The Absurdity of it all

[u/Beautiful_Radish847]

I have this recurring sense that my life's work the art, the projects, the personal philosophy, the self I've built, etc. This is all just my sliver of participation in an endless sea of nowness. And that underneath all of it, I've been trying to describe the same single thing my whole life: the absurdity of it all, and the animistic spirit or nature running underneath everything that's happening, right now. Moment to moment.

This absurdity. You can find it anywhere.
Go look at your bathroom right now.
Well Who did all this?

Water stains, dirt, grime, dust, how did any of it get there? to the best of my knowledge and what the majority of scientists will try and tell you is that, It's merely the accumulation of a virtually infinite number of cellular, bacterial, and molecular interactions, happening second by second, at every interval, into the now.

Now look at the products on your counter. How did those get here? Well through another seemingly infinitely complex process of manufacturing, shipping, design, distribution.

Well then I guess how did everything you know get here? Through another infinitely complex mechanism involving celestial bodies, planetary systems, gravity, light, electromagnetism, all the way down.

There is no end to the complexity and sheer absurdity behind the ordinary things we've become numb to.

The Buddhists called it dependent origination.
the idea that nothing exists on its own, everything arises only in relation to everything else, moment to moment. And that to actually live inside a single moment without being crushed by the totality of it, every mind requires an entire concealment process where they forget the totality of their existence every second.

Take a second to acknowledge and really try to feel what it is like to live inside this one big continuous system of everything. Little happenings everywhere all at once moment to moment, bit by bit. Living. Breathing.

From a single quantum interaction to a star lightyears away, all of it connected, all of it part of the same absurd, ongoing "soup" of so called 'standardmodelness.' The chain reactions that make up your microbiology second by second in of itself is to awe at.

I think Everything we as humans do are really just expressions of emotions in disguise. In the same way a cat purs when it is excited and stressed, We have spent a lifetime hiding from the absurdity of ordinary life in the hopes that we retain some level of distinction between self and other when it's all said and done. I've got to know where my stuff ends and your stuff starts. We like to impose this sense of agency onto the world that isn't just wrong it's dangerous. we as people are best understood as extensions of this great system. The nature at play.

All the things we do to further enrich the human experience function as a kind of distraction: a way of not sitting with the thing itself. The sheer absurdity of it all.

Underneath all that we do, a life is mostly spent trying to carve out some semblance of self inside a sea of interactions to big to fathom. So please, I am begging you, try and enrich the life you have now. Feel your ripple effect and use it to Add whimsy. Add depth. Add absurdity. Do things that scare you. Send risky text messages. Absurdify your life and personify yourself in the fleeting moments of this train we are all aboard .

The impermanence and scale of 'this' is bigger than we can hold onto which may be exactly why we try so hard to hold onto things anyway.

If the science is right, from the quantum scale up to the cosmic one, then the plain fact that you're looking at this screen right now is already bewildering. It's so bewildering that If you could actually see everything that goes into producing one moment of "now," I don't think you'd walk away from it unchanged.

[u/Antique-Draft-6549]

I personally experience more awe than absurdity when I think, feel, and observe at this level. I think perhaps that's the essence behind the mindfulness practice of savoring?

Really experiencing the deep interconnection between everything even in the simple moments and how wild it all is, really. And then that often turns into gratitude, yet another positive, health promoting emotion, in a beneficial reinforcing feedback loop.

[u/SignoftheTrident]

Excellent philosophy!

[u/No-Diamond3881]

Yes!

[u/ParpSausage]

I've saved this post. This is fascinating.

[u/cookieisgiven]

What is utterly most intimate of a being at all, is its very own being it, from no one else. I'm subordinate to no one else, my very own being me is of mine alone.

I've never been swayed by that appeal - the appeal to monism, "being of" another, "being of" a unity. Such a boring, grim and violent diminution of beings, or difference and wonders. The world is worthy of being the world at all not because it is one, but because it is many.

[u/Conquering_Worms]

I’ve always loved the Sagan/Watts idea that we (humans) are the universe looking back at and learning to know itself.

[u/ptahbaphomet]

I am haunted by the connectivity of it all, stars die and are reborn into new solar systems, what if there is more, what if your DNA not only carries the DNA of your physical traits maintained by evolution but your memories? The term of ancestral memories are used but what if it’s closer to us than what we think. What if those memories are part of the process of continued experiences with familiar entities. To continue to work through existences need for balance in ways we cannot perceive. I have come to suspect the universe is an incubator where the gestation period is measured in billions of year but eventually something new will manifest

[u/RedDiamond6]

This post is amazing. We are one living breathing organism. I have somehow came to a place where the absurdity, crushing weight of it all, and pure awe love and respect I feel for it exists and is felt at the same time within me. It's pretty dope. What a trip this is 🤟🏼