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Personalised Existentialism
There is a terrifying point in the philosophy of existentialism when, rather than depressing and horrible, it becomes comfortable.
It becomes comfortable to know that really, as a whole, the human species is insignificant and that existence is meaningless. One can take comfort in the incomprehensible vastness and void of the universe. One can take comfort in knowing that there are no cosmic entities out to get you, no horrid fate twisting and manipulating your existence for its own sick entertainment. The universe functions as it does simply because that's how it does.
In a matter of time, everything that is, has been, will ever be, will fade away. This life will end. This city will fall. This country will collapse. This civilization will crumble. This species will be wiped out. Life will end. The planet will become a barren wasteland. The sun will go supernova. This galaxy will be consumed. And so on and so forth, until this whole universe folds in on itself, and becomes literally nothing. Then that literal nothing will expand, and it will all begin again.
But, even then, our view of this progression of events is tainted by human psychology. We think of things in terms of time, when time, as we imagine it, simply does not exist. Everything, everything is this moment. And even the word moment implies that some degree of time has passed; when really, what's being said is that it's all at once and also all apart, and wholly and fully unknowable in all aspects. Time is a human concept, and a matter of perception.
Humanity, the universe, the stars in the sky, the moon, love, gravity, maple syrup, physics, molecules, energy- none of it matters. Not a single thing. All of existence, of unexistence, and of existential concepts that can't be grasped by mortal minds, is pointless. Nothing that anyone can do can change that. And that's beautiful.
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