It's death

Posted by inatreecrown2 5 hours ago

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Comments

Comment by freetime2 2 hours ago

This story has a strong "life sucks then you die" vibe going for it. And the afterlife also sucks apparently (although I don't personally believe in an afterlife).

Hopelessness and injustice seem to be the current zeitgeist - at least for anyone who spends a lot of time online. And I get it, there's plenty to be unhappy about.

But my counter-argument is that it's possible to do things in life that you're proud of. And find happiness in the simplest of places. And most people would do better to focus the majority of their attention on those things.

This story says "do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all" - which I agree with. But I'd go one step further and add "celebrate your successes" and try to align your life in such a way that you can have successes worthy of celebrating.

It makes me wonder: with everyone seemingly so unhappy, why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles? Similar to the 60s counterculture. You don't need the whole world to go along with you - just a handful (or less) of likeminded people. Or some people even manage to go it alone.

It seems a lot of people (perhaps a vocal minority?) actually enjoy being upset. Or maybe everyone is going through ups and downs but we just tend to be more vocal when we're upset.

Comment by jimmaswell 1 hour ago

> why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles? Similar to the 60s counterculture.

I think the brony and furry community count for some examples. Brony community has been a major counter-culture since its inception and I truly believe it's had a measurable impact on gender norms and some other areas. Many of us see it as something of a lifestyle where it dominates the spaces we primarily engage in etc.

Furry is even bigger and easier to argue as a popular counterculture lifestyle, and growing all the time (record convention attendance every year).

They're also places where some other things like polyamory are more common, and much more LGBT/etc inclusive than average (which is less of a statement now, but they were both far ahead of the curve on that years ago), refreshingly sex-positive (at least the parts of the communities I identify with).

Personally all of those things apply to me and I love being a part of those communities. Brony community has been a hugely important thing in my life since high school and working on game development there was a big jumpstart on experience working in a team/technical experience. Furry I only started exploring more a few years ago but I've made a lot of great friends and met my current partners there too.

Brony's a consistent core of lifetime holdouts like me and a steady trickle of new people at this point, and furry's growing faster all the time - even the little bonfire meetup at a nature preserve I like to go to had a record smashing attendance on opening day this year.

Comment by freetime2 1 hour ago

While brony and furry weren't exactly what I had in mind, I think you're 100% correct. And also a great example of finding happiness in simple places. Whatever gets your juices flowing (figuratively speaking).

Comment by kunai 1 hour ago

I thought bronyism sort of died out and that the furry community sort of subsumed it.

I'd also add that I think the increased self-ID of young people in the LGBTQ community is in and of itself sort of a means to access a sort of alternative lifestyle. Many of these people live somewhat hedonistic, bohemian, artsy lifestyles that disregard traditional notions of success or traditional standards and mores in relationships and love.

Comment by 8note 16 minutes ago

> why aren't there more people pursuing alternative lifestyles?

generally land costs

Comment by smnplk 2 hours ago

> And the afterlife also sucks apparently (although I don't personally believe in an afterlife).

Why don't you believe in the experience after dying ?

Comment by BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago

I'm going to say it will be similar to the experience prior to birth / conception, ie. we were nothing, and to nothing we shall return.

It's a scary feeling if you can grasp it. Grasping non-existence from within existence is difficult, I've consciously tried to do it and succeeded a couple of times, but it's fleeting and both times it affected my breathing and heart rate in a similar way to fear or panic or pain.

Comment by whatshisface 2 hours ago

As someone who was born, I can attest that the experience of not being born consisted of billions of years passing by in an imperceptibly short instant, followed by being five.

Comment by canyp 2 hours ago

I go through that exercise of visualizing the void and it is fascinating and terrifying at the same time, especially if you do it before going to sleep.

That being said, you can't just assume that existence is bounded by your living memories. You might as well have been everything instead of nothing prior to being spawned and you just don't remember it.

Comment by BLKNSLVR 51 minutes ago

> you can't just assume that existence is bounded by your living memories

I was going to raise that, but couldn't find a short enough way to describe it properly. Something like:

Existence beyond what you can actually remember doesn't matter because it's outside any bounds of practical discussion; it should be excluded from consideration. The same way it's impossible to predict anything 'before the big bang' because we only have 'after the big bang' as useful evidence. There is no way to verify any continuity if you can't remember it or if there is no evidence of it. There's no guarantee you can even comprehend what it could be, 'you' as a concept may not even exist and it's unlikely to be relate-able to anything in this living world. Maybe you return to being 0.00001% of the collective consciousness of the universe, or any other crackpot thing anyone wants to suggest. Flying Spaghetti Monster.".

Comment by ed_mercer 1 hour ago

I've always wondered why doing it before sleep amplifies the anxiety

Comment by albatross79 1 hour ago

It's very easy to grasp, do you remember what it was like before your first memory? No? That's what it's like.

Comment by BLKNSLVR 47 minutes ago

Nope. That's a long way from grasping it. That's seeing it from a distance and understanding the general shape.

I may just be defining 'grasp' differently to you though.

Comment by freetime2 2 hours ago

I think that once the power supply to my brain shuts down, that's likely the end of my conscious experience.

Comment by hankbond 3 hours ago

I don't really get it, but still kind of liked it?

I enjoyed the abstractness of the story and the disjointedness of the time aspects. I don't disagree with the salience of the point Death made but it kind of felt like an exposition dump in a movie.

Not that I'm a good writer (or reader tbh) but I think focusing more on the first kind of writing and less on the second would have connected more with me.

Comment by aklemm 59 minutes ago

It seems like a gem to me. For those who don’t “get it” just think about what it evokes and follow those thoughts. That’s all there is to it.

Comment by anon-3988 2 hours ago

This style of writing feels like the Minecraft Parkour Civilization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pFwQiwRbcg

There's a perfect balance of absurdity and casualness that makes almost perfect sense that you can follow the show, and yet bizarre enough that you stick to know more.

Comment by ndhbxyd 2 hours ago

Most people/groups are taught How to survive.

Many coast on just that knowledge and die without the WHY to survive question ever coming up.

But if it does come up for you at some point in life, know that different philosophies have different answers. These days you can find summaries of all of them neatly complied like a restaurant menu thanks to LLMs.

People are very diffefent so you find the philosophy that fits you. Also thanks to all those differences proving one is the best is a waste of time and energy. Different ones are useful for different situations.

Comment by matthewdgreen 2 hours ago

I had the experience recently of asking an LLM about the Buddhist view on reincarnation, and then hearing its views on what this means for its own existence. I'm not sure any of it left me feeling better about death, but it was a fascinating conversation.

Comment by _doctor_love 2 hours ago

I appreciate the Australian salty outlook on life, feels very much present in this story.

To my mind there is a Buddhist story hiding in here. The whole idea about an endless black void and that the protagonist considered sitting felt…allegorical? metaphorical?

The end is what drove it home for me. People generally speaking would prefer not to do any internalizing about death whatsoever and will take an endless wandering over the hard work of being human.

Comment by jadar 1 hour ago

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil.” - Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

Comment by Shellban 1 hour ago

Ecclesiastes is an interesting one. It goes chapter by chapter, trying to find meaning in life through process of elimination, trying education, hedonism, labor, and wealth. While some things (usually wisdom) bring about more joy in the interim, he declares that they all will lose their charm rather quickly. In the end, all joy from these will leave us before death. Solomon's last hope for fulfillment lies in the eternal and supernatural.

Comment by NBJack 52 minutes ago

Solomon seems to give a glimpse into a life of "what happens if the only challenges you have are the ones you freely pick?" He had everything one could dream of and more, including an unprecedented era of peace.

Yet he struggled to pass the time. Having the equivalent of billions of [insert favorite currency here], most folks fantasize about the ideal life. We often believe all of our immediate problems go away, free to do whatever we want. Yet, at least in Solomon's case, he seemed to become incredibly fed up with these grand projects and plans of his own devise.

While I certainly wouldn't mind a fraction of that wealth myself, I do recall my college weekends. Free to spend time however I pleased, with my basic needs met and no homework looming, I spent hours playing my favorite video games. And yet, no matter how good they were, I remember how dull and boring they eventually became in only a few hours.

Comment by chopete3 1 hour ago

These kind of write-ups always try to bring one into their real world senses.

Few interesting observations

>> Ten years gone for the sake of picking a Netflix show Thats just Netflix. With kids 18 years go by just like that.

>> Nobody gets it all right. You’re born, and then you go through life making the choices that you think are the best given the information

This is said numerous times but can give wrong interpretation. Choices are what make the life. Life and choices are not parallel tracks.

Comment by avilay 3 hours ago

Can a kind soul write down their interpretation of the story? I didn't quite get it.

[Edit]: Thanks for all the explanations!

Comment by freetime2 3 hours ago

I'm not quite sure I got it either, but I guess this is probably the main gist:

> by the time most people wind up here, they’ve got plenty of regrets. Nobody gets it all right. You’re born, and then you go through life making the choices that you think are the best given the information you have at the time, and you don’t always have all the information to make the right choices. Do yourself a favour and forgive yourself for any failings on your part, you’re only human after all

Comment by Waterluvian 3 hours ago

I’m going to annoy people who actually wield this language well. I feel like there’s less of a clear point and more of an aesthetic. Like not even metaphorical or allegorical. It’s just the overall feel of wandering and pointlessness that creates a sense of calm.

Comment by ok_dad 3 hours ago

Don’t sweat the small stuff

Comment by senectus1 3 hours ago

understated throwaway line. its often the small stuff that we gnaw on for too long.

Comment by Yen 2 hours ago

I'm reminded of the lyrics from Pink Floyd's Time:

  "And then one day you find
  Ten years have got behind you
  no one told you when to run
  you missed the starting gun"
The longer you live, the more tiny little mistakes you make. Things that at the time you could have done better, if you'd known, if you'd been a bit more careful. And these weigh on you, emotionally, pretty consistently.

And while it's pretty absurd, in the story, such tiny mistakes having such outsized consequences, the story reminds us that such severe consequences are well within the realm of possibility. People do lose limbs off of little, careless mistakes. Doubly so with all the incredibly concentrated sources of energy we have in the modern world - power tools, automobiles, explosives.

Would one really lose ten years trying to pick out a single Netflix show? No. But could one wake up one day and realize that they'd accomplished nothing of note for a decade, that all their free time was dumped into Netflix shows that weren't even that good?

So, what do you do with all that? Memento Mori, I guess.

Comment by SoftTalker 1 hour ago

I've accomplished nothing of note ever. Most people don't. They just live their lives, trying to get by as best they can.

Comment by 2 hours ago

Comment by jckahn 3 hours ago

YOLO

Comment by gerdesj 3 hours ago

Beautifully put, in four letters.

Comment by sublinear 3 hours ago

It's an allegory for AI hysteria and WFH depression. Generally, anything to put a wet blanket on the nice things that have happened to tech workers in the past few years. To put salt in the wound, it's done in a style that used to delight HN.

It reminded me of those cringe videos CGPGrey put out for COVID.

Comment by rdtsc 2 hours ago

For some reason I imagined death from The Seventh Seal by Bergman here. Very calm and matter for fact kind of a character. Maybe once in a while he may decide to visit for a game of chess...

Comment by booleandilemma 2 hours ago

[dead]

Comment by tclover 46 minutes ago

It's a funny story if you look at the end of life from a materialistic viewpoint on the origin of consciousness, but that’s not the only perspective.

Comment by _gmax0 3 hours ago

Winston Churchill once laid bricks as a means to outrun the black dog.

Comment by root_axis 7 minutes ago

Kafka pastiche.

Comment by 2 hours ago

Comment by fractalf 3 hours ago

Fantastic, thanks for that!

Comment by crooked-v 2 hours ago

Reminds me of the cut number "The Hole" from the Beetlejuice stage musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYa31LqxKc8

Comment by npl 3 hours ago

Great

Comment by morpheos137 1 hour ago

if life didn't suck and there were not the time out of death there would be no drive to optimize the time we have.