The Eternal Recurrence of Being (Awake)
I presume that there is no such thing as not being from 1st person point of view (ie. you cannot not experience being). There is only being.
Life (being alive) is what carries the qualities and affirmation of being. Death is the cessation of any particular state of being in time and identity.
Whenever and wherever we are, there will be being, again and again and again. But there will be nothing by which we can conclude that our being has ceased and renewed itself. Being won't occur again because of lack of a record of being I rather than you, being here rather than there. Being will just be again, inexplicably, separated by time or timelessness, moments of forgetting, death, sleep and change, et cetera.
Life (being alive) is what carries the qualities and affirmation of being. Death is the cessation of any particular state of being in time and identity.
Whenever and wherever we are, there will be being, again and again and again. But there will be nothing by which we can conclude that our being has ceased and renewed itself. Being won't occur again because of lack of a record of being I rather than you, being here rather than there. Being will just be again, inexplicably, separated by time or timelessness, moments of forgetting, death, sleep and change, et cetera.
Comments (33)
Heidegger has some different things to say about being, if you're interested.
There is plenty of youtube vids about Heidegger. Gets a bit much...
I'm worried about being again after death. It's irrational and absurd though because there is nothing that links being before (life) as with being after (life), so we can just as well say being is finite and will never recur. Furthermore because being changes the fear will go.
A lot of people are afraid of hell. That's where the fear stems from. Hence the need for certainty about being after death. But it's a fear that's cultural, particular to the countries that take seriously the Christian dogma. It's hard to shake if you've grown up around people who do take it seriously. There's no intellectual or logical remedy for it.
Being and time seem to be interrelated. To say being is finite (or infinite) is a mistake. We need to know what being is before we assert a property to it. It does not seem as though being is a being--an object or entity. Thus it makes it difficult to talk about.
There is only whatever this is, whether you call it heaven, hell or reality. The worry is that there will always be a sort of drum warp of being and non-being that never absolutely ends (but non being is an end, like death or sleep). This is akin to the Eastern belief of being trapped in Samsara, the eternal wheel of birth and death.
Quoting Xtrix
Being is finite in the sense that being ends in death. Being may be infinite in the sense that being is the only aware state (the ON state). We only ever experience being, so it might as well be eternal.
You can see the room when the light is on.
You can see nothing in the room when the light is off.
Assume for sake of this analogy that seeing is synonymous with being.
It's not necessarily true that being ends in death. Human beings end in death. The light analogy is a good one, but WE'RE the light, not being.
Yes, that is what I am saying.
Didn't seem it. You referred to "non-being" as death or sleep. One wouldn't say that's non-being. Maybe a kind of nullity. The world goes on when you're dead or asleep, however.
While what exists may not depend on any single being it does depend on the possibility of being at all (any being and generational memory). If there are no beings everything is dead. If there are no perceivers there is no world. Existence stands in relation to any and all kinds of being.
Maybe I have no clue as to how philosophers have used "being". What would non-being be according to you?
What is non-being if it is not being dead? You can't be dead really because you aren't anything when dead . There is nothing that it is like to be dead. There is only what it is like to be alive. Where there is life, presumably there is being. Wherever there is a world that goes unperceived there is the potentiality for perception and beings will appear in no time because beings are what experience time. Thus being is eternal light switch flipping.
You are.
You are not.
You are.
You are not.
Et cetera
What is a dreamless sleep like? Is that non-being? In that case, you're interpreting "being" again in relation to a human being with a life, with perceptions and feelings etc., which come to an end in death. That's one particular entity (being) that ends, yes. That doesn't tell you much about being in general.
In many ways, what's considered non-being (as not being presently before you) is actually more common than being (as presence, which is what the philosophers have always interpreted it from the Greeks onward). What if, instead, being is considered something concealed, absent? A kind of "nothing" in a sense? We do seem to live most of our lives in a kind of "unconscious" (or in Heideggerian terms, "ready-to-hand") relation to the world--like when we're involved and engaged in the world, in a skill or with other people, or when totally absorbed in an activity.
Yes, I'd classify unconsciousness as well as death as non-being, granting the
major difference between those two states.
Quoting Xtrix
I have no clue as to why being would be used in that sense but I suppose I'd have to expose myself to Heidegger for that.
Then consciousness is being? Like I said, you're then interpreting being in relation to the human being, particularly the human lifespan or human consciousness. That's not an unreasonable position, in fact its the view of most people, scientists included. I just happen to think it's not the complete picture.
Or feel free to grill me on it. If I can't explain it well enough for you to understand, then I hardly have the right to simply refer you to some other authority.
Well, I suppose any kind of consciousness is a state of being, not just human consciousness. I think consciousness and therefore being is inevitable because there is nothing else that enters into it.
It seems that Heidegger posed Das Nicht (The Nothing) as a source of anxiety. Please expand about it if you can. My concern is about being as the only possible state of awareness which will never end as the source of anxiety, however irrational this is. Being ends but it likely starts again, like waking up from sleep. I never experience sleep though I sleep, I am unfortunately always awake. It can't be otherwise.
I don't understand this sentence. "Nothing else that enters into it"? What's "it"? Being? What does the "else" refer to?
Quoting Nils Loc
Sure. What Heidegger is driving at, in my reading, is that human beings have no "nature," and so there's nothing to ground our choices on. Custom is our nature -- we are what we interpret ourselves to be, usually through what we do in a given time and at a given place. So we're a kind of "nullity." And this is a fact, he says, that we're dimly aware of -- and it's anxiety-provoking, because it's groundless and uncertain. Sartre later took this up with "Being and Nothingness," and claimed that we're "condemned to be free" in a sense. This is the basis for that analysis -- although I'm not very familiar with Sartre.
Quoting Nils Loc
I don't understand this either. We exist, we are. The world is. That's being. Being is everything, every being, and the basis on which anything "shows up" for us at all. Awareness is being. Non-awareness is being. Your life will end, believe me, and so will your anxiety. So to be worried that anxiety will never end is indeed completely irrational, and also incoherent -- unless you're afraid you'll be reincarnated or something like that.
Quoting Nils Loc
I find your sentences almost completely incoherent, unfortunately. Please make an effort to be clearer -- I'm not a mind-reader and have no idea where you're coming from or how you're defining your terms.
Being doesn't end -- beings end. Waking up from sleep is talking about states of conscious awareness. "I am unfortunately always awake"? What does that mean, you've never fallen asleep? Seems you've just contradicted yourself.
Granted it is a bad sentence which is best to discard. "It" refers to being. Non-being is not a state of being.
My point is surprisingly simple. Being is an experience. Non-being is not an experience. After my death the experience of being will reoccur because being is what constitutes experience. "Reoccur" is an inadequate or incorrect term because there is nothing that links specific beings and identities between lives. Nothing that I identify as myself will recur but being will always be. There will always be an experience because that is all there can be.
Quoting Xtrix
I agree for the most part. The anxiety is very similar to a fear of reincarnation (eternal recurrence), except there is no soul that reincarnates, since there is no linking the continuity of experience between two separate lives.
Being is surely more complex than I've made it out to be, as an on and off state of affairs rather than a continuum. Qualia might work as a better substitute for my use of being. There will only ever be what it is like to be, even if trillions of years pass between instances of what it is like to be something.
Quoting Xtrix
You just stated what I'm saying very succinctly: Being doesn't end but beings do end. Beings end relative to other beings. Another metaphor might be the Hindu deity which creates a universe every time he/she/it blinks. As with the visible and invisible room with regard to a light being on or off, it is the seeing that is something.
In any case I'm not saying much of anything. I'm merely pointing to being and the fear about it that will pass but likely return. I might even concede that I'm irrationally paranoid about the eternity of having to experience what any something is like.
Let me see if I can parse this a little: :
(1) being is an experience.
(2) non-being is not an experience.
(3) Being will always be.
I don't see how equating being with experience gets us anywhere. "Experience" is something that happens to a living being: human beings and animals. The being of a rock has no experience. If you equate experience with being, fine -- but why bother? It's misleading. "Being" as a word is good enough.
Human experience does not reoccur. Human experience is one aspect of being, yes, but only that.
Quoting Nils Loc
Qualia is the subjective experience of something -- "What it's like to be." What it's like to be you, or me, or a bat. That tells you nothing about being except for a specific instance of being: a human being.
Quoting Nils Loc
I really don't see what you're talking about, honestly. Fear about being makes no sense. Fear that being will "pass but likely return" is equally meaningless. If you're worried that your life will reoccur in an eternal recurrence or in reincarnation, fine -- just say that. (You must be saying this, otherwise what is there to "fear"?) In that case, you'll have no memory of it. But you'd be talking about your experience -- your life. Not "being" in the general sense, which includes literally everything.
It's not at all misleading, as it's more natural to use "being" as a condition of a subject experincing and reflecting upon the world. I find it odd you disagree with my usage.
I guess with the verb "to be" we can say that the rock "is". While it likely that a rock has no independent being, it is a dependent feature of our (and any) being.
Quoting Xtrix
I did say as much. Yes, I'm worried, for the sake of chit chat, about whether being (an experience of what anything is like) is an eternal condition. If I am being now, won't I be again later (after death/birth)?
That's not at all natural. Using being to describe a "subject experiencing and reflecting" is a very narrow and idiosyncratic use. "Being" is used all the time for literally anything. I am. You are. The world is. That chair is. Human experience is. Your experience is. All objects, all entities.
Your experience is your experience. It's one aspect of being, nothing more. To generalize human experience to all of the world, nature, the universe -- to "being" generally -- is not only misleading, it's incoherent.
Quoting Nils Loc
This is nearly incoherent. You say it's likely it has no independent being, then state categorically that the rock is a dependent feature of our being?
Quoting Nils Loc
Saying "I am being" is redundant. "I am" already implies being. I'll say it over and over again: being is not an entity and not a property.
My advice: stop using the word "being" -- you're clueless about its meaning.
Stick to your concern: experience, particularly your own experience (your life). You're worried about an afterlife of some kind. That's all this has boiled down to, when stripped of incoherent, multisyllabic, unnecessary talk about "being."
There's no evidence whatsoever that we live again, that there's reincarnation or a heaven or anything else. If there is, we certainly have no memory of it. This could be your millionth life, in that case -- and you have no idea. So who cares.
I'm not generalizing human experience only, I'm extending any experience in any capacity (what it is like to be something/anything).
Quoting Xtrix
Well, I guess I meant experience here. Few would likely concede a rock has subjective experience (unless a panpsychist). The existence of a rock depends upon (any) something for which it is like to be. Therefore I'm proposing a primacy to the experience of being (the experience of an entity) and making it universal. The state of any existence is relatively bound to experience of what it is like to be something.
Quoting Xtrix
You're probably right that I'm equivocating. Lends a bit of grandiose and useful obscurity to try to lure folks in.
Quoting Xtrix
I can't imagine that there is anything but an experience (what it is like to be something). Death is like dreamless sleep and as soon as time begins (for something it is like for there to be time) we are.
If you don't care you are free to go. No need to harass me.
Fine. The only beings that experience are living things -- namely, animals. That's like saying that all things that don't "experience" in this sense, that aren't living, aren't "beings." It's totally unmotivated.
Quoting Nils Loc
Eh, this is just subjectivizing the world. I would say it's Kantian, but it's not even coherent enough to be Kantian. Yes, the world gets interpreted by human beings through perception. That tells us nothing about being.
Quoting Nils Loc
Better to lure people in by stating a clear question or proposition.Quoting Nils Loc
Sounds good. This is going nowhere.
Yes, I don't like the use of "being" for things that we'd claim have no capacity for experience. But it doesn't really matter much either way. Chairs aren't beings. There, I said it. But insofar as they have the capacity for experience, maybe they are. This has nothing to do with the common variants of verb "to be" (ex. The chair is.)
This has little to do with my main worry which I did admit was irrational.
There is only what it is like to be something. We do not experience what it is like to be nothing.
Therefore being (what it is like to be something) is all there is. The totality of existence is stands in relation to what it is like to be something.
It's as incoherent as the hard problem of consciousness. How could there possibly be satisfying explanation for qualia (being like something rather than nothing)?
Not just irrational -- incoherent.
Quoting Nils Loc
Former is a groundless assertion; the latter completely wrong. We experience "nothing" all the time -- we know we do, but just have no memory of it. A dreamless sleep is a kind of nothing. Driving all the way home automatically without thinking about it is a kind of "nothing" -- the use of equipment, the experience of "flow," are all kinds of nothing. None of this involves a subject/object distinction, none of it involves thinking or reflecting or even "consciousness," and yet we do these things all the time.
Quoting Nils Loc
That's just silly subjectivizing. That has a long history in philosophy, and is completely wrong.
Quoting Nils Loc
The whole "problem" of consciousness is nonsense, because no one knows how to formulate what "consciousness" is. So, like the mind/body "problem," it's simply incoherent. A waste of time.
I dont mean he's necessarily right, it's just a really cool read.
That's not what it's about.
That's exactly what its about. :rofl:
Fine, let me qualify: for anyone who's actually read it and understands it, that's certainly not what it's about. Just the phrase "concept of being emerging" is ridiculous to anyone who's read Heidegger, since being is not a concept or a being or a word in the sense he's meaning it. Sure we can try talking about it, but it's an extremely complex thing to discuss.
And it certainly doesn't "emerge" from "dread of nothingness."
Riveting analysis.
Quoting frank
Well I'm already sure you are, just from that comment alone, so NO. End of discussion, and reported. How about this: read some Heidegger.
Yes, I'd be embarrassed too. Run along.
I'll just concede at this point and say my concern is the inevitability of subjectivity after death (even after gazillions of actual years if it takes that long). My intuition is that there will always be subjective phenomenal qualities (that I eccentrically associate with being something).
Here I imagine these qualities of being like listening to music. There are notes interspersed with silence (nothing). Memory permits a play of harmony or dissonance with these silences. Death results in absolute silence (with no memory) but inevitably the music must play for a subject.
Ugh. Whatever.
You're boring me. Bye.
And what does Heidegger say about boredom and its relation to Das Nichts?
I realize you gave me a free therapy session. Nice.