it occurs to me that most people regard their experience in a way that's kind of foreign to me now.
people say, "oh, i want to see paris!" or "i want to ski the alps!" or get a girlfriend.
people are always lustily fantasizing about potential experience. but experience converts instantly into memory. i'd say that very likely 99.999...% of experience is memory, if not more.
yet people take about the imperative of experiencing something as if they will enjoy remembering them in the leisure of their own death.
turns out i'm not totally anhedonic--i've noticed that i seem to enjoy some things more than others. but i always have the same reaction: that's over for good now. it doesn't matter at all.
when it happens, it will seem like the very next minute from now: you'll die. and not only are there very few new-agey theosophical types that think our memories survive death, but religions are strangely indeterminate on this idea. odd religions, like mormons, believe they'll spend eternity with their families. but they're in the minority.
even hindus and buddhists who believe in reincarnation say you can be reincarnated as anything, so what good are human memories to a squirrel?
enjoyment is purely genetically psychological, the most obvious example being orgasm.
people grow up with this deep sense that life is worth living just because it's life, which makes no sense at all, it's like defining a banana as "a banana-like thing".
2 comments:
For me, it's about collecting content and ideas. I've often said that I'll suffer almost anythign if there's a good story in it. And I've often thought about things I really hated at the time, that, retrospectively, it was worth it. I got a good story.
I think that the internal experience might be like the for regular people. They take pleasure in proving telling themselves stories in their memories.
It serves, in either case, as sort of a currency by which one can demonstrate that life was well lived.
Of course, in the end, it's true that we are all dust in the wind. It's just more fun to pretend that we're not, that we're fascinating dust who took awesome vacations.
Another facet of the value of experience is exemplified in this video about Olympic athletes (a lovely piece, btw).
There is value in the idea of the love of excellence and the beauty of the act itself. Sheer momentary gratification is good, too.
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