#existential aloneness

[mentalisttraceur]

My existential aloneness realization had a lot of stuff going into it. A lot of history and prominent recent experiences with unrequited attraction, with being misunderstood, and with people just choosing to not build connection and seemingly not seeing the value of it or just how much richer it could be. The emotions I felt from that catalyzed it. Thinking about it set it in motion.

Also, I was under the effects of a drug at the time which disabled a lot of my habitualized cognition. So my cognition was flowing in a very "raw" way. And I was exploring where that would take me, instead of trying to fight it by conscious effort to maintain careful rigorous thought or emotional and mental state from which I could reliably act and maintain appearances.

But the thing that really hit me was when I realized the much bigger and more fundamental problem: we are all isolated in our own experience stream. There is only ever inferred knowledge of other minds. We never truly know each other, we can never truly perceive each other directly. We can't. It is a fundamental limitation of how reality works - of how any sensical reality can work. It is the curse of being a mind - to be permanently separated from any other possible mind by this divide of inference. We touch other minds at best as if through gloves, but really in many ways we do not touch at all, we just see each other on the screen of our experiences. That screen, if you look at it just right, if you stop looking through it and just look at it, is cold and lifeless in comparison to the warmth we can conceive of on the other end.

I wept when that hit me, more intensely than I ever have, at least since I was a fairly small child. Alone! Oh god we're so alone! We're all so utterly and completely alone! Trapped forever in an existential fishbowl by ourselves, every mind in its own isolated bubble of experiences!

I rebounded quickly, of course. I cope well, and I cope fast. I quickly made peace with the fact that we interact through an impenetrable experience condom. I found comfort in the reasoning that an iteratively inferred fuzzy approximation of likely understanding implies actual understanding. I accept that the most connected we can be is by forgetting and not noticing the glass separating us. But it's there. And if you deeply care about connection and understanding of minds, then it is horrifying and devastating the first time you really see it.

[mentalisttraceur]

Someone replied to the "existential aloneness" post a long while ago:

I was gonna respond in big vs small picture terms but after some thought this sounds more like something specific and personal has happened and then expanded into existential than the other way around 🤔 who’s misunderstood you so

No one. I mean, many people, often, but that was not what prompted this post.

At the time I wrote this, I had just supported someone else through their moment of facing existential aloneness for the first time. If I recall correctly, their catalyst was realizing that they put much more work into understanding other people than other people put into understanding them.

Prior to that I only had my own example. Having a second external first-hand experience helped me identify common elements, which motivated writing a post because it seemed like I was closer to something that could speak to other people.

There's more that I want to write about my own existential aloneness experience, which was several years before that post, but I'm not sure exactly what I want to say and how I want to split it up across posts.

[mentalisttraceur]

One of my casual side goals is to one day have dreams where I split and merge freely as a mind.

I currently have sufficiently built up cognition to use flight and other "at will" "magic" effects in my dreams.

I think if I spend enough time really simulating what it would be like to split into separate parallel flows of cognition and re-merge into one, I would start being able to have cool experiences in my sleep like splitting into multiple bodies and being aware as both at once, etc.

I also suspect this practice might help me have better conscious introspection and maybe deliberate participation in or even control over some of the natural parallelism that constantly goes on in the brain.

The downside, of course, would be doubling down on the curse of insufficient language and existential aloneness.

[mentalisttraceur]

Someone replied to the existential aloneness post:

So is this, like, the flipside of the “planting trees so that future generations can sit in their shade even though I’ll never get to” sentiment?

Umm... I am guessing you mean the lonely shadow of that sentiment, the awareness that you will never actually directly interact with those people? That the ripples of your actions are the closest you'll ever come to a connection with them?

If so then... I guess that's similar enough to potentially overlap. I would not personally get existential aloneness from that, but I guess I can see how it might invoke existential aloneness in some people.

That said, personally, my existential aloneness experience involved a vision of much more total loneliness, inherent to being a mind, putting a sort of existential barrier on any possible connection, not just connections to other possible minds across time or distance whatever.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

“My ongoing struggle against the Capitol, which has so often felt like a solitary journey, has not been undertaken alone.”

— Mockingjay

[mentalisttraceur]

Existential Aloneness

When you spend enough time being good enough at relating to people you gradually realize just how much better the world could be.

You realize how beautiful possible connection and understanding could be. You have the experience to know the raw, powerful impacts it could have.

You realize that the world could be profoundly kinder and better and... just not stupidly harmful and hurtful and inefficient to so many, so often.

Then it finally hits you - you will never have that better life experience, because at any given moment, too many people can't or won't connect at the same genuine level.

The details differ. Maybe you feel it empathetically for someone you care about, or people at large, instead of yourself. Maybe only some of the above features in your mind, maybe there are other notes.

The pain and loss is the same. Realizing that level of connection, of closeness, of potential for being known and cared for is impossible. Seeing that gap between the best we can conceive of and what we now realize actually exists. That hurts. That hurts more than words can describe.

[ears-awake-eyes-opened]

I forgot how lovely

...I feel to connect through a fandom with mutual love for characters and films. I feel infinitely less lonely than when writing out my feelings alone.

I’m totally open with most everyone in my life. I’m expressive of my thoughts and emotions with my husband and daughter. I’m extremely candid on Facebook where I connect with forever friends. I’m raw here on my blog where my words mostly just blow into the ether without expectation of connection or response. “Talking to the wind,” I say.

All that said, writing fanfiction and character analysis about characters and films that other people love too, in a space where those other people are also expressing their feelings about the characters and films through various forms of creation and connection, is just a special experience and unique quality of self-expression.

Right now I’m feeling all smooshy about it and grateful for it, if for no other reasons than I feel less alone in this experience, and I feel a smaller sting from the creature that is existential aloneness — an intimate aspect of the human condition which often feels much less than good.

So, this connection here is good. To say “I’m enjoying it” doesn’t say enough.

[lingonberryjamistakenwhat]

I realized several months ago, that when I started smoking the first time, I definitely didn’t want to be alive - though I also didn’t acknowledge that at the time (it was a few months after I turned 18, so maybe 6 months after leaving a hospital with a PTSD diagnosis and oddly seeing a therapist for 2 months before he decided I no longer needed therapy).

But I think that was only part of the story. Like, I also felt extremely isolated and alone. And I had a cousin who smoked, one that I’ve always looked up to, and on some level it made me feel closer to him, more like him, and less alone.

When I relapsed into smoking a pack a day again, a few months ago, I don’t think it was because I didn’t want to be alive. I think it was because I felt an intense alienation from the people and things in my life, because I was dissociating really frequently, and was on the verge of completely falling apart. And smoking definitely makes me feel less lonely.

Which is weird because a cigarette isn’t a person. A cigarette isn’t even alive. It’s dead tobacco leaves inside a rolled tube with a cotton filter. So why does smoking make me feel not alone for a little while?