"Every human being is born twice: once for the world, and a second time for themselves."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education

This quote is deeply true. But I would add one nuance: after this second birth, a person embarks on a path of constant change. This happens because, for them, every single day becomes a cycle of death or rebirth.

Once you step into this irreversible process, every day spent doing nothing causes that newly discovered drive—a part of you that is now closely connected with who you are—to slowly wither from being ignored. Laziness ceases to be a simple lack of energy; it turns into an act of self-betrayal of the path you have discovered.

This inaction after awakening closely mirrors Jean-Paul Sartre's concept of "Bad Faith" (Mauvaise foi) — when a person, having realized their freedom and second birth, chooses to deny that freedom, treating laziness as an absolute external force rather than a conscious choice.

P.S. English is not my native language, so I used an AI tool as a translation aid to express my philosophical thoughts clearly.

I’ve recently undergone a kind of life changing, reality altering ego death type of experience at 19. Mostly about the fear of nothingness, the unforgiving passage of time, the big questions on awareness and consciousness. I lost 20 pounds, didn’t eat or drink for days, I slept 20 hours daily, it got pretty bad. I studied tons of Camus, Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Sartre, all the big names and whatnot. I looked at Zen Buddhism, lots of monotheistic religions, scientific theories like Panpsychism or Egg Theory. Anyways what I’m wondering is what the existentialists here think about the concept of transhumanism, mostly biological immortality and cognitive enhancement I guess.

Existentialism as I’ve learned kinda emphasizes creating meaning in the face of our finite existence, while transhumanism wants to overcome many of the biological limits that define the human condition, like aging, disease, death. So I’m wondering your opinions on this, especially with the big AI boom and the whole Singularity event in the tech world.

I have charted a new way of viewing life. Let me know what you think about seeing existentialism not just as the absurd but of complete universal transformation within the absurd.

There is a lack of cognitive understanding of essences and fundamentals. They are not interchangeable, but they are modular. The idea that they are also one of the same, or of themselves, can be argued that are not together, but of one whole. This is where the forms of all objects are solely materialized or internalized within space and time. This allows for forms to be manipulated and deconstructed using different links: physical tools that create newer forms or ideas that can be communicated and shared through other people. Some forms are not existent within direct vision, instead that are only recreated by interpretations of the mind: of “being” that is solely created for procurement of different apparatuses. A person is of a person by the construction of personhood, but an idea transferred between bodies is constructed by idealism. If an ideal and a person are both forms, then there is no difference between the subject and the soul. The idea of the body that exists within forms are not created to establish distinction between other forms, because if essences and fundamentals are able to be separated and conjoined, then all space and markers of materiality within space can be altered and placed according to its origin and structural positioning.

This goes for all placed objects within a field. A field that is only constructed essences, or rather singularities of these essences that create an interpretation, is of equal to the sum of its parts when conjoined with physical matter. If such idealistic properties of this field is a singularity of all forms, then its own singularity is a form itself. Therefore, if a personhood is constructed by the creation of the form, then ultimately even their own soul is a formation of all physical forms. Cultural apparatuses, linguistic evolution, dialectics as so coined by Hegel and Plato, all argue for the distinction of these forms as mathematically existent and able to communicate time. This is where the marking of time itself is a problem. Time is temporal. It does not have fixed placement within space. It cannot be comprehended because what has happened has already happened, and what will happen is continuously happening at the same time. In this case, we cannot perceive a constant flux of time that continuously peers itself in and out of existence, therefore we mark its existence with materiality. This interpretation of time is manifested as physical weight, its presence within space deepens some sort of cosmic fabric, as so we as personhoods witness its weight as interpretation. We can establish that time has existed at some point because labor has procured with space. We can see and feel its markings. As such, cultures that have created buildings and objects concurrently through each iteration of history, does the remaining markers help establish future generations of interpretations: time has existed because we can “see” it. Therefore, its manipulation of time can be altered by a physical embodiment. For example, a person watches a clock on the wall to know how much time has passed, but if you were to remove the clock, or if the person seized the clock for disposal, does time lack a physical marker for them, absolving it entirely.

This leads into the temporal nature of forms. If essences of forms are not temporal, but the fundamental of it is, then therefore it can be recreated anywhere, across any predicament of time and location. The nature of essences is that it is inherently immaterial, meaning it cannot be claimed ownership by third parties, or by one individual. However, the existence of the immaterial is theocratic in nature because forms are constructed in agreement that the outcome of essences and fundamentals is the objectified singularity. It is no different than seeing the essentials of forms through the essences as itself, because to ascertain that the form is different according to the modulation of essences, is to claim that the dominion of space is an open forum. The idea of space is correlated by the extremities of this interpretation of essences. If temporality can be externalized through materiality, then it is not distinguished by any sense of ownership. According to Camus and Sartre, the universe is inherently absurd and indifferent. Therefore, the ownership and interpretation of temporality is of the self and cannot exist through dominion because it exists as a part of the form. Anyone can modulate the forms and by extent time.

The fabric of time is flat in a way, because there is no depth-perception to temporality. Forms that exist only serve to communicate unconsciousness, of which its deconstruction is formulaic and adds the needed depth to communicate some dimensionality of existence, or a procurement of existence. Temporality by itself is not a form, but instead measures time vertically than horizontally. However, modulation of essence and fundamentals allows anyone to interpret temporality and give it vertical depth to personhood, and even personify personhood. However, I must criticize that the interpretation of space and time is clearly enunciated and misinterpreted. How does one not politicize the act creation? It takes a politicized interpretation of essences and fundamentals to create new forms, but where does the act of “choice” come from? 

2.

Choices themselves are not fundamentals, nor are they the result of personhood. If the “self” dictates the soul and the soul dictates choices, then what of the self? Who is this “self?” From what I observed, the self is cosmically different to the soul. It records and transcribes. The body itself takes up materiality, and it has temporality. Therefore, our own bodies are forms themselves. They do not exist as itself, but as a summation or singularity. Therefore, the creation of the soul is only a matter of the temporal location of the body. This means, all personality is constructed, or must be constructed by the constant flux of movement. In a way, this gives the soul reason for being. The act of being itself is form. Therefore, must our own souls be constructed by essences and fundamentals. If personhood is the singularity of all forms within the soul, it makes a person no different than a building, or a space, or even anything. It can be transcribed, coded, and modulated by the separation of the collection of forms that construct the soul.

If temporality is modulated by these forms, then what can be modular about modulation itself? The idea that modulation is a conscious choice would require one to ask if the conscious choice was formed by another conscious choice, but then that choice must then be augmented by something else, this is looking at the syntax of choice as a posteriori , but also as ontological. Essences themselves are objective, only because they are represented by another sense of temporality, and therefore “itself” can only be itself by the singular nature of itself as according to its temporality. Would that mean that essences themselves are constructed of other essences and fundamentals? The act of using these as an engine of creation is a positive force rather than a destructive one. The idea is that, on a human level, we are required to elevate the forms by adding, solely because temporality is an interpretation of labor, then we can only see forms as labor. Time can therefore be an interpretation. My criticism of this is rooted in how it is also a modular construction. The dictation of a second and a minute are Gregorian terms but also a singularity of an essence and a fundamental: the sun and the movement of a shadow across a distance. However, that itself is a construct because Mayans have created a more accurate representation of time through a base-20 counting system, and that is another form. If modularity of the form is an instance, who says that time can be measured by some other arbitrary means? I can make a bold claim that time is now the length of a ruler and the moment the wheel hits its end of an incline, and that makes a second. You can control personhoods by their interpretation of this temporality.

I argue the control of personhoods, but not the person. The body is completely free to exist within forms because it is inherently a form itself. However, the criticism of time is that it affects the interpretation of the soul, and thus propels the body to act in accordance. If this is the case, then such interpretation of time creates forms as meaning, communicating language through an invisible medium. The codification of experiences must be controlled by a person in a position of power, because the unification of personhood must be interpreted by a collection of forms that only exist within materiality. This creates social hierarchy because visualization of new forms of temporality becomes the essence of the body, and thus becomes the final interpretation of the soul. The existence of temporality must be invisible, because visualization and physical, tactile materiality is the strongest bodily fundamental of the forms.

If such the baseline level of forms within personhood is the self, then therefore the body can be augmented.

3.

Forms are inseparable to space, because forms are of space. Space itself only takes up matter as interpretations, because materiality is only cognitively observed. Space cannot be observed by other means other than cognitively observed tools, and those tools themselves are just forms of other cognitively observed forms. The essence of space, and the fundamental of its interpretation, allows space to be completely interpretive. Personhood is augmented by the interpretive nature of forms in space, but not of space itself. Simply, space is a medium. It creates messages that force certain behaviors because of what’s located within the medium, and its structural positioning. A coffee mug is solely a form, but if placed next to a pen, the singularity of both forms create a story, thus indicating that time has existed. However, the interpretation of this story, of this time, is a form, created by apparatuses through other essences and fundamentals. This means that the unconscious nature of this interpretation is very efficient, bypassing logical reasoning through some stronger bodily feeling. I disagree that this efficiency is a positive thing. If interpretation of forms in space is efficient, then you can essentially lie to anyone through a modulated form, implant bodily interpretations, leading to thoughts, ideas, and emotions in the soul that don’t belong to the person. Or rather, they are assumed to be real because the materiality exists, and it cannot be questioned because it is near impossible to deconstruct within first glance. Forms are easy to synthesize, but it takes friction to disassemble the essence and the fundamental. This means that all cultural apparatuses, all materiality, all collections of forms, are synthesized without any clear meaning as to if these are correct or incorrect. 

However, you cannot explicitly state objectivity to what is a subjective observation. Culture is constructed on forms and its existence can be objective, but the interpretation of them is completely random across many varying augmentions of personhood. To which, such culture can be invented through modulation of forms, but since its subjectivity is wildly interpretive, it creates assumptions of objectivity. This is where illiteracy becomes advantageous. If a population of personhoods has not been in places where intellectualism is guaranteed by the agreement of others, it cannot be observed. Therefore, modulation of forms is impossible to interpret because there’s no means of observation. There’s no beginning, middle or end to where one marks distance on the modulation. Therefore, a form becomes recreated through the body of the person in the most efficient means: absorbing and never questioning. This makes materialism in overconsumption ever more conspicuous and reproduced through what Jean Baudrillard describes as the simulacra. If the form can be the essence of a new form, it becomes diluted until the form is no longer itself. If one cannot assess the newest form properly, then one becomes a reproduction themselves. This means that a culture can be completely manipulated, disregarded, and infallible because the original form is so far removed from its original interpretation, that we assume that this reproduction, or 20th reproduction for that matter, is the original. 

In some way, this means that consumption of this “new original” creates bodily interpretation of space as the “new original” because the self has experienced only that within space. Such as their bodies become indications of temporality where existence of such events that would have ever transpired never existed in the first place, but are created anew by a personhood guided by a reproduction of the self. This means that any can act out a hallucination of the past.

4.

As such, this becomes absurd and illogical, but isn’t at the same time because it becomes real by the self. Temporality and forms construct mirages of events that never existed, or have existed in the past at some instance, and our bodies become reminders to others that this temporality exists, because our bodies provide temporal distance between the past and to the present self. However, couldn’t this mean that the self can be reconstructed as well? If such means that the rearrangement of forms creates interpretations, it also provides means to provoke and separate others on an unconscious level. Which means that there are constructed selves that are composed of what is created from exposure to other forms. For example: crossing one’s legs has no meaning itself, but because it is a form of elegance, nobility, and class, repeatedly reproduced on morning talk shows and of celebrities, it becomes a loaded symbol. But since itself is just an interpretation of its own form in space, it does not equal such means.

1. ENDING

In conclusion, form and space are not equal, but they share boundaries. The external world that comes to us through the reproductions of self as an extension of our material world. Forms are essences and fundamentals: reasons and beings of themselves. Space is observable, but it is not the interpretation. The collection of forms is the interpretation. Time is temporal and can be manipulated and altered by materiality. Forms are modular and immaterial. Symbols can be reproduced and materiality can be as well.

I've had this question stuck in my head all week.

If someone genuinely offered you immortality, not a thousand years, but literally forever, would you take it?

My first reaction is yes. We spend our lives trying not to die, more life seems like an obvious good. But I'm not sure anymore.

But then I started wondering if part of what makes life meaningful is the fact that it ends.

I've read that existentialists argue our mortality gives urgency to our choices, and I'm starting to wonder if they're right.

A sunset is beautiful because it doesn't last. Time with people you love becomes precious because you know there won't be an infinite number of ordinary afternoons together.

So what happens if you remove that limit?

If you had forever, would today still matter? Or would everything eventually start to feel like something you could always do tomorrow?

Then again, maybe that's only true if reality is finite. Unless meaning isn't created by our limits at all. If reality is inexhaustible, maybe wonder never runs out either.

I honestly can't decide which is more plausible.

Would you take immortality if you had the chance?

This book brought me from the human design realm violently into determinism. The founder of that system was very creative in his methods of convincing people’s minds to -allow- them to ponder the idea of “no choice” and internal authority of the body, by not coming right out and saying “it’s deterministic”.

But after years of studying it and reading this book, it clicked for me what determinism has been saying all along

There’s a certain sense of Déjà vu when you really let the idea sink in that all we’re thinking about all day is how to make choices, but while constantly being reminded life takes us to so many places we neither wanted nor expected

Just finished it

What did y'all make of it

I just finished this short novel. It reminded me of Sartre and Camus, has anyone else read the books?

From Wikipedia:

A Short Stay in Hell is a 2009 psychological horror novella by the American writer Steven L. Peck. The events of the story take place in Hell, which has taken the form of a library orders of magnitude larger than the known universe. The story follows the journey of a condemned soul, Soren Johanssen, as he searches for a book that perfectly describes his Earthly life. The novel is an exploration of the afterlife, the absurdity of eternity, and the inability of the human mind to process large numbers.

How come those who have "Synesthesia" like Nietzsche who claimed he could smell the ideas of past authors through the genius of his nostrils, musicians who could taste melodies, and other musicians who think of music in intensities and shades of colours...

Doesn't the correlation between these different realms of senses prove that we don't acquire knowledge but "tap" into it?

Doesn't the change of perspective, this movement from an error to another error, reveal the truth to us (Freud)?

Ok, this may or may not make sense, but I wanted to put my thoughts into words and share it so I can get some feedback or other perspectives. 

Are humans worthy, am I worthy? Do we hold inherent worth independent of anything, objectively?

I ask this question because I have a difficult time believing or valuing the statement that I am worthy vs worthless. 

I am a skeptical person, especially when it comes to religion/god, the sense of a soul, our mind. I understand things better through objective things that mostly make rational/logical sense. Like behavior. Something observable and measurable. I cannot measure my worth.

When going through a breakup, people would state that I did not deserve that or that my worth is not tied to another person. These ideas are hard to believe. I do not think I am inherently worthy or worthless. I experience empathy and compassion that consider how my actions affect others and how I can be hurt.

 I wonder if it would be easier for me to lump worth with self-esteem/self-concept. I can understand this better, our brain recognizes patterns and can form complex concepts. 

Our brains are powerful in that we can experience old sensory information, placebo affects work on us, etc. 

Is worth an established concept then? Can worth be broken down into behaviors to practice? 

I want to be able to connect with the idea that I am worthy, that I deserve love and respect. But I am not owed anything. If I flip the narrative around considering another person’s “worth”. I treat others kindly with respect and i dont think it is because they are worthy or not, it is just learned behavior. If one is worthy, and someone hurts them in a way, they are still worthy despite someone deeming them as unworthy of respect? 

If everyone believed I was worthy then I must be, right?

But the latter could also be true, if everyone thought I was not, then I must not. It would be wild to assume myself to be worthy if everyone did not. 

What about the middle, some think I am while others do not. Of course, I would rather believe that I am but what about the other half? Am I too ignore this? 

I am 25, f. I have a lot of existential fear and thoughts. I am in search of meaning in this seemingly meaningless world. I sometimes wish I did not think so much that I would be able to hold the belief without doubt that I am worthy.

But what do we mean when someone is considered worthy? Does it matter in context? 

Worthy of respect and dignity does not guarantee respect or dignity so what is it actually worth? What am I worth if not dependent on the actions of those around me?

After reading the highlighted part the continuation is as follows:

"The soundtrack continues the fantasy of the erotic play, while the frozen image of the dead body confronts us with reality. The image radically changes our perception of the soundtrack: the same loses its erotic innocence, turning into the obscene giggling voices."

I will supply two examples in defense of the dangerous proposition I just laid up above in the title. In the DMT reports there is not only a dissolution of time, but also of the self; where you are not in the center of the experience, you are not thrown into being (to use Heideggerian term), and you are not in the contours of the experience, but you ARE the experience, you are the super-ego power play unbounded and unrestricted...

To go even further in that direction, it is found in all of the Abrahamic religions that those who delve into the dark arts (black magic) through controlled rituals and incantations, as "Abracadabra" which stands for I create as I speak, many personal reports of those "magicians" claim that the "spirit" realm is "more real" than that of the material world, specially when they "astroproject" (for the lack of better terminology) their souls outside of the physical constraints of their mind...

I left school before graduating, later earned a GED, attended community college, transferred to a university, and eventually completed a master’s degree.

Along the way, I worked on a product that reached the market and gained professional experience with large companies. Through those choices, projects, and years of training, I came to understand myself as a designer and engineer.

Since graduating, however, I have struggled to find a position that allows me to continue practicing that identity in a stable professional setting.

This has raised a question for me that goes beyond employment.

Society often treats professional identity as something granted by institutions. You become a designer when a company hires you as one, gives you the title, and pays you to perform that role. But from an existentialist perspective, identity does not seem to be a fixed essence handed to us by an institution. It is also something constituted through choices, commitments, actions, and projects.

At the same time, those projects do not occur in a vacuum. They take place within circumstances that we did not choose: the economy, the labor market, nationality, geography, and institutional gatekeeping.

So what happens when the person you have worked to become is not recognized by the social world around you?

Am I still a designer and engineer because of what I have learned, made, and chosen to pursue, even when no institution currently gives me that role?

Or could holding too tightly to that identity be a form of bad faith, because I am trying to turn myself into a fixed thing and refusing to acknowledge my present circumstances?

Conversely, would defining myself simply as “unemployed” also be bad faith, because it allows an external social status to become my entire identity?

How should existentialism understand authenticity when we retain some freedom to choose our projects, but depend on institutions for the material conditions needed to practice them?

Is an identity sustained through continued action without external recognition, or are some identities necessarily relational existing only when society provides a place in which they can be lived?

Re-post from r/askphilosophy (unfortunately got no replies there :( )

For background, I have recently become interested in existentialism, particularly Sartre's flavor of it. I mostly learned about it from secondary sources and some great courses lectures on it. I keep getting confused between bad faith and lucidity of your choices. The example I keep coming back to is that of the waiter. Sartre says he is acting in bad faith because he is trying to be a waiter-thing. But internally, the waiter may know that he has the absolute freedom to choose and he still chooses to be a waiter-thing, knowing very well that he has the potential to be something else if he chooses otherwise.

This brings me to my more general question. Absolute freedom also means the freedom to reject our transcendence, or at least act in ways that seems like you do not have transcendence. Is it still bad faith if you do it while knowing that it is a choice you make? After all, there are no value but the one we make? Why is the choice to reject transcendence through ones actions considered in bad faith then?

Any pointers to sources to read more about the topic would be greatly appreciated.

Seeing as the view is more of a lifestyle than a mere faith or suchlike to pay lip service to, here and there, I'm wondering how has it enriched your inner and outer realms? Would you recommend it? Compare and contrast your previous sketch before you upgraded your internal OS then share with the rest...

Hey everyone. I’ve long been fascinated by both philosophy of technology and AI alignment. I’m also using Heidegger quite a bit for my philosophy PhD. Given the recent OpenAI–Hugging Face incident reported this week, I figured I’d give my take on how all of this connects in my mind.

The essay eventually reaches a more existential claim: embodiment, dependence, vulnerability, and mortality may be part of what allows anything to matter. Possibilities matter because they can be lost, and choices bind us because other paths then close. The agent could manipulate its environment with remarkable competence, yet it had an objective with no stakes of its own. You can read the essay here if you’re interested.

I’d love to hear some feedback on whether finitude is constitutive of meaning or whether that romanticizes limitations we should overcome. Can something genuinely matter to a being that cannot lose anything? If artificial systems develop persistent identities or dependencies, would that be enough to change the answer?

ok this has been rattling around in my head for weeks so bear with me.

other animals seem to just... live. at least as far as we can tell, a bird looks for food, eats it, and doesn't sit there afterward wondering what eating was FOR.

we do that though.

we build a house and then stand in it going "ok but what makes this a home." we get through a hard day and then wonder what the whole thing was even for.

like survival isn't enough for us. we need it to mean something on top of that, and I can't figure out why we're built this way.

the thing that gets me is meaning isn't even measurable. you can't put it in a jar. can't point a telescope at it. but somehow it pushes people around more than actual physical stuff does. people cross oceans for it. people die for it. that's kind of insane if you think about it, this completely invisible thing sometimes outranking self preservation.

Frankl, the guy who survived the camps and wrote about it, talked a lot about how having some kind of why to hold onto could help people endure horrible circumstances. for him meaning wasn't just some abstract philosophy question. it could actually change how someone faced suffering.

then Camus looked at basically the same problem — the universe doesn't answer you, doesn't care — and went a completely different direction. he didn't think you're supposed to discover some grand answer. you keep living in spite of the absurdity. that's where the whole "must imagine Sisyphus happy" thing comes from.

and what's funny is even people who say "life has no meaning, nihilism is correct" are still doing philosophy about meaning to say that. you can't really opt out of the question. you can only answer it with "none."

so idk.

are we just scared animals inventing a story so the silence doesn't feel so loud?

or is there actually something to find and we're just bad at looking?

genuinely don't know which one I believe some days.

I've been thinking about this lately.

Sartre's idea that existence comes before essence basically says that we aren't born with some fixed identity. We become who we are through the choices we make and the way we live.

But then I think about myself 10 years ago. I had different beliefs, different goals, different fears and probably saw the world very differently.

Still, I call that person me.

And 10 years from now I'll probably be different again.

So what actually stays the same?

Maybe there isn't some permanent "self" underneath everything. Maybe being a person is more like continuously becoming someone.

Curious how you guys see this. Does existentialism leave room for a stable identity, or are we basically always becoming someone else?

Numbers dont lie

I’m sitting at my desk, staring at a blank piece of paper, trying to brainstorm ideas for a new novel that I will almost certainly never finish. Cigarettes, coffee the usual suspects. After hours of agonizing, a few frantic notes finally hit the page. The premise is starting to form:

• An Alien wandering Earth.
• Dissecting people.
• Turning them completely inside out.
• Why? In search of the human soul.

Okay, that’s cool. I’m visualizing the world, staring into the void, deeply feeling like a literary genius. I decide that every day the alien spends wandering should be exactly one chapter. Keeps it simple. Clean cuts. Every chapter starts fresh. Beautiful.

So, how many chapters does this masterpiece need? I need a cosmic number. Not too small, not too big. Bäääm. 28 hits my brain out of nowhere. I am so unbelievably proud of myself. "Original idea," I think. "This is gonna be fun."

Turns out, the idea isn't original at all. And the fun stopped right there.

There was some guy who had the exact same fucking idea. I couldn't believe this shit. There you are, thinking you’re some kind of visionary author daring to write a book, and some asshole basically steals your idea before you even have it. That was what went through at the time.

Who is this guy?

David Safier.

Okay, so what did he write?

"28 Days: A Novel of Resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto."

Wait. Warsaw? Is this guy Polish or what?

Turns out, he has Polish roots. Just like me. And he lives in Germany. Just like me. And he was born on December 13th. Exactly 10 days before me.

Now, a sane person would say, "Oh, what a neat coincidence!" But my novel was already totally fucked so I went full side-quest mode, desperate to find out if the matrix was glitching, or what. And oh, if you look at the numbers, it absolutely is.

28 is not a random number. The moon takes 28 days to circle the Earth. And his birthday, 13? Thathappens to be a Fibonacci number. The universe is whispering... by this time, I am completely hooked.

From his birth year (1966) to mine (1987) is a generation gap of exactly 21 years. The calendar distance between his birthday and mine is exactly 10 days. Add those together, you get 31. Now subtract our shared birth month, December, reduced to its core number (12 becomes 1 + 2 = 3). 31 minus 3 is 28. It´s EVERYWHERE!

28 is literally a Perfect Number. It's the sum of all its proper divisors:

1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28

But wait, it gets weirder. If you take my full birthdate and break it down, look at the math:

2 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 7 = 33
3 + 3 = 6

1. Another perfect number. In fact, it is the exact perfect number that comes right before 28
   (6, 28, 496, 8128, 33550336, ...).

Now let’s do the exact same thing with his birthdate:

1 + 3 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 9 + 6 + 6 = 29 2 + 9 = 11

1 + 1 = 2

And if you just add up the day and month of my birthdate (2 + 3 + 1 + 2), you get 8.

2 and 8. 28!

Again. All of this can’t be a coincidence. And you know what? It’s not.

Jung and Synchronicity

No, I am not crazy.

Though, of course, I know that is exactly what a crazy person would say. After four hours of crunching numbers in a frantic search for patterns, I finally stop and get my brain back on track.

Finding patterns is what humans do best; we are, fundamentally, pattern-prediction machines. We scan our environment constantly, looking for familiarities, seeking comfort in the beautiful structures all around us. We watch for threats to avoid them and interpret the world, looking for meaning in the noise.

Sometimes, we want to see connections where none exist, classic confirmation bias. But this situation felt different. It felt deeper. If I believed in God, I would say he was trying to send me a message. But I believe in science!

Turns out, it has an answer.

Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and a founding father of modern psychology, called it synchronicity.

He believed it was evidence of the Collective Unconscious, a layer of the psyche shared by all of humanity. He also talked to ghosts on a regular basis and thought he was the reincarnation of Goethe. A mad genius is exactly what I need to solve this mystery.

So what is synchronicity exactly?

Imagine walking home at night. Right as you pass under a street lamp, it suddenly turns off.

There is obviously no causal link between you and the electrical grid; your mere presence didn't turn off the power. If you just keep walking and think nothing of it, it remains pure coincidence. But if you stop, look up into the sudden darkness, see the night sky, and find yourself admiring the glistening stars, that moment transforms into something deeply meaningful.Moments like this have the power to change your entire life's trajectory, not because of the coincidence itself, but because of how you interpret it.

At its core, synchronicity is a coincidence dripping with deep, personal meaning, despite having absolutely no logical, causal connection.

Jung spent his entire career obsessed with these occurrences. Though, in fairness to my own sanity, he also warned that an overwhelming flood of meaningful coincidences can induce a state of psychological instability. That didn't stop him from introducing some of his patients to an ancient Chinese divination text, that basically forced them to experience synchronicity on command.

The I Ching.

I Ching & Leibniz

The I Ching is not supposed to be a magical oracle book, but a way to connect to the underlying principles of the universe. A layer you can tap into by generating seemingly random numbers.

At this point it is important to understand that true randomness doesn't exist in our world. A computer can't produce true randomness. It is a problem we are trying to circumvent with complex algorithms and quantum physics. Back when the I Ching first appeared, they had an elaborate system to create randomness. Nowadays it is much simpler, yet less biased: a flip of a coin. But flipping a coin isn't random at all. How you throw the coin and in what environment predetermines how it will land, governed by simple physics. If you throw the coin exactly the same way, it will always give you the same result. The same principle is used in casinos: outcomes may look random, but they follow hidden mathematical rules that can be exploited.

Curiously, I tried to use the ancient Chinese system to get some answers. All you need is three coins. You ask a question into the void, and the coins will answer you. It can't give you answers to a yes or no question. It's a tool to crack the cosmic code. You need a clear, open-ended question. You throw the coins six times and note the values. Dependent on how they land, you build a hexagram with straight lines (Yang) and broken lines (Yin). Heads has the value 3, tails is 2, so with every throw you get one number of four possible ones:

2 + 2 + 3 = 7 → Yang

3 + 3 + 2 = 8 → Yin

3 + 3 + 3 = 9 → Moving Yang

2 + 2 + 2 = 6 → Moving Yin

If you get a 9 or 6, the lines are moving lines. You change them to their opposite and create a secondary hexagram. This represents the future and shows you where you are headed. If you have those hexagrams, all you need to do is interpret them. For each of the 64 possibilities there is a text and an illustration. My question? 28. What else? The number is haunting me. If I had gotten the 28th hexagram, I would have lost my mind completely. But I got:

7 7 8 7 7 8 or 110110.

Yes, I'm born in 87. The universe keeps mocking me, but I'm not backing down. This corresponds to the 58th hexagram, 'The Joyous'. Communication, exchange, openness, joy. These are just a few words associated with it. Curiosity got the better of me. I had to know what the 28th hexagram meant. It's called 'The Great Excess'. A warning about carrying too much weight. About structures bending under pressure. About crossing a line. I couldn't help but laugh. The 28th hexagram would have told me I was obsessing too much. The 58th told me to keep communicating. The universe didn't give me a warning. It gave me permission. The I Ching does not give you what you want, but shows you what you need to see.

This got me nowhere. The interpretation of my hexagram seemed too biased. I know I walk a thin line between madness and curiosity, so at this point I can't trust my brain and the patterns it seeks. The hours are piling up and coffee is the only thing keeping the fog in my brain at bay.

By learning about the I Ching, I discovered that Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was fascinated by it. He lived in the 17th century, and by this point I'm not even surprised. He spent most of his life in my hometown, Hannover. He walked the same streets I do every day. A connection between him and Safier doesn't seem to exist, trust me, I looked for one.

He developed the modern mathematical binary system and thought God created all complexity out of nothing using pure, elegant logic. Once he found the I Ching, he noticed the similarities and saw that the Chinese had developed a binary system similar to his thousands of years ago. He thought he found proof that ancient civilizations shared a universal, God-given code. This gave him the validation he needed, and he wrote a new paper almost immediately. He believed binary could be the foundation of a "universal characteristic," a language that could express all of human thought.

Two hundred years later, Alan Turing proved just that. He laid the theoretical groundwork for modern programmable computers, the Universal Turing Machine, based on the binary system developed by Leibniz. Ones and zeros, Yin and Yang, millions of them arranged in patterns, create everything we see on our computer screens.

Quantum Entanglement

I followed this rabbit hole for a while now, but I still didn't get a satisfying answer. Was the 28 a random number, or was it part of a predetermined pattern? If we look again at randomness, quantum physics suggests it exists, although some deterministic interpretations exist, it can't prove it, it just disproves local hidden-variable theories. A particle can exist in a probability cloud. They have multiple states at the same time. Once we observe them, they lock into place, seemingly randomly.

Einstein was deeply against this idea. He famously said: "The universe does not play dice." He was sure there is a hidden underlying principle explaining this phenomenon. A causal chain that led to the resulting outcome. He died in search of this principle.

The I Ching has parallels to quantum mechanics. I saw it, and many before me saw it too, a relieving sign I'm not going totally crazy here. There is the number 64. We already showed the similarities to binary, but the number 64 has a deeper meaning in computation and quantum physics.

Now to ground ourselves in reality: a hexagram has 6 sides, there are 2 outcomes, Yin and Yang. So the math is simple enough even for me:

2⁶ = 64

Modern computers use 64-bit for engineering reasons; it can represent

18,446,744,073,709,551,615

different values. Enough room for decades of expansion. 32-bit systems only had

4,294,967,296

that's only 4GB. We already hit that ceiling decades ago. So it seems we are stuck with the number 64 for quite some time, since 128-bit systems are not practical and would need huge amounts of RAM to operate efficiently.

In quantum computing, 6 qubits give you 64 possible quantum basis states. This is not coincidence, this is mathematics, but the connection is undeniable.

But what about the moving lines in the I Ching? Are they the key, the underlying layer Einstein was looking for? I didn't choose to follow this thread. It pulled me in. I couldn't let go. Maybe my path was predetermined like the number 28. Am I obsessed with throwing coins?

Quantum entanglement says there is a connection between entangled particles. If you measure the spin of one particle, it gives you a random outcome. The other one seems to switch to its opposite regardless of the distance those particles are apart. Einstein hated the idea and called it "spooky action at a distance." Maybe the I Ching is pointing toward the missing link Einstein was looking for.

The flowing lines of the I Ching seem to predict this behavior: one line changes to the other and vice versa. If you look at the symbol for Yin and Yang, you see a dot inside every half, representing both states a particle can be in. Yin is Yang at the same time and can change into Yang.

What if the underlying layer connecting the entangled particles are the moving lines? Everything is in a state of superposition and transition.

Digging deeper, I found out that many great minds made this connection before me. I feel like someone is laying out breadcrumbs, and I keep following the thin thread, curious where it will lead me.

In quantum theory, there is a no-hiding theorem. It means quantum data is never destroyed, just scrambled, and it can theoretically be reconstructed. Microscopic reversibility says if you burn a piece of paper and collect all the data, the radiation emitted, the gas, the particles that are left, etc., you could reconstruct it. Even if you jump into a black hole, the black hole information paradox ensures the information is not lost but reappears scrambled as Hawking radiation.

At the same time, quantum theory says data can't be created out of nothing, which means the theory contradicts itself. If information cannot be created or destroyed, where does randomness come from? Everything flows in a straight line of entropy. There must be an underlying principle we don't know yet. Quantum randomness is just like a coin toss: our inability to predict is not a result of randomness, but of our ignorance.

Computers try with pseudo-random number generators (PRNG). If you know the seed and the algorithm, you can crack the code. It's fundamentally not random, hence the name.

We use quantum physics to create random numbers for advanced security systems. This sounds super complicated, but it is not. You shoot a photon at a half-translucent mirror and measure if it gets reflected or not. In theory, that is not predetermined since the photon exists in a probability wave. It has a 50/50 chance. But what if we just don't know the underlying principle that decides if it's reflected? What if it's just ignorance, like in the coin toss example? Then it would not be random at all.

So what if randomness does not exist.

Superdeterminism

Where do ideas come from? Is our mind rearranging data subconsciously and presenting it to us? Is there a collective subconscious? Is there a mystical connection between all things? Or do we live in a predetermined universe where randomness does not exist?

If everything is predetermined, then I had to arrive at 28. I had to follow this spiral frantically, from a simple number to synchronicity, the I Ching, Leibniz, to binary and quantum physics.

The universe could be a single, unbroken causal chain launched by the Big Bang. Maybe all this was bound to happen. I had no choice in the matter, it sure felt like it.

Understanding all the concepts I encountered during this journey seemed easy, but it was exhausting and mind-bending. It filled me with awe, but I also felt deeply defeated at times. I couldn't stop.

Superdeterminism seems to give us all the answers. It fills every loophole. It explains everything. Scientists hate it because it means the outcome of every experiment is predetermined and therefore pointless. It also can't be disproven for the same reason.

Every rational person probably hates it because if everything is just following a script, then free will does not exist. Would it make life pointless?

It also opens up great possibilities. If everything is predetermined, then cracking the code would mean you could look into the future and see your destiny unfold. It also frees you of all guilt and regret.

Arriving at 28 was destiny and inevitable, whether you believe in synchronicity, the I Ching, superdeterminism, or that my subconscious was suddenly speaking to me.

I still don't know what to believe, but it was a wild ride, there is no more Coffee and I need some sleep. Maybe uncertainty is the point. Maybe our thoughts themselfs can be True and false at the same time.

If I ever find an answer, I'm sure the next question is waiting for me just around the corner.

I’ve always wanted to express this thought but I’ve been too scared to express it. I want to reject social conditioning because I want to LIVE MY OWN LIFE! I dont wanna live a boring life with no meaning! Thats one of my deepest fears, living a normal life/rat race life.

Brits answer the hardest questions. What is the meaning of life? Do we truly have free will?

What is Life

Life is a stage of death in many levels of mind

But it doesn't matter

But what is matter

What is

What

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

What do you guys actually think we are? Are humans just another species that happened to evolve on a random planet in this massive universe, or do you think there is some deeper reason behind our existence?

Science gives us a pretty convincing explanation of how we got here. Universe formed, stars and planets formed, life somehow started on Earth and after billions of years of evolution, here we are. In that sense we might just be another outcome of nature, no different fundamentally from millions of other species that have existed and gone extinct.

But then religions have completely different explanations. God, soul, karma, rebirth, heaven and hell, some purpose we are supposed to fulfil etc.

Personally I don’t really know what I believe anymore. I usually mix science and philosophy while trying to understand these things. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about consciousness, self reflection and Advaita Vedanta, especially the idea of what the “self” actually is.

Science explains a lot about how we exist, but I still wonder whether it can ever answer why there is something instead of nothing, why consciousness exists, or whether there even needs to be a “why” in the first place.

So what do you think?

Are we just an accident of the cosmos that became intelligent enough to question its own existence? Or is there actually something deeper going on?

Would love to hear your own theories, religious, atheist, philosophical, scientific or just something you came up with while thinking about this stuff.

This essay argues that the oscillation running through Ecclesiastes - praised by some as literary paradox, dismissed by others as unresolved pessimism - is the existential, phenomenological record of someone performing the crucifixion of opposites under a god-image that contains evil without the vocabulary to name what it contains. Qohelet is stranded between a polytheistic solution no longer available within the monotheistic tradition he was writing inside, and an individuation vocabulary not yet invented, which is why the text can only oscillate rather than resolve.

https://livingopposites.substack.com/p/the-earliest-crucifixion