Confucius

The Secret Diaries of Confucius
2003-01-15 10:18:26 (UTC)

I can't sleep... I'm depressed...

As of late I've been depressed. Nothing has seemed to
cheer me up like it usually does. I don't know what ot do
with my life. It all stems from when I picked up a story
that I read a long time ago. This book discusses religion
and chronicle's a man's life from his conversion to belief
in God at a young age to his final discover of the sham
that was his religion when he was older. It reminded me
so much of my own journey with regards to religion, that
I feel like I've relived the entirety of my young life
over again by reading that book... only it's just the bad
parts, and they're all concentrated into one 35 pg. story.

But the real reason I'm depressed is it forces me to think
about the meaninglessness of life. Life is nothing more
than a series of destractions designed to occupy our mind,
distracting us from the reality of our own mortality long
enough for us to copulate and perpetuate the species. The
choice of destractions are irrelevant. Whether we choose
religion, family, friends, sex, love, knowledge, physical
training, or any other we are only turning our mind from
the inevitability that the universe will continue on
without us, and it will not mourn our passing. Focusing
on our insignificance only depresses me farther.

These thoughts have been with me for as long as I can
remember. But of late, they've been worse. It's come to
the point where I dread sleep because it has come too much
to me to resemble the ultimate end, death. I've turned
into a restless insomniac. The only way I can sleep is to
force myself to become so tired (or physically exhaust
myself with exercise) that I simply cannot last any longer
without sleep. And the irony is that the only end to this
cycle of death-fear is death itself. The pathetic thing
is that even though I find myself as depressed as many
people are when they are suicidal, because my depresseion
is a result of death-fear, I do not have the courage to
kill myself.

But is it courage not to fear death? In all known media,
those who seek to eschew death through extraordinary
scientific procedures from cryogenic freezing to implanted
nanobots that will physically force our bodies to live
forever as cowards who fear what is all people's 'rightful
end.' But what is so rightful about ceasing to exist? The
answer is that the only reason that it seems so right to
everyone is that we instinctually know that if we lived
forever we would eventually consume all the resources in
the universe and that would spell doom for our species.

To me, however, the real nature of this problem is embodied
in this story from an unnamed TV show (those of you who are
as big of nerds as me will probably know what show I'm
talking about):

There was once a great army, known accross the land for
their bravery, that was camped in a clearing after a great
battle. They had shown particular bravery in this battle,
and they were all in very high spirits. However, soon
there came a storm, and the winds picked up, and the men
began to seek shelter from it in a nearby cave. Two of the
men however, refused to go into the cave. "We are brave
and couragous men, and we intend to shout our bravery into
the wind, even as it sucks the life from our bodies." The
other men became afraid however, and took shelter in the
cave. When the came out of the cave, there lay the two
warriors, dead in the wind and rain. Quickly, half of the
men began to praise their valor and courage, lauding their
brave accomplishment. But the rest of the men thought
different, thinking the two men fools for throwing away
their lives when they could easily have saved them.

This story neatly divides people into two categories:
Those who thought the men were brave, and those who thought
the men were fools. I fall into the second category. I
think it is the same for those who say "I would not choose
to live forever, even if a means of doing so existed."
They are as much fools as these two for throwing away their
lives when there is so much more that they could live for
and accomplish. I am not alone, but I definately do not
stand eye to eye with the rest of the world on this issue.

Thank you for this distraction, it's taken my mind off my
depression for at least a little while. Actually it's
quite nice that my diary has taken a turn from the mundane,
since the first entries are far from what I originally
intended for it [EDIT: So much so that I've gone back and
deleted them!]. These are the kinds of things I prefer to
write.

-Scott-




Ad: