Being dead isn't all that great.
You know what, screw being dead.
I was like, 12? 12 years old when I decided that "Death is better than life"?
12 y/o me was wrong about a lot of things.
I've been dead for about 4 days now, it's actually quite difficult;
I keep getting these 'dangerous thoughts' (a reference to Szeth's "truthless" shtick) and forgetting I'm dead, and that's so tedious!
The reason I decided to commit philosophical suicide was because I was living for my ideals and they turned out to be wrong.
Ok, fine! I was wrong!
That's bound to lead to some great and cataclysmic turnover,
but philosophical suicide (at least in the extreme) doesn't seem to work without also doing literal suicide.
(literal suicide is too hard, so I can't do that either.)
This leaves me with one more option, rebellion!
12 year old me was wrong, but 13 year old me had figured out about absurdism, so maybe he was right.
Anyways, we'l return to the example of the prisoner who's being tortured:
He's left with a few options
(it's impossible not to choose any of these because humans really hate torture)
- Escape
If he finds a way out of the prison, he's good like gouda!
This can be difficult, because prisons are designed specifically to not let people escape from them. - Pretend escape
Another form of escape is suicide, he can't do this either because he doesn't have access to any implements of harm, but he can pretend to have killed himself; we see this with that one Xadian captive from the first arc.
With this, basically the prisoner has completely convinced himself that he is already dead.
He will still take actions (because physically, he is alive), but he only takes whatever action costs the least energy.
This works until he actually dies. - Rebel
This would be actions like: saying insults to his captor, refusing to eat stuff, being loud and obnoxious, spitting. Anything that provides him with some satisfaction, despite his predicament.
This option will probably just increase the torture though,
so it isn't really applicable.
Another example of a bad situation is being a fresh Nihilist
(this is the 12 me)
Picture this: you've just realized that there is no point to anything.
You are born,
You live,
And you die.
We are all just food for worms.
Those worms are also meaningless.
This is pretty sad, so there are a new three options.
(these are really just the same as the other scenario, but in a different costume)
You can:
- Suicide
If you do this, then you don't have to live with the sadness of no meaning. - Philosophical suicide
Something like: joining a religion.
You deny the 'no meaning' idea and convince yourself of a meaning.
This is called that because you will never do philosophy again. - Rebel
In the last scenario, this option didn't seem that fun, but now it's awesome!
It works like this:
You accept that there's no point to anything, and use that knowledge to just do whatever you want.
You now have ultimate freedom because there's no reason to exist, so there's no reason to do anything except for following your greatest joys.
Sometimes this rebellion is done where you make up your own meaning.
Sometimes you'd do this coupled with heaps and heaps of comedy.
Sometimes the rebel makes his own new meaning.
My bad situation started like 5-6 days ago.
it was intensified by my new rule of "I never lie!" (it was a fun thing to try)
This had me stuck in a hole of sticking to my promises,
and because I was rebelling against my mom
(whom had prevented me from having control over my possessions)
these promises had been based upon the rebellion,
based on demonstrating my perspective and regaining this control.
Eventually, there was too much stress,
Police came over uninvited,
Mom lied about what I said,
There was some rocking and shaking,
Eventually I was forced to violate my ideals (which I valued more than living).
This (as you could have guessed) led to a cataclysmic upheaval of said ideals
and a descision to stop living.
Now, as we've already established, I'm not capable of actually committing suicide,
so I instead did sort of like the prisoner one.
I decided "Sam is dead" and I began taking only the action that costs the least energy.
This works mostly well, except that I keep having these 'dangerous thoughts'
I'll see a cave exploration video and think "I wanna do that!"
Or I'll feel dissapointed in myself for missing a friend's birthday party.
Or I'll want to go back to the musical because I want to keep my role.
Or I'll consider blogging.
Yadda yadda yadda.
My best guess is that these will spiral and increase and eventually I will stop being dead.
This 'rebirth' will be big and eventful and
it will certainly be consequential.
I will most likely regret a bad rebirth, so right now I should try to ensure a good rebirth.
What I really need is a new system of ideals.
I'll use these (as always) to choose my actions.
Ultimately, these ideals will be designed to propel me towards the ultimate goal of:
Happiness.
Personal happiness.
That's a nice goal, sure, but what are my actual tenets going to be?
It's getting late, so I'll fix this later.
Maybe also in a new note.
I'm going to go take a shower.
That's all for now.
Goodbye.