Existential nihilism and Immortality

[Matthias M.]

Existential nihilism argues that life has no objective meaning. The human belief in the immortality of a personal essence, soul or whatever is one of the preferred methods to give our short life span such a meaning. This belief frees us from our insignificance which would become manifest dramatically if our short life span would be all we have. I don't want to jar on your nerves with the reoccurring topic of immortality. I clearly do not believe in any form of afterlife. What I would like to know: Is the rejection of immortality, the belief in total annihilation after death, the plunge into oblivion an inseparable component of the philosophical view of nihilism?

[SpookyDread]

Reasoning existence after the total extinction of your consciousness is impossible to do because there lacks a witness.

Deep by Anathema from their album Judgment

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Ghost In The Shell

Immortality of consciousness has mainly I guess to do with memories. It's possible that the existence of your self can persist without any memories of who you were .

This is the conundrum proposed at the end of Ghost In The Shell is this idea of who is she? Does the puppet master become her? Does she become the puppet master?

It's a film about the absurdism of human consciousness. It's nihilistic and yet life affirming. It doesn't posit the extinction of consciousness but extinction of memory.

Another weird facet of the movie is the idea of a shell itself. The main character is not an empty shell, she holds an identity. In my opinion, by the end of the film it seems really clear that she gets the better half of the bargain. The person coming into her is the one who gets assimilated. The puppet master in the film can animate shells, but it's also interesting that you never see unconscious robots in the film.

I think there's a middle ground . Reincarnation can be totally nihilistic. It's not transcendental. It's merely the transference of one identity annihilated into another one, it's about as scary as nihilism, but it's not totally non-sensical in that sense that you can reason witness, a kind of after-life, without necessarily being on another plane of existence.

I don't know. Under-rated anime film is under-rated.

[Druidic]

Quote

Reincarnation can be totally nihilistic. It's not transcendental. It's merely the transference of one identity annihilated into another one, it's about as scary as nihilism, but it's not totally non-sensical in that sense that you can reason witness, a kind of after-life, without necessarily being on another plane of existence. --SpookyDread

To me Reincarnation seems just as horrific, if not more so, than The Eternal Return. With infinite rebirth comes the possibility of experiencing all the bad things you may have hopefully dodged in this life. Sooner or later, like winning an evil lottery, you'll experience all the nastiness the universe can throw at you. I know Karma is supposed to come into play here but that concept always struck me as a desperate afterthought, a band aid on a hemorrhage.
Getting a horrible disease, falling from a terrible height, burning to death, being murdered, tortured or raped, getting crushed in an industrial accident, maybe devoured by wild beasts…infinite possibilities, infinite rebirth…something to look forward to for everyone One life is enough. .

[SpookyDread]

Yeah I don't follow rational superstructures overlaid on top of reality . Karma is supposed to be cause-and-effect, it's often made out to be a bulky moralism super imposed onto a world that objective and alien to human nature. The philosophy of Karma is an anthropocentric view of reality, and I suppose most of you here probably have rejected that.

in Sinister Yogis by David Gordon White he presents various viewpoints about reincarnation by yogis arguing with each other, which is fun to get a sense for. The model that I found most poignant was the idea that the yogi attempting to re-embody themselves has to make themselves smaller, like a virus, and this is the idea in Ghost in The Shell is that reincarnating entities are little ####s. Commonly around the world, reincarnation is viewed as an illness that comes from the outside but is ultimately inferior to the dominant consciousness they're coming into.

Dr. Wilhelm Reich argues that if life-force or orgone or whatever attracts through mass, then you can't actually reincarnate yourself without being assimilated.

here's a podcast with David Gordon White, for that book

If it wasn't the way I just said it was, reincarnation as necessarily being smaller, we'd live in a far more horrific world. I think it's a lot easier to grasp the concept that willful reincarnation is effectively the death of your own ego into another one.

there's also a good biopic about Dr. Wilhelm Reich, here

. I think he was onto something in some ways .

[LeglessSaltyDiogenes]

Quote Originally Posted by Druidic

Quote Reincarnation can be totally nihilistic. It's not transcendental. It's merely the transference of one identity annihilated into another one, it's about as scary as nihilism, but it's not totally non-sensical in that sense that you can reason witness, a kind of after-life, without necessarily being on another plane of existence. --SpookyDread To me Reincarnation seems just as horrific, if not more so, than The Eternal Return. With infinite rebirth comes the possibility of experiencing all the bad things you may have hopefully dodged in this life. Sooner or later, like winning an evil lottery, you'll experience all the nastiness the universe can throw at you. I know Karma is supposed to come into play here but that concept always struck me as a desperate afterthought, a band aid on a hemorrhage. Getting a horrible disease, falling from a terrible height, burning to death, being murdered, tortured or raped, getting crushed in an industrial accident, maybe devoured by wild beasts…infinite possibilities, infinite rebirth…something to look forward to for everyone One life is enough. .

Who by fire, who by water....

In my personal physical-metaphysical excursions, I've found the Bardo realms of the Tibetans to be quite real, and well described in the Bardo Thodol. Peter Christopherson of Coil said we should not regard the pursuit of happiness in the form of taking drugs and jumping up and down to club music as a frivolous pastime, as those engaging in this activity are actually learning a bit about what happens after we die. Its a rave-like atmosphere in there, and I can see why souls would be reluctant to cross over into the physical universe, unless there were some mechanism, like karma, to compel re-birth.

The nihilism of re-incarnation was one reason why Buddha and Mahavira said it was a ride you could get off of. I can imagine how the belief in re-incarnation would fit the purposes of the ruling elite, even more so than Christianity.

The only way to make sense of anything remotely complex is to reduce it to its most senseless components. That's how Man has muddled through the mystery of life.

The serpent smiles as it coils around the world. Feed upon the false phoenix. And thus we cry; long live death. For all our yesterdays will die tomorrow.

Mark S.

[Mr. D.]

Belief in the immortality of the soul comes from revelation, not philosophy. In fact it is a very poor subject for any philosophical discussion. The revelation has to be experienced and is very subjective. Those who believe in the immortality of the soul have a different vocabulary than those who believe in a totally material universe. Even the words that they share have different meanings. So. Mathias, you would be confronted with affirmations rather than arguments and someone who is sure of immortality will have much trouble understanding why your arguments are so important to you. It would end up being arguments for or against versus memory and experience.