Suppose we knew the world was ending. Would the fear of knowing it's all over outweigh the relief of not having to goto work tomorrow?
To be honest, I'd just be happy I could smoke cigarettes again.
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OP, you sound like you need to talk to someone. Not on the internet. In real life.
Did I miss something OP said that made you think that? I’d indeed be happy I could smoke again, too. There’d be existential crisis and all, too, but cigarette would 100% be back. Man, and it’s been like 10 years, imagine someone who just quit lol
I don't think someone who's not having a crisis would think about the world ending and decide that the thrill of skipping work is about even with the knowledge of impending death in terms of emotional impact.
Oh no... Literally everyone I know feels this way. That's probably not a great sign lol
Look at Mr rainbows & sunshine here
We all live with the knowledge of impending death every day, it's something we all have in common that will come for all of us at some point.
For a lot of us, the hard thing to deal with is the uncertainty about when. We might keel over tomorrow, or even later today, but if we live our lives like that's the case, we might screw ourselves over if we manage to live for another 70 years. We might fuck up our health, leave ourselves poor, homeless, ruin our reputations, etc.
It's a balancing act to squeeze in as many good times while we can, while setting ourselves up to have many more good times in the future and for others to continue having good times after we're gone. Plan too conservatively and you miss out on a lot of stuff now, but if you go completely balls to the wall now you leave yourself nothing to work with later.
Put a hard limit on things with the world ending though, and you remove a whole lot of uncertainty from the equation. You don't have to worry about making things last, or the long-term consequences, you get to live entirely in the now, because there is no (or very little) later.
I'd rather have another 50+ years of normal good times and people to continue having that opportunity long after I'm gone, even if it means going to work, than a scant few days or hours (or whatever scenario we're imagining in this case) of raucous debauchery, but if that's the cards I get dealt and theres no way of changing that outcome, I can either mope about it and waste the little time I have left, or I can lean into it and make the most out of it.
From where I'm standing, anyone who'd rather mope is the one with real issues.
Eh, it's not like you can do anything about it. Why worry?
I think about the world ending a lot. Isn't fear of death really fear of leaving others or being left? If we all go at once, that solves that issue and I'm pretty ok with it. On days when I'm especially tired, i would choose asteroid over work.
You do realize it's entirely possible to hold more than one disparate emotions at once, right? If I knew the world was ending tomorrow, I'd definitely be excited that I wouldn't have to scrub any fucking toilets at work, even if I would be sad/scared/etc that I couldn't further accomplish or experience things I wanted to before I died.
I’m what you could describe as an optimistic nihilist. I understand it might now satisfy everyone, but for me, the certitude that we’ll ultimately all be forgotten and erased from existence, as time passes and the universe slowly drifts into heat death, is an extremely liberating idea. The lack of an objective overarching meaning to life means that I can choose one for myself, and I genuinely think the best way to do it is to try to make everyone’s time on this drifting ball of rock and magma suck as little as possible.
All this to say, I don’t really fear my own death, but the impacts it’s going to have on the people I love.