I can’t get over the fact that we all must die. Everybody you ever knew and could be able to know will. You who are reading this message, I, all the other significant people in our lives, all the users on this platform. Everybody who is right now experiencing their consciousness in this universe. All the consciousnesses before - the person in the article who asked to tell the bees about their dead.

It’s as if whatever is and ever could be completely collapses once your consciousness is gone. Saying it doesn’t make sense to try to make sense about it makes no sense because once it’s over it’s as if there never was and will be no sense to begin with.

It’s filling me with nothing but deep dread, tears, pain and suffering all over my body.

Still, beautiful to see how others tried to cope with it by telling the bees.

I now accept that it could happen again at essentially any time, and that the defibrillation might not work. And yet my life continues pretty much as normal (although I'm no longer able to drive). I still get up, do the chores, enjoy the other aspects of my life, get bored, etc etc.

I've recognised that there is a difference between death itself (which doesn't now frighten me), and the process that causes it. I've now come to believe that VF is actually how I would like to die, when the time comes. It seems infinitely preferable to a slow painful process due to cancer, or Alzheimer's.

Sudden deaths are, in my experience, much worse for the family. Especially when you feel like you could have “done something” to help in an emergency but you’re not there. The one case I’m thinking about came out of the blue. A father of two died without any warning, nobody knew.

Thanks for sharing your story.

I'm not saying my experience is the matter of fact worst. But that it can go both ways, i literally cannot imagine thinking i could've done anything to save her. But giving more than you have for a year just to witness inhuman terrors beyond your comprehension is no walk in the park.

I'm sure there's a way to die well, i think we as a society should all be trying better to find such a means and make it available if desired. Especially since we now have the means to create living hells in the name of rote survival.

I realize now that perhaps these are two different kinds of suffering. For the kids of the dad who died suddenly, they had to take it all in right then, in a matter of moments. They couldn’t say goodbye, or be held hand during the time leading up to it.

But they could all remember him exactly as he were. Healthy, strong, caring, responsible. If they’d been forced to see him erode and weaken slowly, I’m not sure how they’d take it.

> I'm sure there's a way to die well, i think we as a society should all be trying better to find such a means and make it available if desired.

Absolutely. The details may be complex, but the ethical foundation is crystal clear, to me: we own our lives, including the right to end it.

I try to take comfort in the fact that, as crazy as it seems, I really am a sentient ape on a spinning ball. My experiences right here, right now, prove that there is something instead of nothing. And things don’t have to make sense to me for things to be real. In fact, whatever the absolute truth of the universe is, it’s probably too complex for us to comprehend, let alone for us to figure out. Even as a Christian, I accept that large parts of my beliefs are completely wrong, or at best simplifications. Because the absolute truth is something beyond understanding.

I don’t know, saying it out loud doesn’t feel very comforting. I had a bit of an attack of existential dread typing this out. But I felt the need to share my experience with you

Everything you've said, and your conclusions echo my thoughts almost exactly. I find myself torn between the absurdity of life and being an sentient monkey in a seemingly endless universe, and then considering the other side, infinite nothingness - or nothing existing at all. Ironically, it seems both of these absurdities have existed at some point.

All I know is that I wake up every day, and life seems to continue as it did the previous day. Channelling Occam's Razor, it seems like this must be real, as everything I experience points to that being true. Until something points to that not being the case, it makes sense to believe it. Maybe if we were a smarter species all of this would make perfect sense.

Thanks again though, I do take comfort in the fact that I'm not alone when it comes to these thoughts and feelings.

It only lasted a few days and was honestly so jarring that it frightened me from trying meditation again for some time after

Would you mind sharing your mediation experience and practices?

Thanks

Matthew 10:29-31: Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

For those of you that don't find this helpful, well, if there's nothing at the end, then there's nothing to fear. If you're gone, what use are your worries then? What use are your plans? If there's nothing, then there's no pain - you go to sleep, and that's it. (very Ecclesiastes, I know)

My own take on "existential dread" is that it could be in part the fear that "If something does come after this life, then maybe I'm not ready for it." I think that's a fear a lot of people share, regardless of their beliefs.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth, though - I'm interested to hear about what bothers people about the end.

I ended up on anxiety medicine for something else and it has made them less frequent. Turns out they may be a sort of panic attacks

The thing is, a wave is basically some water particles and energy. The water particles don't go away, and as we know from physics, neither does the energy. So how can a wave die when all of its components don't die?

The truth is, a wave doesn't really exist. It's a concept in our head. "Here is some part of water that is higher than the rest, let's call it a wave". And now the wave can be "born" in the sea and "die" at the beach. But in fact nothing was created nor removed. It's just a concept. Everything is in fact interconnected. The disconnected parts that we see are concepts in our head. A tree, the sun, the rain, grass, ... . Nothing stands on its own.

You and me and everyone here, we are just concepts like the wave. What are you composed of? Some DNA from your ancestors, some cultural influence, the plants and animals you eat, the water you drink. After the concept of "you" dies, everything is still here. Everything that you were composed of is still here.

You're not an entity on your own. You are interconnected with everything around you. You are the water you drink and the water is you. Your thoughts are the thoughts of your ancestors, of your fellow humans, etc, and your thoughts are theirs.

So even if the waves die on the beach, the sea is still there. An therefore, the waves are also still there.

    He turned to the center idol: “Why did you take my son?”

    In singsong sighs, the center idol answered: “You have heard it said:

    > If the red slayer thinks he slays
    > Or if the slain thinks he is slain
    > They know not well the subtle ways
    > I keep and pass and turn again.

    Your son is not dead. You never had a son. You drew a line around a
    cloud of atoms and qualities and divine fire, and called it a son. Now
    each has dispersed in turn. In Baghdad, there is an oilman with a
    nitrogen atom in his thymus that was once in your son’s parietal
    cortex. In Belmopan, there is an orphan who has your son’s smile; in
    Bratislava, a businessman with your son’s kind nature. In Bangkok
    lives a very holy monk who just had a thought that nobody but he and
    your son have ever thought before. Thus is it written:

    > He is made one with Nature: there is heard
    > His voice in all her music, from the moan
    > Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet bird;
    > He is a presence to be felt and known
    > In darkness and in light, from herb and stone,
    > Spreading itself wherever that Power may move
    > Which has withdrawn his being to its own;
    > Which wields the world with never-wearied love,
    > Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it above.
    > 
    > The splendors of the firmament of time
    > May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not;
    > Like stars to their appointed height they climb
    > And death is a low mist which cannot blot
    > The brightness it may veil. When lofty thought
    > Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair,
    > And love and life contend in it for what
    > Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live there
    > And move like winds of light on dark and stormy air.

This story for me made the click of how Zen Buddhism looks at the world.

The water and energy will express itself into a wave. The same as human evolution will express itself as you and me. Basically you are only 1 of the many possible outcomes, and other outcomes will occur which will resemble you very much, just because it's the same system that created you.

The concept that I'm describing is that you really need to think about what 'you' is. What is really yours? Your DNA you got from your parents, your culture from the people around you, your body from your food, etc. Are you still the same you as yesterday? Are you the same you when you were a baby?

Of course I didn't invent this philosophy, it basically comes from Zen Buddhism.

There is this thought experiment where you are transported to another location by cloning you, and then killing the original. The question is then if you die or not. In the end, you live on through the clone, which has the same body and brain composition and memories. But your body, the original, is killed. So do you die or not?

It's of course how you look at things. If you agree that the 'you' of yesterday is the same as 'you today', then why also not accept other transitions?

To come back to your car, when the parts are separate it's indeed not a car. Let's say I put the engine, wheels and chassis back together. Is it still the same car? What if I replace the wheels of a car. Is it the same car or a different one? What if over the years I replace part by part, and end up with all parts of the car replaced. Is it still the same car as before, or is it a separate one?

All these questions basically comes down to how you define the concept "same" or identity. And the universe really doesn't give anything about concepts. Whether you consider it the same car or not, and I think the opposite, it doesn't have any impact on reality. The car is the car, whether it's "the same one" as yesterday or not.

Edit: so to come back to the 'death' question. Basically before you were born, you were already there. Everything that made you was already there. During your lifetime, you constantly change. Parts of you die and are born again. The 'you' changes into another you. And when you die, everything will still be there.

Do other animals know about their ultimate demise? I'm not sure. It seems like a human problem due to our incredible capacity for foresight.

Transcending this distress is part of our growth IMO. Some folks resolve it w/ a belief in an afterlife.

Ignoring the metaphor but taking the thinking to its logical extreme - the real problem is the cruel trick of evolution that means we think we are unique beyond the things that compose us. It makes sense that we think so because all the people who can accept the truth don't mind dying off quietly. The ones that breed vigorously are those who think differently.

But just because there is strong evolutionary pressure to believe something false doesn't make it true. It just means the illusions we labour under seem very real.

> Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.

-- Paul Bowles

It turns out this question—how do we contend with the question of death?—is one of the most, if not the most, studied questions in human history, second perhaps only to why we came to exist. The collective answer by each of the world's cultures is encoded in myth, poetry, and spiritual and religious traditions. I would recommend the Bhagavad Gita, translated and commentated by Eknath Easwaran (https://www.amazon.com/Bhagavad-Gita-2nd-Eknath-Easwaran/dp/...). It's not necessary to practice or believe in any particular religion to gain something valuable from these books, nor is it incompatible with science to delve spiritually.

I’m already reading the Dhammapada (Gautama Buddha’s take on these and many other things) by Eknath Easwaran and can greatly recommend it to everybody as well.

It's much longer, and definitely not meant to be read in one sitting. Instead, I read it a little bit every morning, a little bit every night. To me, living a good life is hard and requires constant effort—the wisdom in these texts can't possibly sink in after just a single reading. Sustained reading and re-reading grooves the text into the brain, and over time changes our thoughts, which over time changes our actions, which changes the whole world.

I didn’t figure out how to cope with it until sometime in highschool, when it really hit me that laying await all night having a mini panic attack about dying someday was really bad for my life. It made the next day suck, and for what? Worrying about something I ultimately can’t do anything about? Entirely unproductive - unhealthy even.

I’m better at setting it aside now. I recognize when I’m getting fixated on it, and I deliberately change tack - I put on music, I read, I go curl up with my dog on the couch - anything to distract myself sufficiently. And half an hour or so later, it’s passed, and I can lay back down and fall asleep. Ebooks and podcasts are super good distractions too.

I hate it. The whole thing. I hate that coping with it is even necessary. But I literally have no choice. Doom is on the horizon, and I need to get my beauty sleep so I can enjoy the time I have left. Boooooo.

But instead of having known the terror of a slow painful death debilitating me, it's kind of done the opposite. It can get so bad that you're glad it's ending. And thank fucking God that it ends. Holy shit hell on earth exists for some people and death is the final freedom from the fire. I'm so infinitely grateful that it was able to end, it was such an immense relief, that it kinda broke that whole illusion of terror. I remember crying inconsolably to her when i was very young when i realized some day she would die. It was so scary, and that fear stayed with me up until i saw what real fear was. Now that the fear has passed, only i remain.

All the things people try to save, themselves, their cultures, their religion, their species, the earth, it is all not only temporary, but barely an infinitesimal slice of nothingness, a rounding error indistinguishable from zero on any global timeline. At the same time, it's a miracle we ever got to exist at all. Enjoy what you get and stop longing for the impossible. Everything will die. Whoever or whatever you love, go love it while you still have the chance.

That means you are actually a billions-eyed monster whose eyes grow anew and go blind from time to time. Rather than fearing being gone, fear that you, right now and in the past, experience the horror of existence of all organisms that ever existed. Be thankful for your current “eye”’s relative comfort which is rare. And dread the next experience somewhere in <choose a shithole> as a <choose your species>.

But if you believe that, then truth, wisdom, justice and love are as meaninglessly attractive as turds to the little buzzing flies we are.

Alternatively, maybe what you think of as the cold, hard reality is just the best reality your tiny pink meat brain can understand and reality us much, much richer.

I don’t think c. is a binary attribute or even a linear one. C. is a set of experiences and qualia. A human has many, a mosquito less and/or different, a tree (a forest?) maybe zero or lost in the noise.

In any case, pain and other conscious beings are as real as it gets, so no matter how brief one lifetime is, you can have a real impact by making it better for those around you.

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."

- Alan Watts

The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it's very brightly colored and it's very loud and it's fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: "Is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say: "Hey, don't worry, don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." ... and we kill those people. Ha ha, "Shut him up. We have a lot invested in this ride. Shut him up. Look at my furrows of worry. Look at my big bank account and my family. This just has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill those good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok. But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it anytime we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings and money. A choice, right now, between fear and love. The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off. The eyes of love instead see all of us as ONE. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride. Take all that money we spend on weapons and defense each year, and instead spend it feeding, clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would many times over, not one human being excluded, and we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.

- Bill Hicks

I'm still moderately afraid of _dying_ - pain is unpleasant, and so is loss of physical faculties - but the non-existence part of death? I've been there, and it's no big deal.

I doubt this helps you - it wouldn't have helped me, had I been told it prior to experiencing it - but it is immensely comforting to me now.

Speaking of bees. The average worker bee lives about 1 month. Workers will sting and sacrifice themselves because it is the hive that matters, not the individual. They don't live that long anyway.

Who we are is defined by those who raised us and the rest of humanity. We are a reflection of it, not distinct. We owe everything to our collective existence and should cherish each other more, past and present. It is the only thing that persists.

In fact we die and are reborn in nearly every moment.

also, general anesthesia usually involves memory blocking chemicals, so it's not even clear that it's truly an unconscious experience. what if you're conscious the entire time, but just don't remember it?

i'm not convinced that either one is equal to death

I can’t see why. Imagine you’re unconscious: anesthesia, fainting, dream, coma, knockout. Is there something else that must happens to your consciousness that will make you dead? To me it’s like turning off the main switch when lights are already out. You just can’t Alexa turn them back on, that’s it.

Death is a thing that you don’t come back from[1], so it’s impossible for anyone living to tell us what it’s like after dying. Being knocked out, is not death. If you don’t dream at night, you don’t die every night.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death

If you don’t dream at night, you don’t die every night

Of course you do not. We talk about states, not their finality.

This point of view is good for thinking environmentally, "we" will live forever as long as we keep the planet habitable. But there's a range of other perspectives between the individual and planet-wide organism. For example, some like to focus on keeping their nation alive, or their race, or their culture, or just their own bloodline. If you elevate any of these it lessens the despair of the inevitable death of the individual.

When you first walk through the gate it's like 8am and it's incredible. There's so much to do and see. So much potential. You don't know where to start.

So you get a map and you look at all the rides and attractions and you start doing them by what interests you.

As the day goes on, you're having a great time but you kinda have to take a break at 3-4pm because your feet kinda hurt and youre hungry.

But you still have the other half of the park to get to so you get back to it.

Eventually, night time rolls around and you did everything you wanted to do. You rode all the rides that looked fun, and you saw all the attractions that looked fun.

Now, you have been wandering around main street looking at all the shops, wondering what you're going to buy as you wait for the fireworks display, and you realize, you're exhausted. You have been on your feet since early this morning. You have walked literally 20 miles today. You have had a great time though.

The firework show starts and it's just fantastic. It spends the rest of the mental energy you have and then it's time to head back to the hotel and go to sleep.

Now instead, imagine that someone locks the front gate and you can never leave. You can never go home. You can never sleep again. You must stay in the park forever. Imagine how exhausting that sounds...

Obviously I am equating this to the life events of being born, being a kid, living life as a young adult through mature adult, through your senior years until it's time for you to pass on. And being trapped in the park is like living forever...

Realize that by the time it's all over, you should be able to look back and say "I rode all the rides I wanted and I eat all the waffle cake I could", rather than "Boy I really wish I didn't complain that my feet were sore for an hour and I never got to ride that one ride".

Of course, here my thesis is that love and family fall into these things as I am fortunate enough to have an enjoyable and entertaining family :)

For me at least the metaphor of Disneyland seems apt!

Duty.

I made a reference a few years ago to "Let's put on the 'Theme Song from Rocky' and get this done!" (in reference to having figured out a bugfix or something for the project of the day), and I was met with blank stares by my (admittedly younger) co-workers. It really kindof broke me for a second that something that was _such_ a cultural phenomenon is currently "unimportant" or "irrelevant".

If "The Theme Song from Rocky" can be forgotten, what chance do I have of making an indelible mark on life?

Maybe John Wayne movies still come on every once in a while, but as a global community, we're losing a lot of "broadcast shared culture" in favor of "unicast, A/B-tested, divisive entertainment", and specifically "entertainment" rather than "culture".

So don't focus on making an indelible mark on life-at-large, or being a larger-than-life character like John Wayne... but instead focus on making positive impacts to the people closest to you, and especially yourself.

<3

If there is an after life, perhaps we can ask King of Kings Ozymandias. ;)

> So don't focus on making an indelible mark on life-at-large, or being a larger-than-life character like John Wayne... but instead focus on making positive impacts to the people closest to you, and especially yourself

This is something I constantly find myself flip-flopping on. Part of me believes I should be more productive, min/max my career, be as frugal as possible, etc.. The other part of me knows, perhaps on a deeper level, that most of the "shoulds" do not matter in the end. Hell, most of those aspirations and ambitions probably are not even mine to begin with but rather a strongly influenced by society.

Life feels like a game of Tetris to me. One can make all the wrong moves or all the right moves, and the only way to keep playing is to just keep on surviving.

We arrive there only to hear a suspicious familiar story by a traveller from an antique land...

> This is something I constantly find myself flip-flopping on. Part of me believes I should be more productive, min/max my career, be as frugal as possible, etc.. The other part of me knows, perhaps on a deeper level, that most of the "shoulds" do not matter in the end. Hell, most of those aspirations and ambitions probably are not even mine to begin with but rather a strongly influenced by society.

Man. I don't even know how exactly I feel about this. Man. Definitely important to consider though. I hear that people who get old contemplate whether they lived worthwhile lives. Let's strive to not (terribly) disappoint our future selves, yeah?

See, it’s not something you can easily (or even at all) think yourself out of, similar to how you can’t think yourself easily out of loving somebody, mourning your deceased loved parents or needing to release the leftovers from your metabolism.

Schema “Should X” was conditioned into my cognitions by binding via association to a (previously) learned Schema of “Y is unsafe”/“Y impacts your probability of survival/mating/continued existence negatively” or summed up “Y makes you anxious”.

Somewhere in this process your brain (maybe falsely) infers ¬X -> Y. This might be e.g. by purely experiencing Y and ¬X at the same time (e.g. being bullied for ¬X, being in a overwhelmed state - think not enough met bodily needs, not enough slept, too much stress, too much hangover etc - and focusing on ¬X), explicitly arguing for the validity of the implication in some discussion (e.g. “People who chose to ¬X leads to Y, as we learned by reasons Z”).

The pitfall here is that once Y is concerned, it can for many of us be very difficult to stay rational. That is, because Y was in this recursive way already associated with the topic of bodily safety. And as we know, in war and love there are no rules, so basically one run risk of associating many many new ¬X to Y, which then themselves become new Y for the next recursive step, because the reasons Z seem to be true while they might be not.

And I get it, let’s not take chances, we might be playing with our lives here and end up without a partner, without a long list of exciting experiences, bad health etc.

But where is the end to this style of thinking? Eventually people realize this and stop conditioning themselves and others to new “Shoulds”, but what I see with many is that the huge stock of already conditioned Ys is not worked against, rather, they continue to seek to fill the Shoulds they already collected and lower the rate of adding new baggage of Shoulds.

The approach I chose is to be as conscious as possible (e.g. do all the things they say, eat well, sports, meditations, journaling etc etc) in order to witness - on a meta level if you will - when my behavior is a function of the “Y makes me feel unsafe” schema. And then, consciously and hard not to fulfill it and instead seek other ways to make me feel safe. Then I have the chance to break the conditioned association, stop adding new baggage, and slowly reverse the huge amount of Shoulds that exist in my cognition.

So to sum it up, it’s not sitting down and actively thinking “Should I really?”, it’s more like “I probably believe I should because I’m scared. Let’s remove being scared to wash out the interference. Then let’s lay out whether I really should”.

And most often, the answer really is “No, I shouldn’t”.

I'm a Christian and, oddly, don't suffer from the same existential dread as most admit any more, but I used to be consumed by it.

The simplest way I could say it is this: once you are shown what is behind the curtain and you place your trust in the one who's running the show then dread gives way to overwhelming peace. That's what happened for me and I guarantee that anyone who seeks the same true God will find the same peace.

Easy to dismiss, I know, but I guarantee it's true. Odd, eh?

Part of dealing with your existential dread is accepting the fact that you're right to be afraid, but not for the reasons you first think. This will be a bridge too far for some, but a discerning reading of this could be the catalyst some need: https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/edwards_jonathan/Sermon...

I was watching “Hustle” (Adam Sandler basketball movie) yesterday and strangely enough a line he said resonated with me: “they can’t kill you if you’re already dead.” (The context in the movie was that the youngster protagonist missed his official chance of playing in the NBA by failing the combine, and thus was “dead.” He had nothing to lose when he got a random last-ditch chance to demonstrate his skills in another venue.). As a Christian we believe that our old selves have died and that we are born again in the Spirit, even while we are here on earth. This gives those who believe this the confidence to face any fear or challenge in this lifetime, as we have already died anyway, there is nothing to lose since our new lives are secure in Christ (even after a physical death process).

Imagine playing Minecraft on hardcore... And now imagine dying for real...

To me, the ethics essentially come down to mirroring Christ in my own life in everything I do; the moral compass is Christ himself in the Christian life. I fail often but that's the goal / struggle. With that, I'd like to know what those outside of the faith find deplorable about the way Christ lived His life?

And I do understand that deplorable ethical decisions have been made by those or the body calling themselves Christians (and sadly, myself too at times). I would say this is a sin / shortcoming of the person or group and not of what Christ has asked that person or group to live like.

James 1:27: "Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their misfortune and to keep oneself unstained by the world."

My other issue with Christianity is that Jesus comes off as genuinely unhinged sometimes. For example, when he tells the Jews that the only way to be saved is to eat his flesh, and when they say “surely that’s just a metaphor, how do we eat your flesh?” he says “no, I’m being totally serious”. There are a bunch of times in John where the stuff he is saying sounds crazy even to his disciples. Let me ask you, if someone today came and said those things, would you believe them? The only difference between him and a modern person on drugs is the records of his supposed miracles

1. Dwelling on the utter absurdity of the universe appearing from nowhere without the intervention of a power well beyond our means to understand is a good start.

2. Try to move from the dominant paradigm of scientific analysis (nothing wrong with it, in its place!) which breaks things down into smaller things, to a narrative or holistic view of the world. They're both equally valid, and both can be considered fundamental. There are things happening in the world and to you. Those things are all imbued with meaning. Nothing is meaningless. What is the story of your life, what is your mission? If the events of your life were trying to tell you something, what would that be?

Ah but it does! There's lots of modern apologetics around this, not in the least the Kalaam argument, which go into it.

I take comfort in participating in this huge system of life and death and in knowing that billions have lived ordinary lives and died. I don't dye my hair and don't ignore signs of aging. I'm happy to grow older and retire and reduce my needs and spend more time with friends and family and when I die I'll join the legion of billions of decent, hardworking, perfectly ordinary people. It's a fine group to be part of.

This life is only one we have so why not make it the best for everyone.What else is the point of life but to live to the fullest and help everyone else live to their fullest (happiest). You can't take it with you, there is no prize for dying with the most money or power.

The meaning of life is only what we want it to be.

Actually it's probably more basic than that. Competing over scarce resources brings out the best and worst in us as biological entities.

What you're feeling has lead to civilization, essentially. I think the finite nature of a human life isn't an inherent property of the concept of humanity, but I think a lot of the ideals thats we use to define humanity are born from this finite nature (respect for life, respect for each other etc., the idea of "respect"). Separately, I think the term "respect" has been taken over by game theroretic ways of thinking, which I find disappointing. Such is life, I suppose.

"Do Chairs Exist?" by VSauce [1].

Now, the thrust of the video deals with mereology [2]. However, the final line from Michael at the end surprised me a lot, and in the days since watching it, has been an extremely strong comfort for me:

"I am not a thing that dies and becomes scattered, I AM death and I AM the scattering."

I think it is worth spending the 40 minutes to watch the whole thing, as makes this line make more sense and extremely impactful. Anyway, this helped me recently, maybe it can help someone else :)

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXW-QjBsruE [2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/sum2005/entries/mereolog...

I wonder if layers upon layers of self-modifying code can create something resembling consciousness.

It is repeated acts of acceptance that will get you through this painful realization. It is even possible to become cheerful about the whole endeavor. But the first step is to stop bashing your head against the brick wall of reality thinking that somehow helps you to keep doing it. Accept and experience the pain of your realization, as deeply as you need to, but stop wallowing and digging yourself deeper into the unpleasantness of it.

Of course you can lose yourself entirely if you devote your life to plumbing the depths of sadness that can be evoked by staying locked into all the loss you will ever experience as often as you can. Choose not to do that. It doesn't help anything, and it hurts far more than necessary like digging into an open wound for days and weeks on end. It doesn't mean pretending the reality away. Just experience the pain and move on with your day.

Eventually, like an adult who no longer breaks down in tears over a stubbed toe, you'll get used to experiencing the pain without it effecting your mind too much. You might even give a sad, knowing smile to yourself from time to time when these thoughts arise. This is the first signs you are on the track to cheerful acceptance of our mortality, which is an incredible tool to have in life.

Good luck with your profound struggles, and may they lead you somewhere worthwhile!

For me, I heard someone say something to the effect of "Plant trees you will never rest in the shade of" and like, that hit a weak spot for me. Right through the armor. I changed a lot of my life to go out and restore ecosystems, restore healthy forests, and plant trees.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/12/29/plant-tree/ (the page also mentions the one you did)

From an ecological perspective, I think it is quite extraordinary that pine trees grow so quickly. Just planting conifers exclusively is not going to reverse all the environmental instability that we have caused, but it's a stopgap method of reducing carbon in the atmosphere that we could implement almost immediately.

I think what I am about to share is the Jewish perspective although I suspect many people have the same view.

I imagine the following scenario. I am old, I have several grown children who have grown up to be good strong people and who are starting families of their own, I have set up systems that continue to support charitable causes that I care about, I reflect on my past with fondness (eg people I helped and mentored, things I built, etc.)

In that scenario, does death bother me? Not in the least. Because the things that I care about (family, ideas, causes) continue. Knowing that things I deeply care about go on is the big thing.

So then rather than worrying about death, life becomes about doing things in such a way that maximizes the chances of these outcomes. Regardless of whether I believe in a literal after-life, I believe in this metaphorical after life strongly.

If anything, a bunch of inanimate matter suddenly springing up and wreaking havoc is the scary reality. If a bunch of sand on the beach suddenly became conscious and started talking to me, and swallowing people up, that would be far freakier than death itself.

You will die and you won't care. Why worry about that fact now and ruin your life?

Socrates made another point: do you mind going to sleep at night? What is sleep but the suspension of consciousness? Death is the same. Or there is an afterlife and then you don't need to worry about it.

A masterpiece of a film and one that came at the perfect time for me in my life. I made the jump from theism to atheism months before it came out and I had just started grappling with the sudden exposure to nihilism I was experiencing. I was uncertain and a little scared and that movie helped me navigate and understand those feelings in a way I don't think anything else could have.

Have you considered taking magic mushrooms in a clinical setting where it’s legal? Simple drugs can let you dissociate to understand that you are not a single conscious being; you just operate like one.

This is and was a common conclusion of mystics the world over, clothed in different words.

It helps bring me back to the present moment.

I rarely actually open it to see the quotes.

I recently gave in and got a fitness tracker, most apps I blacklist for notifications, but it's nice to whitelist this so that throughout the day my watch reminds me I'm going to die :)

If this is true, then our lives are eternal—not in the way envisioned by religious people, but eternal in a very real sense. It’s true that I am finite in time in exactly the same way that I’m finite in space, but just as I don’t lament the fact that my body isn’t infinitely large, I shouldn’t lament the fact that my life doesn’t extend through all of time. (I wouldn’t mind living for a lot longer, but that’s a different matter :-D.)

I realize this conception of immortality will be too abstract to provide any consolation to many people. But ideas of an afterlife or reincarnation are abstract, too. This one at least has the advantage, to my mind, of being plausible.

It’s not that I once was not, then I was, and after I die I will be no more. My life, my presence, this experience—it’s eternal and ever-present.

I am very afraid of death. But I also don't want to live for eternity. I feel like I'd quite enjoy a 200 or even 500 year life though if my body could be made to stay fully functional for that long.

Kinda rambling LOL.

> I am very afraid of death. But I also don't want to live for eternity.

Very understandable. I don't want to die young or from a car crash or something. Is it unrealistic for me to want to live until, say 80 without much cognitive decline?

Uhm, this knows why it’s bad to use this form, but why in general? This asks for elaboration.

Trust me, I practised Buddhism quite heavily with a teacher. I understand what impermanence and no-self means. I still think that it's sad to use impermanence and no-self to cope with death. Accept your clear, bright vitality, despite death.

> In fact - time itself is also an illusion. Read about the theory of relativity if you don't believe me.

I have a PhD in theoretical physics and this is very incorrect.

Besides, if everyone is you than isn't that a pale approximation of unending life? I hate it when people either read or think up an interesting philosophy of existence but then become convinced that they know The Truth. If existence is a vast and strange as claimed is it not equally if not infinitely more likely that they have no idea what the hell they're talking about? I mean, no matter how many human lifetimes you traverse you're still just a human. That is, unless your philosophy also involves you being the One True God, which i think devolves into narcissism pretty fast.

I must admit i have found myself wishing that i had been all of them in separate times. It's just so alluring to think i was Einstein and Feynman and Turing and everyone else. I can almost convince myself that i can see enough similarities to make it possible. But that's actually crazy. It's a sensation, a desire. A way of fighting off both the fear of death and the fear that this life won't matter as much as I'd like. After all, who cares, one day I'll be the leader of the free world and i guess also an asshole most likely. It's just a cope for me.

It's also sad that so many purely pull to the authority of physics to justify their personal philosophy. "Quantum" has been butchered by popular media in such a way that everyone just takes it to mean what they want it to mean. Anyways, I'd love to read or hear about your PhD in theoretical physics, I'm about a year away from starting a PhD

Honestly I think it's just best to accept the life that immediately presents itself to us: totally localised to each separate being, facing death as exactly the horror that it seems. I think that, unless you have genuine insight into some kind of deeper reality, then anything else really is just wishful thinking. I just think it's quite sad to go so far in that wishful thinking so as to wish away the reality of the life you currently have.

> It's also sad that so many purely pull to the authority of physics to justify their personal philosophy. "Quantum" has been butchered by popular media in such a way that everyone just takes it to mean what they want it to mean. Anyways, I'd love to read or hear about your PhD in theoretical physics, I'm about a year away from starting a PhD

I totally agree. I'm pretty jaded about science communication because of it. Also it really implies that we have some really strong philosophical ideas about what physics means, when we really don't. We actually have no idea how to interpret the results of quantum mechanics and relativity.

> You come out attacking assuming that I'm sprouting new age stuff. I'm not.

I mean, you honestly are, quite objectively. You are literally relaying your own interpretation of Buddhist philosophy, specifically the teachings of no-self and impermanence.

> I've studied physics for well over 20 years now and I've met and talked to many others who have PhDs as well. QED by Feynman is actually my bible. I actually bring it with me everywhere I travel.

Well that doesn't really mean anything. Physics doesn't say that time is an illusion. In relativity, time, like space, is a very important parameter, since it is when events occur. In fact, gravity on our Earth is primarily due to the bending of time. Hardly seems like relativity is telling us that it's illusory. In Quantum Mechanics, time is a very important parameter, and can't even be easily reconciled with space.

> Either way - before offending someone and coming out firing next time, maybe you should calm down and take a deep breath. I'm not trying to offend or hurt anyone - although it appears to me that you are.

This quite well illustrates what I'm talking about. You are very quick to apply the Buddhist teachings of no-self and impermanence to the "pessimism of death", but now that you want to be mad and offended, you quickly forget about it. Your irritation is too clear and vivid to ignore, just like your life.

"Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. We should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed! Do not squander your life." - Zen Master Dogen

In Zen we called what you are doing "attaching to emptiness"

I'm sorry - but could you show where I'm actually implying or stating that there is 'no-self' or 'impermanence'? I'm implying that we're infinitely powerful beings that misperceive the interconnection within reality. I'll once again pull up a quote from Einstein to reiterate my position:

“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein

All I did was attempt to state that we are all inter-connected. Everything else you talk about is your own skewed and incredibly wrong interpretation of what I'm trying to state.

"Well that doesn't really mean anything. Physics doesn't say that time is an illusion."

And the same back to you. Your PhD in Physics means nothing to me, so blatantly talking about it like it gives you some sort of extra credentials makes you look extremely ignorant. Also - apologies for stating something in a manner which wasn't clear. Time is clearly a PARAMATER IN THIS UNIVERSE AND IS NOT AN ILLUSION. I can't think of anyone who would be stupid enough to deny the existence of time. What I meant to say is that the 'FLOW' of time is an ILLUSION. Here - this is a great watch for anyone that's non-you and that wants to understand what I truly meant to say:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y-JmocB84Y

"Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. We should strive to awaken. Awaken! Take heed! Do not squander your life." - Zen Master Dogen

I 100% agree with this statement.

In Zen we called what you are doing "attaching to emptiness"

Once again, I'm not sure where in the world I'm "attaching to emptiness." Once again - you're adding your own interpretation here so I have no further comments for you.

But the point is, I don't experience reality in this way, I experience reality as a totally separate individual. I don't think coping with death is a good reason to deny that I experience reality completely as an individual, and never as "the whole universe".

> Also - death is a gift. Living forever would be a nightmare.

If "time is an illusion", then birth and death are also illusory, as Buddhism teaches. Therefore, according to your own philosophical views, you do live forever.

https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/science_and_technology/The...

> When we talk about hopelessness and death, we're talking about facing the facts. No escapism. We may still have addictions of all kinds, but we cease to believe in them as a gateway to happiness. So many times we've indulged the short-term pleasure of addiction. We've done it so many times that we know that grasping at this hope is a source of misery that makes a short-term pleasure a long-term hell.

> Giving up hope is encouragement to stick with yourself, to make friends with yourself, to not run away from yourself, to return to the bare bones, no matter what's going on. Fear of death is the background of the whole thing. It's why we feel restless, why we panic, why there's anxiety. But if we totally experience hopelessness, giving up all hope of alternatives of the present moment, we can have a joyful relationship with our lives, an honest, direct relationship, one that no longer ignores the reality of impermanence and death.

Realizing that there is likely no god means facing this very existential feeling as well as loneliness. There is no god you can talk to.

PS: Even if there is a "god" that caused the big bang billions of years ago, it won't interact with you in any way.

Life is very short if you live it the traditional way. By the time you realize what is what (or, what you came here to learn in this life) it feels like there is little time left to enjoy it.

But a lot of this comes down to self-awareness and whether or not it interests you. There are many actively religious places on this Earth (India, Nepal, Bali(!)) who will happily laugh at you for saying we live only once.

And as for me. I distinctly remember when I was five years old, I used to think we could only have one life and my parents used to think that way too. And then you wake up to the reality and you realize that life isn’t finite. But imagine if it was? How different would the experience be on this planet?

You can accept certain conditions on the world as given, but you can never know they're correct. You can decide on the meaning (and sense) of your perceptions and interpretations, and since that's all you can do, you might as well lean into it. Accept your (non-)fate and all will be clear to you(r habitual and critical understandings of the world).

This perspective is broadly described as nihilism. There's different ways to express such a philosophy, depending primarily on how collectivistic vs individualistic you ultimately decide to be.

And as a little science nerd, I understood that the whirlpools weren't one thing, water molecules came in and water molecules came out, but the whirlpool remained ... for a little while. Sometimes it would just fade, or split in two, but never constant, never more than a full circle around the edge. I watched and watched, and suddenly I was struck that we as people were these tiny whirlpools, sucking in matter and expelling matter but somehow remaining, for a little while, and the light and the dark on the hot tub walls were very much like our minds, a product of the vortices themselves, but dependent on and therefore less real than the spinning water. And so just as these little water tornadoes would fly apart into nothing, no longer doing anything with the light, so would I and everyone else I knew. I was definitely going to stop spinning, stop taking things in and pushing things out, and instead it would all just settle.

That'll probably come with me to my deathbed. Some days I am very tired of spinning and bouncing against the walls, to no great end, and then when I think of flying apart and the refractions I could no longer produce against those walls, I find it more comforting than the idea of enduring.

Some may scoff, but as a young man I had a nice little mushroom trip, topped off with a little baby woodrose in the hills above an English town.

It cumulated in my lying, sinking into the ground. I felt quite profoundly certain that this would be the experience of death. A return to the wholeness from whence I came.

I think back to that experience whenever I'm troubled by mortality.

I too have experienced this existential dread, and sometimes still do.

Your post triggered a multitude of responses from different people experiencing the same, each with their own set of beliefs and coping mechanisms.

I found it fascinating - thank you.

It always surprises me that we are in a minority - most people go through life without experiencing this, or wondering about this. When trying to discuss this with one of them, they are usually baffled, and truly cannot understand you. It is almost as if we're speaking different languages. As a side note - I am wondering if there is something in common in all those who experience this dread.

But feel deeply into it. It's heartbreaking yes, but love is underlying that heartbreak. The love of experiencing life.

Death is a doorway really. It grants freedom from the tyranny of the beliefs that things are permanent or they have to be a certain way. Every moment dies to the next and we are the constant awareness, aware of ourselves and the "things" we name that is actually just one thing - the totality of experience.

As experience continuously morphs, we remain at peace as that which hears these words. That which knows the thoughts that arise.

Death, in how we conceptualise it, is illusory. There is no evidence of anything apart from our awareness of it. Think of it like a move screen. To the characters in the movie, death is real. To the observer of the character it's a play. And what is a play with no stakes?

There are structural beliefs that we are this body. Are you this body? Does the body contain consciousness or is the body made up of consciousness (as in, without awareness of a body, how can it be known to exist). Same with our thoughts and feelings.

All concepts arise within this (whatever this is) but do not colour the colourless canvas that we are.

Yes, death is an experience but is it really the awareness, that which you are, that dies? Or is the thoughts of a body to which we attribute the thought of death?

I'm not talking about personal awareness. What would that mean? Awareness would be both aware of the term "personal" and "impersonal". Leaving the awareness still colourless as these thoughts come and go within it, inseparable from it.

So don't shy away from this, look closer and see it clearly. It's okay to have the beliefs we have about being the body but we cannot confuse it for our direct experience. And our direct experience of death, which is a thought.

1. Realize that /regardless of what it's all about/, making oneself miserable by dwelling on fear (of nonexistence, or of anything else) is a really lousy use of the time they have, so stop thinking about it. Easier said than done; it takes practice, but it's possible.

2. Existential dread comes from thinking that one is separate from the rest of the world, which would mean that when an individual dies, something invaluable is extinguished forever. Talk to some hippies about that separateness; they can suggest ways to set yourself straight.

3. My sister likes to say that I was "down in Florida playing with the alligators" about things that happened before I was born. What will happen to 'me' when I die? Well the question is nonsensical because it implies a 'me' that is ontologically separate from the universe, but if it must be answered, I guess I'll be back to Florida, playing with the alligators.

With the bees, it’s not necessarily a coping, but also recognizing how life moves beyond our own: https://youtu.be/OGXbOiiaI24

In the song, the boy learns from his mother that his father died in the war. She tells him to go tell the bees.

Later, he met someone and fell in love. They got married, and he went to tell the bees.

Then they have a child together, and when his child was born, he went to tell the bees.

(The front man for that band passed a few years ago: https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/nottingham-news/tributes... )

The conclusion I came to is that I didn't exist before I was born, and it wasn't a problem. I won't exist after I die, and it won't be a problem then either. While its completely logical, it isn't enough on its own, but maybe its one piece of the puzzle that will help you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Beach_(novel)

> My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness... When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.

I'm no monk or saint, but have some intuitive sense of the continuous material flow of life that counterbalances the small feelings of loss that accompany gradual physical decay. "A single ocean for all the droplets, a single voice raises the clamor of Being"... It's a strange adventure, this universe and this human culture that basically arose from accounting statements just a hundred thousand months or so...

I also wonder if/assume people take religion to avoid/deal with these thoughts.

Cheer up. You were OK for the first 13 billion years of existence, and there's no reason to think the next trillion years will be any different.

Other than that, it's totally horrible, and there's no way to really cope with it. That is by design. No animal doesn't cling on for dear life at the end. Dying is the absolute worst thing that can happen to any being. If you tell yourself otherwise, you are really just deluding yourself

Also, as Zizek says, it is a total fiction. Death is so horrifying because it's something that is a total non-element of our reality. By definition, we can't access it, we can't think about it, we can't refer to it.

This probably won't help, but I find this expressed rather well in the poem Dirge Without Music by Edna St. Vincent Millay [0].

Perhaps the note of anger in that poem is a helpful accompaniment to the despair for me. I can't win, but I can express my disapproval and temporarily resist by attempting to live a good life.

Look after yourself and others.

[0] https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52773/dirge-without-m...

I'll also say there's a difference between engaging philosophically with the idea of death, and having panic or anxiety attacks about it. When my existential thoughts turned into panic attacks I sought therapy, which gave me tools to ground myself and get out of the downward spiral of dread.

Since your consciousness will never know or regret it is gone, nothing is truly lost. It encourages one to live every minute to its fullest and enjoy what you have. imagine how cheaper life would be if it was infinite.

While I agree with your statement today, it might not be the case going forward.

The idea of impermanence can also be liberating. All our mistakes, failures, and problems will ultimately be washed away by the crashing waves of time. It takes the pressure off a bit.

At least that's how I use the same realization to provide comfort at times.

Also ultimately it humanizes and connects all of us: no one is exempt from dying.

Now the question is what will you do next...

Cherish people and your memories of them. Have faith that they will do the same for you.

"But there is a way of turning this logic around. We can begin to do things not in spite of death, but because of it. More and more, we can lean into the truth of impermanence. And rather than make us morbid, it can make us appreciate just how beautiful life is. You're alive! What do you get to do today? You can go for a walk. You can make pancakes for someone you love. You can read a good book.

"When you do these things, in spite of death, everything can seem ultimately pointless. But when you truly embrace impermanence, the point is always now. You get to make full contact with the reality of life... now! What other point or purpose could you hope for?

— Sam Harris (Waking up App)

There is a budhist parable called the Parable of the Poisoned Arrow, from a Theravada sutta. You should read a good translation on the "accesstoinsight" website, but it goes somewhat like this: Malunkyaputta, one of Gautama Buddha disciples, asks him to answer the metaphysical questions that were afflicting him (questions about the Universe, life after death and such) - and if Gautama failed to answer him, he would renounce His teachings. To which Gautama Buddha basically responded that he never promised to answer those questions, and the reason is:

"Imagine as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... [lots of "until I know" later].. He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him."

So those questions were, in fact, useless. No matter the answer, the arrow was still there inflicting pain. And Gautama follows that by saying that his Teachings were the way of removing the arrow and treating the arrow wound, and not a way of answering those questions.

I'm not budhist, but I read this passage in a moment of my life I actually spent nights awaken because thinking about death was simply too dreadful (it's a very personal background, but I was VERY christian until the very night I noticed after my prayers, at 20 yo, that it was not that I believed in christianism, but I was just afraid of not believing in anything at all), so I was looking into anything I could support myself with. This story made me understand a couple of things:

1. Someone around two millenia ago also had trouble sleeping because of those questions. That's weirdly comforting, knowing that this is something part of our human condition, and something we've been trying to figure out how to deal with for as long as we became self aware.

2. The story aknowledges that what we are feeling, this existential dread, is pain. Is real pain, even if a mental and emotional one. That means that we can and should find a treatment to it, philosophically or not.

3. Most important of all, looking for answers of the kind "Is there life after death?" Is independent of not fearing death anymore. Someone two millenia ago noticed that we can live a happy life and not suffer from the existencial dread NO MATTER your own personal answer for those questions.

Again, I'm not buddhist, and by no means I no longer fear death. I still have my existential crysis now and then, still have some trouble sleeping sometimes. But it's a process of facing this feeling and understanding that it is possible to face our little time alive with human dignity and without feeling overwhelmed by death. We still can treat this pain and live happy with ourselves and our loved ones. Everyone deserves this.

Anyway, hope this helped, even if a little bit. No matter what you believe, knowing someone faced this same problem before and actually discovered a way to live happily is something that soothed me in my worst nights, hopefully it can start something good to you too.

—- that’s a Zen response not a snarky question.

Excerpt [1]:

> Honeybees accumulate an electric charge during flying. Bees emit constant and modulated electric fields during the waggle dance. Both low- and high-frequency components emitted by dancing bees induce passive antennal movements in stationary bees. The electrically charged flagella of mechanoreceptor cells are moved by electric fields and more strongly so if sound and electric fields interact. Recordings from axons of the Johnston's organ indicate its sensitivity to electric fields. Therefore, it has been suggested that electric fields emanating from the surface charge of bees stimulate mechanoreceptors and may play a role in social communication during the waggle dance.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance#Mechanism

So while this custom seems perhaps superstitious and frivolous, it carries actual layers of meaning and importance, because animal husbandry, even insect husbandry, is steeped richly in tradition and knowledge handed down across generations, for millennia, more than we can even comprehend.

I ask because I’d love to keep bees myself someday and the relationships people have with bees are something I don’t know well, or don’t understand, but am fascinated by. (The tradition linked for this thread is one I’m familiar with, for example — but what I don’t know is what makes people believe it. What is the experience of beekeeping that leads people to believe bees understand?) It’s one primary reason I’m keen to become a beekeeper, to experience and to learn. I’d love to hear whatever you have to say.

I wander if as we all start to use chat based LLMs in our everyday lives similar "superstitions" and traditions may appear? People telling them the things that have happened in their lives...

Though I sincerely practice prayer and confession which ironically probably makes me an unreliable witness to their mechanisms and value in this venue.

This practice is in _Carpe Jugulum_, IIRC.

Telling the Bees - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28667197 - Sept 2021 (59 comments)

(Yes, bees don't have much individuality, perhaps she gives them more than they really have to make a book, but it's also part of the fun to see how she succesfully makes a story from characters mostly without much personality or individuality).

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/18652002

They say the important things in life are to have meat from hunting and to have honey from the bees, and that’s it. Meat and honey is the meaning of life.

The videos are:

1: https://youtu.be/TAGjuRwx_Y8 Asking questions to some Hadza

2: https://youtu.be/Ny4bHOnSg0o Going hunting with the Hadza

"What happens when you die?" "Well, we bury you in the ground and then we move somewhere else"

"What is your greatest fear?" "Lions"

The guy is desperately trying to get some "ancient tribal wisdom" from them and they're like "yeah, Lions are pretty scary".

I have never once had any of them removed. Nor can I imagine why anyone would do that if it was factually correct and relevant.

I do make sure to add a single source to a major news publication review of the show/film/etc. that mentions that the work is indeed about the thing or involves it as a major plot point.

From my perspective, if the edits are uncontroversial, it appears as though the response will be too. Editing Wikipedia is, socially, neither an overwhelmingly positive nor an overwhelmingly negative experience for me. I do it now and then as a purely altruistic endeavour.

It's like when someone gets banned from a Reddit sub for a stupid reason and concludes that every one of Reddit's thousands and thousands of mods is an evil power-tripping egotist.

How could they not know that they needed to twerk it to communicate these messages?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waggle_dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adbrWWnyMKg

One distant relative was a beekeeper (indeed a teacher of beekeeping) and when he died around 1970, his wife (born 1922, my great-aunt) would tell the bees.