We spend our entire lives learning -- how stuff works, why it works, social/emotional skills, on and on... yet at the end, it all just disappears. And then a baby is born, and it has to spend the rest of its life to learn as much as we knew at the moment of our death -- and of course, by the time it reaches that point, that baby will soon be dead from old age as well.
The amount of knowledge and wisdom a person has acquired by the end of their life is massive, yet only the smallest tidbit of that experience is passed on for the next generation -- and only if we're lucky! Most people die without having been able to give anything back to the following generation. All that they've experienced, all that they've learned, all that they've accomplished is gone. The experiences that took a person a lifetime to collect are instantly gone, and a "new" person must spend the same amount of time re-learning those same lessons which the recently-deceased had already mastered.
I love to learn, but lately I can't help but think about this -- what's the point in educating myself if none of it lasts? I'm never going to write a book or make some lasting impact on humanity, so nothing I do will last more than a generation beyond my death. Even if I write a book or leave some lasting record of my life, all that does is pass on a minuscule smidgen of my experience for future generations. Even Sun Tzu hasn't left a legacy of much more than entertaining quotes for people who stick in their forum "sigs".
Any advice other than "take antidepressants"? How can I force myself to look beyond this nihilistic view of life? I know the stuff I'm talking about isn't original or even very "deep", but I'm not trying to be either of those things. My brain is just stuck on this thought, and it feels like its constricting my attempts to do anything other than ruminate.
:music:
The amount of knowledge and wisdom a person has acquired by the end of their life is massive, yet only the smallest tidbit of that experience is passed on for the next generation -- and only if we're lucky! Most people die without having been able to give anything back to the following generation. All that they've experienced, all that they've learned, all that they've accomplished is gone. The experiences that took a person a lifetime to collect are instantly gone, and a "new" person must spend the same amount of time re-learning those same lessons which the recently-deceased had already mastered.
I love to learn, but lately I can't help but think about this -- what's the point in educating myself if none of it lasts? I'm never going to write a book or make some lasting impact on humanity, so nothing I do will last more than a generation beyond my death. Even if I write a book or leave some lasting record of my life, all that does is pass on a minuscule smidgen of my experience for future generations. Even Sun Tzu hasn't left a legacy of much more than entertaining quotes for people who stick in their forum "sigs".
Any advice other than "take antidepressants"? How can I force myself to look beyond this nihilistic view of life? I know the stuff I'm talking about isn't original or even very "deep", but I'm not trying to be either of those things. My brain is just stuck on this thought, and it feels like its constricting my attempts to do anything other than ruminate.
:music:
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