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| Thread: Personal Struggles | |
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blizzardboy
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Nerf Herder
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posted October 22, 2019 04:31 AM |
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Personal Struggles
Well, the 95% dead forum of HC is a safe place to rant, so here is my anecdote to share.
Does anybody else struggle with the fact that life is way too big to grasp? The more I know the more I realize how much I don't know. I'm in my early thirties and biologically I'm probably closer to someone in their early twenties. I seem to be lucky in that respect, but there are things about life that annoy me a lot, like how big the world is. It's too big for me to be able to make connections with people and learn everything and experience everything. It's so big that events happen and I'm basically this ant on the surface that can't control anything. I'm going to die at some point in the future and it will be like a fish dying in the ocean among billions of other fish.
It just bothers me but I think part of it is because I'm disconnected from a community right now and it allows me to dwell on stuff that I usually wouldn't think about.
Feel free to post any random things you are dealing with.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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blob2
Undefeatable Hero
Blob-Ohmos the Second
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posted October 22, 2019 09:41 AM |
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Edited by blob2 at 09:45, 22 Oct 2019.
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I don't know what you base you're rant on, but I can tell what I think from my perspective, because this is something I'm experiencing.
You probably have something your parents/grown-ups were warning you about, but you laughed it off till now: growing-up syndrome. See, when you're a child you're more positive about the world, granted you did have something that we can call "a normal childhood". You see it in different light, you want to experience it, discover new things with a passion. Lucky for me, with minor setbacks, I had one.
Well, early twenties can still be taken with a dose of laid-backness, but come 30s it all starts to fall down on you: family matters (having a family or not, both generate problems), everyday life and routine: you're becoming sick of the world/life in general.
Only a few people find something good in life: happiness in simple things or their path in life.
Me? I've come to hate the world in general. Sure, you have you're friends, people close to you, but then you see wars, politics and even you're fellow countryman who have such entirely different views that you're sick of it, or you're favorite companies becoming greedy. Most of the people simply start to not care for the world, others calm their conscience with small things like buying a paper bag instead of a plastic one. I just stopped caring, I'm like "whatever happens happens", maybe it'll come back to me at some point.
My advice? Keep searching for something that will give you happiness or start to be happy/look forward to the smallest things, even if it is only the next episode of you're fav tv series.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted October 22, 2019 10:27 AM |
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Edited by Elvin at 10:29, 22 Oct 2019.
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I've always felt insignificant in the large scale, I just stopped caring about it and focused on what I want/need and what I can do about it. It's not like the world cares about you but what you can do is do your thing and let that be an example, to be involved wherever you feel that matters.
[It's too big for me to be able to make connections with people and learn everything and experience everything.]
How so? You've always sounded like an easy-going and sociable person. If you are talking about connecting with people that can further your knowledge/skills/horizons, you'd have to give it some focus though. Of course you won't learn everything, much less be good at it. For some years now I've started feeling that I haven't done, learnt or experienced nearly as much as I would have liked so I keep an eye out for opportunities to do so. Except drugs, I am not all that curious ^^
Have you looked into popular activities nearby? It's always good to have a shared activity, you will meet new people whether they want it or not  If you have a significant other, even better. I remember back in my previous aikido dojo when a couple came to learn and practice together. It was so adorable! Actually, how have you adjusted in your new place? Are you doing alright?
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
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tSar-Ivor
Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
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posted October 22, 2019 05:15 PM |
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It's not something that ought to discourage you, infact it's very healthy to see life that way, it branches out to two different primary outlooks, one that it promotes growth through the desire to learn more with the feeling that you will never understand it all being a source of security (contrary to what you might believe, once you know everything or believe you have it figured out you'd grow a lot more depressed, stagnation/or merely the feeling of it kills your mental state like nothin else). The second route is you get discouraged from ever attempting to understand because it appears futile or worse as in my case the answers turn your solid world to liquid with nothing to secure to grasp to (this is down to having a lack of developed personality and being an academic without first establishing a solid foundation onto which to build on, so for me there's nothing to grow), since everything is transient there's nothing solid to hold on to in order to brave the unknown.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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JollyJoker
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 22, 2019 05:30 PM |
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Strangely enough it's the SMALLNESS of this world that really baffles me, in comparison how incomprehensibly vast the universe is - the part we have an idea about, that is, not to mention the vastness we don't.
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tSar-Ivor
Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
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posted October 22, 2019 06:10 PM |
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That's the amazing part, you'd think we'd have a utilitarian focus about knowledge but that's not necessarily the case, there's a sense of wonder to it, like that fuzzy feeling about discovering something new for its own sake.
For instance when i had two modules on Russian history at uni(one focused on Cold War), all the German scientists the allies and Ivans snagged all wanted to go into space, ofc their states didnt give two craps about space (at the time it had no strategic value, none) so seemed like a waste of time and resources, now look at it. This is just conjecture but since Stalin only had 1 scientist (whom he kept lobbing into the gulags) I'm guessing they came to an understanding, since one end naturally served the other having a rocket that can put something into space with accuarcy can also deliver a payload across continents or somesuch). But I digress, the utility of a discovery is determined once the nature of the discovery is uncovered, we have imagination but reality it appears is so much more wonderous than what we could possibly imagine, everything I believe to be true points to it. Which is funny these scientist had more sense of wonder and exploration (when I always pictured men of knowledge to be grey and bland) and my professors are just that, they're unhinged yet so wise and intelligent.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted October 22, 2019 07:10 PM |
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JollyJoker said:
Strangely enough it's the SMALLNESS of this world that really baffles me, in comparison how incomprehensibly vast the universe is - the part we have an idea about, that is, not to mention the vastness we don't.
Yes, to me it's a mix of both... how small I am in the world (Earth) and then compared to how the Earth is to the universe and then there's me... I can't even imagine.
____________
Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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JollyJoker
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 22, 2019 08:04 PM |
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I don't actually feel small in the world, probably because it is somewhat comprehensible (as comprehensible as I am myself or even other humans are for me). Yes, there are a lot of humans around, but you can count them. If you get a Euro for single one of them, there are a lot of people in the world who have more money than that. Yes, the world is big, but you can fly around it pretty fast.
But the universe? And what is beyond?
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Drakon-Deus
Undefeatable Hero
Qapla'
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posted October 22, 2019 08:10 PM |
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Yeah, that's so much bigger than anything I could think of about the Earth and people, I see what you mean.
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Horses don't die on a dog's wish.
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2019 12:49 AM |
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The way I see it, Earth is much bigger than the galaxy. It has billions of people and all of them are so fascinating and intricate.
Of course if there were another planet in our galaxy filled with people than that would be overwhelming and massive too. But otherwise it's just %99.99+% vacuum.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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JollyJoker
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 23, 2019 08:26 AM |
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I know what you mean, but the depth of beings and this planet are a positive thing for me. Whereas the vastness of everything around this single island with its limited number of short-lived beings is somewhat crushing. If anything, science has made our "surroundings" even more incomprehensible than before. You know, missing context.
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted October 23, 2019 09:45 AM |
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Pff the universe... We don't even understand the flying pattern of a bee... 
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artu
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My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted October 23, 2019 09:57 AM |
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2019 08:02 PM |
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Yeah in recent years astronomers and biologists are slowly reaching a consensus that if there is life elsewhere in the galaxy or even in the universe that it is exceedingly, exceedingly rare, and then about a trillion times more rare that highly intelligent life would develop.
Our galaxy in the universe is about the equivalent of a coin sitting on the face of Australia. So that's a crapload of planets, but the chances of other intelligent life in the galaxy seems increasingly unlikely.
Basically, size doesn't matter  Earth might be tiny but it's a diamond in the rough and it's far more significant than the rest of the galaxy. It really sucks that I'm so short-lived because I want to see what happens with our civilization.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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JollyJoker
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posted October 23, 2019 08:27 PM |
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In my opinion all these "probability evaluations" have a couple of massive flaws. What is worse - they don't matter:
For one thing, there is time. When we talk about the forming of the universe, our galaxy, our solar system and our planet, we measure development or change in million years. Evolution works a bit faster, but not that much faster - a factor 10 to 20, maybe. And now OUR species has a mind for this for roundabout 100 years.
Now, development has been fast, once things started to get rolling, and noone has any idea how long our species will be this conscient and survive in this state or an even higher developed. At this point there are a couple of desasters imaginable that would at the minimum throw us back into a dark time. A collision with a big enough asteroid would kill us, as would a nuclear war, a climate catastrophe, an energy drought or even infertility on a large scale. Our "conscient" phase may last just a couple hundred years - but even if it lasts a couple thousand, that's not much time with a view on what a couple thousand years mean on a universal scale.
Without a way to reduce the vast distances and solve all problems based on the limits of mass and speed and distance and time we will be isolated, no matter how many comparable civs may exist, HAVE existed at one point or will exist in the future.
At this point other civilizations are kind of like a Schrödinger's cat problem. There is no way to know, except when we crack the lightspeed barrier one way or another.
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2019 08:52 PM |
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The chances of an extinction event or an event that sends us into a dark age is most likely to happen in the time period we are currently living in, plus/minus a few hundred years.
And that boils down to the number 1 problem in our time, which is that our ethics are not evolving at the same rate as our technology. So you have a civilization with stuff like nuclear weapons and an industry developed enough to negatively impact the climate, and yet at the same time there continues to be squabbling over the sort of stuff that people were squabbling about 1000 years ago, and we simply can't afford to do that anymore the way that we could in the past because we've outgrown our nursery. People love to blame world leaders but world leaders are simply a reflection of the people.
But if we do become a multi-planet civilization it seems like the chances of total self-destruction will go down a lot.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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JollyJoker
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted October 23, 2019 11:09 PM |
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I agree with that, but that's irrelevant for the problem at hand. The problem at hand is, that while time spans in cosmic standard are measured in very large increments, when it comes to time spans in our developed standard they are rather short - you can count them by the year.
That doesn't leave much of a window for contact.
Now. If there had been other civs around somewhere, they may have existed a couple billion years earlier. Or a couple of hundred million years. Or a couple MILLIONS years - not much time in cosmic standard, but can you imagine humanity A MILLION years from now?
And they may emerge in a million years, or 10 million or 50 or a billion.
Our galaxy may have seen and will see a lot of civilizations but they may simply emerge in completely different "ages" and never make contact. That's the reality of the vastness of space and time we live in, and that fact is what depresses me.
It depresses you as well, mind you, just with a view on having too short a life span to follow human history - the vastness of time in comparison to our life span.
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blizzardboy
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posted October 23, 2019 11:52 PM |
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On a cosmological scale, let's say another intelligent civilization already developed hundreds of millions of years ago, that actually would be sufficient time (even without breaking light speed) for them - or computers, more than likely - to have made contact with lots of other systems assuming they wanted to do such a thing.
But yeah, it definitely is sad to think about not being able to connect with people across the universe. It's a basic part of our nature to want novel experiences and contacting another intelligent species would be the ultimate thrill and novelty. There's a reason all the top grossing movies involve aliens. People love the idea.
But it doesn't depress me too much because people are people and these intelligent aliens would basically be people. They wouldn't have the same nature as us but biologically speaking there would still be a lot of commonalities since they live in the same universe with the same laws of physics, the same laws of chemistry, etc. Their language, for example, even if it isn't oral or written down the way ours is, would have to include things such as tense, aspect, direction, nouns, verbs, adjectives. To be an advanced civilization they would need to have some sort of highly regulated society, a complex system of ethics, a complex culture, etc., otherwise they either wouldn't exist or they would have already obliterated each other.
But just Earth itself is way too big for me to be able to grasp everything, let alone people on other planets.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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