a.n.kirillov
velle non discitur
- Nov 17, 2019
- 1,831
I don't yet know where this will go, but I feel the need to collect my thoughts.
Last night I found myself awake and unable to sleep. My brain decided to play a highlight reel of the worst and most painful moments of my life, first of the last five years, then of the last 25, all the way back to my earliest childhood memories, and this is where I was reminded of a concept of Daniel Kahneman I had read about in Karim Akermas work, of the tyranny of the restrospective or remembering self.
What Kahneman found in his studies was that the majority of people, after going through a painful experience, when they are told to recount how painful the experience was, and how long they thought the painful experience lasted, are heavily influenced in their report even by subtle changes in the painful stimulus, as long as these changes occur towards the end of the experience. So for example, participants having their hands submerged in very cold water for five minutes might report the experience, on average, as a 6/10 on the painfulness scale. Interestingly, when the temperature of the water was increased by merely one degree towards the end of the five minutes, say the last minute—they reported significantly lower scores. There are, according to him, other effects of optimism bias in remembering painful experiences—this is simply one of the more notable ones. People in general don't accurately recall the amount of distress they felt in the past, their memory blocks out these memories and favours good or neutral ones, and so on; this is what Akerma calls the tyranny of the retrospective/ remembering self over the experiencing self.
Now, as I was laying there last night, this mechanism must have been short circuited somehow. For the first time I realized the extent of how shitty my life has really been for the last five years and for large stretches of my childhood; how alienated I had been, even in elementary school; how on edge I was back when I got into puberty; how many humiliating moments I went through as an adolescent; and finally, the last five years of my life, where, slowly, I have lost all that was ever dear to me: my optimism, my sense of invincibility and innocence, the relationship with my parents and bit by bit those with my friends, crucial illusions about nature, humanity, politics and most importantly myself and my own abilities and importance, my drive to exercise or do anything aside from fulfilling base desires, my admiration for creation/ nature, any loving feelings towards my siblings, friends, family members and all hope of ever finding my place in this society.
The only way I ever learned to cope with bad experiences was to forget. My parents seperated when I was five years old, and I think I learned early on, after having one bad experience after another, that you can not trust humans, so I never fully attached myself, never invested too much in a relationship. I had the ability, even as a child, to cut someone or something out of my life instantaneously and irrevocably and, to be honest, it helped me survive. When I was very invested in weight lifting in my teenage years for example, and, after a back injury, was told by several doctors that I could never lift again, I wrestled with it, sure, it was devastating because it was the thing that pulled me out of the depressive fog that my childhood years were, the insecurity, the feeling of not belonging, of being useless; but in the end, I was able to become indifferent to it.
The important question that struck me after laying there for several hours was: at which point, realistically, counting the suffering I went through experientially, not in recounting as the remembering self, but in an honest way—at which point or points did the suffering, that was ahead of me, exceed what could be rationally justified by the state or states that came after that point? Does my existence today justify the the last five years of my life? was it worth it to go through those painful experiences? The answer I think is no.
I have found several such "jumping off points" in my life, where what came after that point could not be justified by the—marginally or significantly—better periods later in my life, or by the state I am in right now. These are before I got into elementary school, before I went to middle school, before I graduated high school and basically any point in time after my twenty first birthday.
This is a pretty self absorbed post and I don't feel I really got across what I was trying to say. The thing is, I think it is starting to sink into me that this is it: I don't want to lay in my bed, twenty years down the line, and think, "you should've killed yourself twenty years ago. The shit you went through to get to this point wasn't worth it."
So I have set myself a date last night ... I know from past cancelled attempts that this will be a difficult week for me, preparing everything, packing away my belongings, organizing the hotel room or the spot to camp at. But I sincerely hope that I will have the strength to go through with it.
Wish me luck.
Last night I found myself awake and unable to sleep. My brain decided to play a highlight reel of the worst and most painful moments of my life, first of the last five years, then of the last 25, all the way back to my earliest childhood memories, and this is where I was reminded of a concept of Daniel Kahneman I had read about in Karim Akermas work, of the tyranny of the restrospective or remembering self.
What Kahneman found in his studies was that the majority of people, after going through a painful experience, when they are told to recount how painful the experience was, and how long they thought the painful experience lasted, are heavily influenced in their report even by subtle changes in the painful stimulus, as long as these changes occur towards the end of the experience. So for example, participants having their hands submerged in very cold water for five minutes might report the experience, on average, as a 6/10 on the painfulness scale. Interestingly, when the temperature of the water was increased by merely one degree towards the end of the five minutes, say the last minute—they reported significantly lower scores. There are, according to him, other effects of optimism bias in remembering painful experiences—this is simply one of the more notable ones. People in general don't accurately recall the amount of distress they felt in the past, their memory blocks out these memories and favours good or neutral ones, and so on; this is what Akerma calls the tyranny of the retrospective/ remembering self over the experiencing self.
Now, as I was laying there last night, this mechanism must have been short circuited somehow. For the first time I realized the extent of how shitty my life has really been for the last five years and for large stretches of my childhood; how alienated I had been, even in elementary school; how on edge I was back when I got into puberty; how many humiliating moments I went through as an adolescent; and finally, the last five years of my life, where, slowly, I have lost all that was ever dear to me: my optimism, my sense of invincibility and innocence, the relationship with my parents and bit by bit those with my friends, crucial illusions about nature, humanity, politics and most importantly myself and my own abilities and importance, my drive to exercise or do anything aside from fulfilling base desires, my admiration for creation/ nature, any loving feelings towards my siblings, friends, family members and all hope of ever finding my place in this society.
The only way I ever learned to cope with bad experiences was to forget. My parents seperated when I was five years old, and I think I learned early on, after having one bad experience after another, that you can not trust humans, so I never fully attached myself, never invested too much in a relationship. I had the ability, even as a child, to cut someone or something out of my life instantaneously and irrevocably and, to be honest, it helped me survive. When I was very invested in weight lifting in my teenage years for example, and, after a back injury, was told by several doctors that I could never lift again, I wrestled with it, sure, it was devastating because it was the thing that pulled me out of the depressive fog that my childhood years were, the insecurity, the feeling of not belonging, of being useless; but in the end, I was able to become indifferent to it.
The important question that struck me after laying there for several hours was: at which point, realistically, counting the suffering I went through experientially, not in recounting as the remembering self, but in an honest way—at which point or points did the suffering, that was ahead of me, exceed what could be rationally justified by the state or states that came after that point? Does my existence today justify the the last five years of my life? was it worth it to go through those painful experiences? The answer I think is no.
I have found several such "jumping off points" in my life, where what came after that point could not be justified by the—marginally or significantly—better periods later in my life, or by the state I am in right now. These are before I got into elementary school, before I went to middle school, before I graduated high school and basically any point in time after my twenty first birthday.
This is a pretty self absorbed post and I don't feel I really got across what I was trying to say. The thing is, I think it is starting to sink into me that this is it: I don't want to lay in my bed, twenty years down the line, and think, "you should've killed yourself twenty years ago. The shit you went through to get to this point wasn't worth it."
So I have set myself a date last night ... I know from past cancelled attempts that this will be a difficult week for me, preparing everything, packing away my belongings, organizing the hotel room or the spot to camp at. But I sincerely hope that I will have the strength to go through with it.
Wish me luck.
Last edited:
