it's likely that Millions perhaps even billions of people have at one point or another felt the desire to not exist now when I say not exist I'm not talking about the way some people wish they had never been born or even somebody's self-destructive fantasies no the desire to not exist is a yearning to magically disappear preferably in a way that doesn't require any sadness violence or death you may know it as the wish to fall asleep and never wake up again as often as this desire is felt it's mysteriously rarely discussed what I found surrounding
why we sometimes feel this way says a lot about the nature of our existence desires and how we interpret the existence of others and one of the most memorable scenes from Doo's novel The Brothers kazav a monk and an atheist walk into a bar their brothers kazav to be exact what ensues is a debate about the existence of God albeit an unconventional one in our world nobody escapes the torture of daily pains and disappointment even children suffer in horrific extremes thus God the Elder of the two brothers maintains must be evil to have introduced us
to such a world any promises of paradise after this life are just taunts life is about a cruel Angel's thesis it's not that I don't accept God I just most respectfully return him the ticket he says Ivan Kaza rejects all Notions of God's goodness but even further than that we can interpret that for Ivan it is not so important to contemplate whether or not God exists the question that must be asked is whether or not we want to exist in a world like this one this idea would be repeated by Al kamu who famously made
the remark that in deciding whether or not one should kill oneself one answers the fundamental question of philosophy when we think of the desire to not exist we usually imagine something akin to this kind of thinking the idea that life is meaningless and insufferable is a popular one however when compared to these outlooks the desire to not exist is unique what these individuals desire is not death but to experience non-experience the desire is not a logical set of beliefs about the characteristics of life but a complex psychological wish furthermore not everyone who Longs for nothingness
thinks existence is entirely unbearable to not want to die but also wanting to simply not exist implies a contradictory hope hope that one might continue to go on living I think the most tempting way to explain this is to bring up what is called cognitive dissonance when a person has two contradictory beliefs but can only embody one of them they will pick the one that is easier to exhibit in this case it's easy to suggest that the people who would like to not exist continue to live their lives because death is much too messy and
final it takes a certain dedication to accept death of course there is something to be said for this idea after all most people would hesitate to see death as a solution to their problems but this Outlook of cognitive dissonance ignores the intense feeling these individuals still experience not to mention the ways they'll still attempt to replicate nothingness in their own lives one way of reading this contradiction is that it is prohibition that leads to Fantasy we desire that which we cannot have not only is nothingness impossible we're told that we must not achieve it we
might therefore desire nothingness simply as a way to exert our freedom The Impossible is desired all the more for its impossibility one of the best references to the desire to notexist can be found in the philosopher saen KAG guard's book The Sickness unto death KAG guard's argument is that the torment of the desire to not exist is the hopelessness of not even being able to die death means an end to life a perceived nothingness though not a sickness that will literally end in death once a more horrifying reality than death is encountered one will wish
they could die when even this last respite is taken from them the desire to disappear will consume them in an act that kard calls despair but as we've already discussed those that suffer from the desire to non-exist don't exactly want to die kirkgard a deeply religious thinker thought of Despair as a response to the eternity that lies after death by replacing his mentions of death with the idea of nothingness we lose something from his writings but even if we disassemble this part of his argument the most fascinating portion Still Remains there exist even in life
simulated perceptions of Eternity when time is slow to a crawl and every monotonous day bleeds out in unity we are held a hostage of Eternity boredom depression and Nostalgia all linger here but some of the less familiar residents of non-time also deserve a mention the Delirious ache of Desire is felt here and it is also in the Silence of Eternity that we catch our glimpse of nothingness eternity is important to ker guard's argument because it preserves every he says a despairing person wishes they could be freed from it's in eternity that the self remains immutable
and that's exactly what can be so Dreadful about it a self is a heavy burden during the total ceasefire of time the inability to escape from ourselves grows ever more prominent under the right conditions that can be its own form of [Music] suffering at a first glance the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion appears to be about angsty teens piloting giant robots as they fight other worldly entities referred to as Angels but in reality the show is about 14-year-old boy's fight with his desire to not exist of course spoilers ahead each of the main characters suffers from
an intense existential loneliness however it's in Shinji a character modeled after the anime's Creator that we find the show's depiction of this desire episode 16 is even titled the sickness unto death in reference to kard AA isn't shy about naming its philosophical influences by explicitly using philosophy Neon Genesis Evangelion presents us with an interesting existential argument in order to understand that argument we need to take a look at the ideas of the philosopher Arthur schopenhauer another one of the anime's major influences in his book The World As will in representation schopenhauer describes the way individuality
can cause suffering he argues that the world is made up of Will and representation while the total universe is in fact one thing operating in unity human beings each have their own will distinct from that of the universe and each other furthermore each person only experiences a limited sample of the total Universe causing them to have their own unique perspectives longings and pains to schopenhauer as long as human beings exist separately from one another there will be suffering this dilemma is portrayed countless times in Evangelion as the main cast of characters repeatedly struggle to deal
with the pain inherent to the process of becoming close to another person Ava doesn't just stop here though the shadowy organization Zilla German for soul seeks the literal unification of all human life through what is called the human instrumentality project the project is intended to destroy the boundaries of our egos and allow for total Harmony as each person's Consciousness is merged into one total unit don't leave me don't ignore me don't kill me what the hell is this this apocalyptic event will unite all Minds hearts and bodies as one in the movie End of Evangelion
after the human instrumentality project is unwittingly put into motion by Shinji were presented with a surreal commentary on the psychology of those who desire nothingness ukar help me please ukar you're the only one for me you're lying you know you are you'd run up to anyone you're afraid of misato and Reay you're afraid of your father and your mother it's just that now you're only running to me it's the easiest and least painful thing to do come on ASA help me the truth is you've never really loved anybody the psychoanalyst and philosopher jacqu Lon suggested
that our desires form in response to our separation from one another Lon often discussed the existence of something called the other we can understand his mentions of the other in two ways first as some who is not you second as the big other a more Ematic character the big other's essential feature is that we struggle to know what it desires despite our persistent efforts to find out the big other is not a person parse it is a symbol a category all desire forms in response to some lack in our lives all desire fundamentally presupposes other
desires and all desire craves recognition the 's argument is that your desire comes from your best guess as to what the big other lacks or desires the big other is always present in the mind it's imagined presence leading you to wonder if your desire is acceptable and more importantly if you as you define yourself are a desirable person schopenhauer saw the individual will of the self as a pointless striving with no end to him only suffering arises from our wants because our wants can only stem from an initial dissatisfaction action this also applies to what
laon is saying here about desire there are many ways one's desire might repel others and it is always a fact that we never truly comprehend what the other desires from us the burden of Desire easily finds itself implicated alongside pain Evangelion makes a very important point that obsessing over the desire of the other can introduce feelings of Shame ending in the desire to not exist shame is a deep disappointment with oneself for not being desired a feeling that the whole self is invalid yet it can only be felt before something of an audience even if
it's an imagined one in shame we view ourselves from an exterior perspective that of the big other the desire of the big other isn't as simple a matter as merely doing what other people want from us it's about wanting the thing other people want Shinji is afraid that he has no desirable qualities other than being the pilot of his Ava and to be fair he's not so far off he's let the demands of of other people dominate him demands that stem from their own unresolved issues Mis wants Shinji to be what she could never be
Osa wants him to be less apologetic in pursuing her and by the end of it all it's still not really clear what his father desires of him theorious is the dynamic that plays out as a result Shinji thrashes about an indecision hesitant to Pilot his Ava knowing the pain it will cause him but nonetheless wanting to please others he's told to only do it if he wants to which is really just a more severe way of being told to do it and enjoy it the presentation of a choice here is really an illusion all of
this culminates into the conflict of shinji's own desires as they bite and cower at the desire of the big other in certain scenes and through certain responses we see that Shinji is as shame that his desires are not those of the others one can think life is full of good and still not want to fully take part in it rebelling against all existence he thinks he has acquired evidence against existence against its goodness the despair thinks that he himself is this evidence acting against what we desire or feeling disgusted at what we desire both lead
to shame both involve a sensitivity to the big other desire always plays some sort of a role in shame because the true nature of our wants constitutes a fundamental part of the self despair over something such as rejection really is despair over having a self writes kard I believe the desire to not exist can be understood as an expression of frustration at one's individual existence despair rages in each of us as we acknowledge the truth that we are not one but rejection especially bruises those who desperately want to be desired these persons who suffer from
the desire to not exist really want to have no desires to experience the freedom and peace of a complete dissolution of the self as it is known we will never be one but after I cease all striving forward perhaps I can numb the pain inflicted on me by my neglected desires everything that matters to me matters in this world and that's the precise reason I find it all so tiring the cold anesthesia of nothingness is the nuclear option for desire this attitude of distance is fully displayed in the behaviors tied to the desire to not
exist there's just one more thing I wanted to understand what's the solution in order to figure that out I first thought it necessary to get as close as possible to actually experiencing nothingness myself sensory deprivation tanks are pods of salt water that work to eliminate each of the five senses in them there's no light sound or gravity in order to experience what nothing this is like I decided to jump into one of these things after setting up an appointment at a place that offered these I step in and begin to float the lights turn off
and slowly my world is ending finally only I remain there is nothing only warm primordial old Blackness my body is Sleek from the salt the water feels as if it expands out infinitely my limbs grow heavy in the darkness my eyes project forth the after images of meaningless shapes and colors that they spend some time assembling into coherent objects my time in that pod felt both instantaneous and infinite almost like a dream when it did end stepping out of the darkness I felt as if I was emerging from an imaginary space deep within myself and
yet I found that the peace I experienced there did not make me hate existence I rather felt content with it in episode 20 of Evangelion Shinji is dissolved into a primordial soup inside of his Mecca with only his Consciousness remaining kind of like me here kind given the choice to remain in the state of nothingness or to return to the physical world he contemplates his self worth we're again introduced here to the fact that Shinji determines the value of his existence through how desirable he is to others we are to understand however the solution that
is proposed here as it is this that ultimately influences Shinji desire to return to the real world it's your future only you can decide Shinji you must make a choice a philosophy is in some way an interpretation of the Philosopher's own experiences sensory deprivation although not as surreal an experience as to what Shinji goes through here helped me to understand that there's yet another way to imagine ourselves returning life the ticket we do not need to allow the immediacy of our existence to Define us we can learn to create out of the void that we
yearn to return to we all have the ability to go from feeling a mixture of pleasure and guilt in our desire to feeling secure in the thing that propels our desire I believe that part of this process is learning to decide for ourselves how we feel about our desires and what causes them instead of presenting ourselves to be judged by a jury of our own Conjuring we must understand that everything in this life is in a constant state of becoming all people will continue to grow closer and farther from each other in an endless variety
of ways in our simulated eternities we fear that we will always be prone to repeat the same mistakes to desire the same things and to always be the disgusting person we are now if we trust in the idea that even the Absurd is possible we can instead push forward to carve out opportunities for our acceptance shame arises when we trust in the big other to decide what is acceptable for us but the actual people in our lives while they might not always agree with what we desire still have the chance to accept us if we
trust them friction will always exist between what they want and what we want accept that and you can take the risk to be accepted yourself in taking that risk and accepting the potential Pains of Desire you'll already have made steps towards accepting yourself and moved beyond the desire to not exist if you enjoyed this video you'll absolutely love my video on the game with a perfect portrayal of trauma
