For anyone wanting to have a fictional take on this subject, I'd recommend reading Dark Matter by Blake Crouch.
What If You Could Do It All Over?
251–260 of 460 posts
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#252I'm 61, male, and started in software back in the mid 70s. First computer that I could physically touch was a PDP-8/M with an ASR-33 teletype with paper tape reader and punch.
In my mid-50s, I started listening to Alan Watts and learning about ancient Indian religions / philosophies. My world-view today is some kind of cross between Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm a free will skeptic, as well.
While I'm not paralyzed by it, I've come to think that we can't know how any decision we make is going to turn out. We can't know with certainty if doing X is going to be good or bad for us in the long run. All we have are our own estimates of probabilities, and I'm not sure how well we can estimate them, either, honestly.
I also don't know who "I" am, or where I begin or end. In infancy and childhood, I think we come to accept a belief that "we" are individuals, each residing in our physical bodies. Yet I understand the Universe to be a single thing (a quantum field? a simulation?) and so the idea of us being individuals seems a bit off to me. I think we are far more connected and interdependent than we usually recognize.
One good outcome of my world view is that I don't really worry about passing away. A less pleasant outcome is that my world view is so out of the ordinary that I don't often connect with people that I can talk about this with in any serious way.
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#253> ”It’s likely, Miller thinks, that capitalism, “with its isolation of individuals and its accelerating generation of choices and chances,” has increased the number of our unlived lives.”
Wouldn’t be a New Yorker article without a dig at capitalism. Capitalism is individuals choosing how to invest their own money. Any deviation from private capital is socialism and we live in an extremely socialist society already.
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#254This reminds me of “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath, which has a quote Aziz Ansari used in his series “Master of None”: > "I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor,…
Forgive my nerding. This week I've been playing dark souls. I couldn't commit to a plan this time around and so now I'm part mage, part rogue, part knight, and I can't use any of the good weapons and I have like five weapons all partly upgraded. My figs all rotted and my character is just so mediocre.
It's definitely easier to commit to one path. I've played bloodborne and DS3 twice and dark souls remastered once. I completed all my playthroughs with a quality melee build. Despite these 5 playthroughs, my understanding of the game is quite narrow. I have no idea what playing as a sorcerer, pyromancer etc would be like, so at least you get that.
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#255I'm 61, male, and started in software back in the mid 70s. First computer that I could physically touch was a PDP-8/M with an ASR-33 teletype with paper tape reader and punch. In my mid-50s, I started listening to Alan Watts and learning about ancient Indian religions / philosophies. My world-view today is some kind of cross between Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm a free will skeptic, as well. While I'm not par…
I’m in my 30s and have a similar world view though I’ve never paid much attention to religion and just sort of landed here by default. The system we’ve created for ourselves doesn’t care much for world views though. Its important to adapt to our micro environment as well as macro. This is probably why it’s rare to bump into likeminded people. You probably wouldn’t know I think like this if you met me either.
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#256This is a fascinating subject. It looks like many people are commenting about alternative realities and that exploring them is a fool's game (BTW. I concur with that). The thing which bothers me is upbeat comments about living here and now and planting the seeds for future changes. It feels like current problems (and desire to wish them away via woulda/counda/shoulda) didn't happen entirely randomly. These problems a…
Penetrating so many secrets, we cease to believe in the unknowable. But there it sits nevertheless, calmly licking its chops. - H. L. Mencken
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#257What if I could fly?
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#258I'm 61, male, and started in software back in the mid 70s. First computer that I could physically touch was a PDP-8/M with an ASR-33 teletype with paper tape reader and punch. In my mid-50s, I started listening to Alan Watts and learning about ancient Indian religions / philosophies. My world-view today is some kind of cross between Zen Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I'm a free will skeptic, as well. While I'm not par…
I share a lot with how you view the world, but could probably stand to learn a lot from you as well. I'm in my mid 30s, software developer, and generally open to spirituality but not in the conventional, western, judeo-christian sense.
One of my foundations of belief is that life is entirely about probabilities and chance. It's a sort of guiding force that I follow. I view everything similarly to how you do, in that we cannot possibly know for sure it's outcome. By extension, we cannot possibly know what the right choice is for us. Sometimes, you have to close your eyes and roll the dice.
I'm deeply interested in the random nature of the world / life. When you stop to think about it so much of our existence is truly random in nature right down to our conception. It boggles the mind to think how little control we had over even our own existence.
As for identity I'm also a free will skeptic as you put it.
Anyways, just thought I'd let you know that people like you are out there. I also find it a bummer that we're a huge minority, but such is life I suppose.
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
29 and ditto. You know the phrase "30's is the new 20's." There's some truth to it, right?
I've never really understood what this means. Did people in their 20s have their life pretty well together in the past? or does it mean when you're in your 30s is the best time to start partying and throwing caution to the wind? Is your 30s when you first leave home and get a higher education? It's really a really confusing turn of phrase to me. I must be missing context
In my parents' generation, there was a lot of pressure to have children before 30. There was a widespread belief that giving birth after 30 risked the health of the mother and the child. As medicine advanced and neonatal care greatly improved, that deadline was pushed back and women started to seriously entertain the idea of careers before having children.
There are other cultural and societal factors at play, but the greater longevity and better medical care have opened up the time period for the expectations that previous generations had for their 20s.
Re: What If You Could Do It All Over?
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
29 and ditto. You know the phrase "30's is the new 20's." There's some truth to it, right?
I certainly hope so. But man, it's a sinking feeling when so many others seem to have it figured out at an even younger age. And knowing that the clock is ticking to actually go get those figs.
If the purpose of life is the journey to get there, not the destination, how could anyone younger than you have figured it out? Life is the one thing where people will never catch up and pass you.