular school of thought on -foo- we were - to which we responded that we were pragmatists - if it works, it works. He denounced us as boring.
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