If you could push a button and simply cease to exist, would you press it?

And part of the shit of it is, for example, watching my grandmother, with advanced Alzheimers, lose every single one of those memories, more of them every day. She doesn't know who she is, who anyone else is, where she is, or much of anything else. She doesn't remember the word for "sandwich." She doesn't know how to eat tater tots. She can't remember whether she just went to the bathroom or not, and when she does, she doesn't understand what the toilet is for. What a joy!

― Tom Hardy & the Batbreakers (Phil D.), Friday, October 12, 2012 1:19 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

If/when I get to this point I hope to either have it together enough to take matters into my own hands or have loved ones with whom I've discussed the issue and will do it for me.

Yo plax: at some point you won't know you did those things, and you won't miss them, because you won't have any intentional state at all. Button-pushing, that just speeds up that process. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO REGRET PUSHING THE BUTTON. It is very possible to regret not pushing it. ERGO, push that shiz.

― emil.y, Friday, 12 October 2012 17:22 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is the thing though its not about regret or missing or longing or yearning. whats interesting about this question is how time is structured. its about undoing the past as future. i wish i had never been born. every tiny fragment of pleasure.

If I cease to exist in this scenario, does my dad still have the orgasm from which I sprung? Wouldn't want to deny the guy that tiny fragment of pleasure.

forks how dare u, don't you know that relating yr experiences/pov is an attack on all others.

― Randy Carol (darraghmac), Friday, October 12, 2012 5:28 PM

implicitly it is tho

i have known ppl who lead lives seemingly even more fulfilling, vital and relevant than forks', who evidently didn't feel as fulfilled, vital or relevant as forks purports to be

yeah this is really about the internal life, not the external facts of how you spend your day, which is the real problem with forks's post (aside from the question of how the hell this presumptuous fucker KNOWS he's getting laid tonight!?). i'm grateful for the good fortune of being born in the time & place i was and the material benefits of that, but more than that i'm grateful for the disposition or brain chemistry or whatever to be able to enjoy it -- many people have had more and been far unhappier.

and it seems pretty cruel to tell people that if every day doesn't feel like a gift they're not just unhappy people but UNGRATEFUL unhappy people

xp dude, i'm not generally fulfilled vital or relevant! i'm scared most of the time! but it's worth it for the momentes when you get close to the moments of fulfillment vitality relevancy and real joy
also lol at me with my exciting life unwilling to stop posting on ilx to go live; how exciting can it be?

xp eh forks also said that he was depressed for 6 years so i don't think that is the correct think to take from that post. to me the post was is more about realizing and taking advantage of opportunities that exist for you to be stoked on things in life, something that ime it is terrifyingly easy to lose grasp of

The issue with forks' posts was never about him relating his experiences. It was about the multiple times he explicitly stated that because of his experiences other people should feel the same way that he does about life.

Forks was making the "it gets better" statement which doesn't work for me but he shouldn't be castigated for thinking it might work

if "becuz of my experiences other people should feel the way i feel about life" = "life is ultimately meaningful and worthwhile and beautiful in some way at the core" than yeah i'll rep for that

am gonna push the button, using the lo-tec equivalent offered by a nail gun, if the collective response to forks' "there are wonderful things in life!" post is people interrogating his ability to assess them & getting at him for appreciating them w/o appropriate deference to others' conditions. the solipsism of "i can't believe you people don't think this" is sometimes a necessary part of the single-minded capacity of being able to appreciate things, imo.

also lolz forever on that tokyo jungle post A+
i mostly play at 4 in the morning

there u are conflating 'life' as in individual phenomenological lived experience and 'life' in some gloopily pantheistic 'the tree of-' sense

The fact that you're asking or reading or answering or entertaining this question says to me that you haven't given yourself over completely to the idea of nonexistence, which indicates at least a glimmer of hopefulness.

guys, every fucking day is a gift and it's insane to me that any of you think nothing is preferable to EVERYTHING

Every day is a gift = rendered as statement of fact, and anyone who diverges is "insane".

trust me when i tell you that anybody who's privileged enough to have the time/tech/education to be contributing on this thread can find a level of joy in life that improves on "let's press a button and make it all go away" even if it requires medication/therapy/disappointment and sadness to achieve

TRUST ME THIS IS TRUE. SO TRUE AND NO OTHER OPINIONS MAY DIVERGE. YOU PRIVILEGED TWAT.

ugh

After all, and I think this argument might be beyond me, but in admitting to others that you would accept a consequence-free elimination-of-self, that could also be interpreted as a negation of another's state of happiness. Logic being that "I do not accept that my happinesses or yours make life worth living" and "I do not accept a human's capacity for life-changes, or that these changes could create a positive effect on their outlook", it's an enormously provocative statement, imo

it's a major underpinning of a lot of ethics that life is sacred/gift/beauty/etc, i don't think forks articulating that idea is so controversial.

every day is a grift

ethics is vacuous

it's p funny to see the habitual ilx flav dismissive/reductive argument in service of "no, life is NOT worth living!"

every daaaaay is a winding roaaa-d!
(...i get a little bit closer!)

but to what?

..."to feeling fine"

*thinks*

I would love to write a letter to my 11 year old self with a list of books to read not read

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, October 12, 2012 10:56 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"life is worth living" is a statement with a lot to unpack. Worth what? To who? Living how? How can we be sure?

Furthermore, and this might not be the case everywhere, but isn't the desire toward self-elimination considered a treatable illness?

I'm on a kick the last couple weeks where I'm pretending I'm still in college and that I'm an asshole philosophy student

every day is a gif

Lol as Z S

"life is worth living" is a statement with a lot to unpack. Worth what? To who? Living how? How can we be sure?

― www.toilet-guru.com (silby), Friday, October 12, 2012 1:55 PM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pack that shit back up & liveitup, homie

I guess part of the issue is that it sucks to see that ilxors who have provided me with happiness via hilarious/insightful posts don't find joy in their own lives/existence. And that's part of why I think it's sort of important to mention suicide in this thread. ILX has experienced that loss as a community, and many of us have lost friends either to suicide, or the de facto suicide of personal neglect, or a tragic accident, or whatever. It isn't a hypothetical situation, and it doesn't come with a button. So while this thread is an interesting intellectual exercise, it's hard not so see it as a red flag, and while forks may have come off a little braggy, I think what he's really saying is "come have fun with me in New York! Don't press the button!"

in admitting to others that you would accept a consequence-free elimination-of-self, that could also be interpreted as a negation of another's state of happiness. Logic being that "I do not accept that my happinesses or yours make life worth living" and "I do not accept a human's capacity for life-changes, or that these changes could create a positive effect on their outlook", it's an enormously provocative statement, imo

That isn't a logical inference, that's an emotional response. I do not accept that my happinesses or yours makes my life worth living, but I never said shit about whether it makes your own life worth living.

it's a major underpinning of a lot of ethics that life is sacred/gift/beauty/etc, i don't think forks articulating that idea is so controversial.

Most ethics is bunk. And I never said that forks' posts were "controversial". I am saying that they're limiting, and an imposition of his own ideals onto others.

it's impossible to state an opinion without imposing your ideals upon others

Actually, it isn't.

the way you spit things ppl say back at them you would think it was tho

FTR, I wasn't castigating forks at all before. I'm always happy for anyone who's legitimately able to find happiness and meaning in life. But like some dude said, the externalities of one's life sometime have an unfortunate lack of consonance with the shit going on in one's head. And although a lot of people would surely disagree, I feel pretty strongly that the value and beauty of life is a perspective rather than a universal truth.

the way you spit things ppl say back at them you would think it was tho

What, the way I use verbatim evidence to support my claims? Oh shit, sorry man, I didn't realise I was supposed to talk ill-informed bollocks instead.

ethics as first philosophy

emil.y, you may be miserable, but you are also hilarious.

life is grotesque. push the button.

i don't want to push it now, but i'd like to have the option in the future

emil.y, the act of describing an opinion or viewpoint to someone and making them understand it is, by definition, imposing your viewpoint upon someone else. I do not think it is actually possible to communicate an idea or understand other people's points of view without this type of imposition, therefore I do not see it as an exclusively negative process.

WCC pitching "the button" as a new concept to a home electronics firm, using this thread to collect market data. pie chart shows two thirds of consumers open to installing some kind of button, depending on ease of use, cost efficiency, attractive design.

xp em. eh no i mean just acting like some guy making a posi post relating trying to relate his own history of happiness/depression to that of a community he is a part of is an "imposition of his own ideals onto others", seems so needlessly defensive & such a generic & universally applicable accusation that dan's post makes sense itc

emil.y, the act of describing an opinion or viewpoint to someone and making them understand it is, by definition, imposing your viewpoint upon someone else. I do not think it is actually possible to communicate an idea or understand other people's points of view without this type of imposition, therefore I do not see it as an exclusively negative process.

DJP, I think your interpretation of 'imposing' here is misleading. One would imagine that a discussion wherein one proffered an opinion to one's conversational partner would be more accurately described as an 'exchange' or a 'proffering' of ideas, or even a 'negotiation'. An imposition is a much more forceful process.

btw, emily totally otm

got to say that if 'being told how to feel' or similar was a particular bugbear of mine then I would probably have tried to give a thread with a title like this a wide berth

What about a button, or machine, that when you enter it, you play out the rest of our life in a virtual state where everything plays out in the most positive possible way. You wouldn't even realise it wasn't real and you were guaranteed that everything in your life were to pan out in utter bliss. Would you do it?

Sorry about structure of that sentence, typin on the phone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine