Discussion Eternal Recurrence

[ngmi]

A concept I was reminded of recently:

What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness, and say to you, "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence" ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."

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Presumably all of us are here because our lives to this point have been terrible, with little or no hope of improving. If you choose suicide with the knowledge of eternal recurrence, you would lock in that miserable experience, with no other possibility but the exact suffering you find so unbearable, for all eternity.

Somehow, this metaphysics feels more plausible to me than getting the privilege of quiet non-existence after death: the conditions that would create any conscious experience at all seems so ridiculously unlikely to arise from pure physics, so if the odds were this narrow, why wouldn't the exact same universe arise again from the tape record of infinite time?

Most religious afterlives also seem too convenient to be real. They all revolve around the soul being judged on its moral deeds after death by some omnipotent-yet-mysteriously-absent sky daddy, which is an awfully nice tool for a non-omnipotent state to wield in controlling its citizens' behavior.

The idea of your particular qualia randomly reincarnating in some other world, or even some other creature besides its current vessel, is just unfounded speculation. That leaves us with one remaining option: the same damn life, forever. So, SS, I'm curious: would you still choose to end the movie here even if it immediately replays again? Or, if you aren't suicidal, what would you change in your remaining time, if you knew you'd need to repeat that again and again, without ever getting to move on?

 

[LigottiSchopenhauer]

Personally, I believe in eternal recurrence. This truth about reality was revealed to me on June 1, 2016, when I had a mystical experience on 5 tabs of acid. If you're reading this, you might not believe me (I'm not totally sure if I believe myself) but at the very least, you should read about well-established concepts in quantum physics such as Poincare Recurrence Time, which supports the idea that everything in existence repeats infinitely throughout time and space.

To answer OP's question: No, I will not end the movie here. I am an alcoholic, and I will end the movie when the health problems from drinking become so bad that I cannot continue. I look forward to experiencing my childhood again. It wasn't perfect, but at least back then I had hope for the future. In the meantime, being drunk is pleasurable enough that I don't feel the need to kill myself immediately.

 

[Ambivalent1]

There were 10 yrs of good in my earlier years. I want to relive them.

 

[Forever Sleep]

As in- exactly the same life again? God- I hope not... To answer that- no, my childhood was awful- worse than things are now. If it's a new life from scratch- urghhh- that still sounds awful but I suppose I'd have no memory of this life. Still- I'm sure things could be worse- so- no again, I'd probably hang on.

Still- if this reincarnation/ eternal recurrence is dished out as a punishment for suicide- how can you be sure that you haven't already killed yourself in a past life? So- are already trapped in the cycle?

I don't believe this though. I'm not totally convinced there isn't a God but I lean more towards aetheism now. If there is reincarnation/ eternal recurrence, I don't think it will be experienced as an eternal life- otherwise- why wouldn't more people remember their past lives? Unless you think the vast majority of us are on our first life? I imagine- if anything- it's just an element of life force that gets recycled. I can't account for people who do remember past lives- to be fair.

I REALLY hope there's nothing behind all this- because most things point towards them being a sadist to me.

 

[FuneralCry]

I guess that it wouldn't make much difference if I ctb or not if that was the case.
But thankfully I don't believe in anything like that, I believe that death is the end of everything for us. Something like that really sounds like such an hellish punishment but I just believe it to be a fictional concept.

 

[endless_pain]

There were 10 yrs of good in my earlier years. I want to relive them.

In my case just two months

 

[LittleBlackCat]

Most of my life has been pretty awful, give or take a few years.. so this idea is terrifying

 

[Superdeterminist]

if it is true eternal recurrence, then surely we would inevitably repeat everything, it would not be a matter of choice. well there are different ways of thinking about it. but as i believe in determinism, i think we would repeat everything inevitably. i really hope that eternal recurrence is not true, but it seems like it has to be. anyway i hope i'm just wrong about that because i don't want this horror to happen ever again.