yeah, that’d be cool. i really wish i had mysterious secret knowledge about death. the fact that i don’t, even though i’m around it a lot, makes me feel a little sheepish. it really seems pretty mechanical. death (for me) tends to be much less illuminating to the human condition than observing people taking care of their dying loved ones. now THAT is an education.

I am basically fully on board with this. I do sometimes worry about existential risk - about nuclear holocaust and so on. But I do so because I want my descendants to have a good life. But I rarely worry about it. I’m very much with you otherwise. I’m hopeful about an afterlife. 🧡

well now you have me curious, do you have any worries of existential risks?

this perhaps makes me a bad person or a psychopath (or, and this is the actual reason: i am very privileged), but i think i can honestly say i do not worry… about anything.

i CAN make a hierarchy of things that will kill me. and thinking about being dead kinda sucks because i dig this life and have a lot of things on my list to do, and i experience anticipatory grief for my children not having a father. but if i’m being honest, that’s mostly counterbalanced with my curiosity re: there being an afterlife + the fact that in the absence of an afterlife i’m not going to even care about the above…

so i ask, do people ACTUALLY worry about this stuff?

i hypothesize no. and this is informed by my experience with working with tons of dead/dying people and their families. i have a strong suspicion that what we call existential dread is mostly a performative signal to our tribe. it allows us to say, “hey look at me, i know the stuff that will kill us, so put me in a position of power within the tribe.”

or simply competitive victimization. or perhaps the ennui of a westerworldian epiphany where we get to the center of the maze and realize we were deluding ourselves into believing there’s actually a meaning to our sacrifice.

just a thought.

Can you see me?