What is there to fear about oblivion?

You may have spent time in oblivion before birth, but you don’t have any memory of it. It is the fear of the unknown.

@marinelife Fear of the unknown, and fear of losing themselves I think. Some people probably feel the way Rincewind (From The Color of Magic) did when he was held over the rim of Discworld, forced to stare into space. A giant blackness, that once you are in, you’re in for good, and you can do nothing once you are there. You don’t exist anymore. We are our anchors in this world, the idea that when the chain snaps and we drift from our anchor, we’re done and are helpless to stop it is very unnerving for many people.

The point is to make the most of our shore leave, before we leave port for good.

“But let’s face it. Every person ever born spent eons in oblivion right up to the moment of their birth.”
– Eh? That’s imposing your assumptions. And it seems to me, is clearly inaccurate when you are talking about the experience of being human in most cultures. Some people believe very different things about the pre- and post- embodied experience. Some think a person starts at conception, or at birth. Some think we get reincarnated over and over. Many are raised to think of our birth as the beginning of our identities, and most of us do not have any memories of past lives (nor of floating in oblivion before then). Clearly, it’s the destruction of the familiar identity; the loss of the things we love, enjoy, hope for, take comfort in; and the moving into the unknown, that I would assume (imposing my assumptions) tend to be feared.

Or do you, josie, have as part of your familiar memory, floating in oblivion for eons?

@Zaku
Imposing my assumptions?
I suppose if it were at the point of a gun, we might start talking about impositions but not until then.
If you are up to it, and if it is not an imposition, I would love to hear how any question on this generally innocent little site is an imposition on anybody. Who forced you to read/answer the question? Or to agree with the premise?
I hope reading this is not an imposition.

Do you feel fear when you lay down to sleep?

We are oblivious in oblivion during sleep, which is a close to death as we can get every night for 8 hours or more. lol

We come out of nowhere and return to nowhere.

Every organism is born, goes through a period of expansion ( growth ) and then, contraction ( aging and mortality) towards the return movement ‘home.’

Classic human ego, wanting to hang onto a sense of self even beyond the grave. haha

With 2 last rites and at least one near death experience under my belt I will offer from my experiences so far there is nothing to fear….death felt warm…embracing and welcoming. I am in no hurry though….got some unfinished biz to attend to.

Nothing, and lots of it.

Here’s a conjecture. It’s not about us not existing any more. It’s our friends and loved ones. The afterlife notion was invented to comfort people at funerals.
The knowledge that that person you loved so much does not exist any more at all, and all hope is lost of ever seeing them again, even just for a moment… that’s painful.

See also: “you may be gone, but you will always live on in our hearts / memories.”

Fear? I welcome it. Nothingness has nothing to fear.

This is an interesting question.

I went to look up the definition of oblivion, and to my surprise it didn’t mean nothingness (I thought it did). Because we do call death oblivion, and if we say there isn’t an afterlife, we try to imagine nothingness.

But the two definitions of the word: the state of being forgotten or unknown and the state of forgetting.

And it makes sense that we fear that. We’re not as worried about what’s to come as forgetting what has happened. Which is why so many (I know I am) are afraid of Alzheimer’s—among the many other degenerative diseases, head trauma—strokes, physical damage.
Also why we take pride in having better memory; of knowing.

Which is why the vision of an afterlife makes more sense. It’s not that we want to live for forever, necessarily, but that we never want to forget. We’re scared of forgetting.

(Personally, I think memories are stuck in the biology of our brain, coded into our neurons, so regardless of what happens after death, I don’t think I’ll remember my life. It is kind of an uncomfortable thought when I think about it in certain ways.)

“Every person ever born spent eons in oblivion right up to the moment of their birth”

Huh. It makes me question what the nothing/forgotten and the something/remembered are.

Because even if we are all nothingness before being born, and nothingness after… we still don’t know what nothingness means. Theories of matter and anti-matter give nothingness the potential of becoming something, and something the potential of becoming nothingness, at the smallest level.
And we are something now. At least what we consider somethingness So at our level, is there that potential? Because thinking about life in this way, now makes it seem like there might be.

Well so what the hell are we? Something out of nothing? Something always? I’m not sure I really like either.

This question leaves me in questions.

—Maybe that’s what we fear? The questions?

Fear of the unknown, fear of the unimaginable. I what you to imagine what it feels like to not exist. You can’t do it, it is simply something that our minds cannot comprehend.

@PhiNotPi Already did it. So did you. See above

….Easy…No Pizza, Popcorn or Movies in Oblivion…. :(

@coffeenut
There are plenty of movies in oblivion. But they all suck. Or people would have remembered them.
There must be plenty of pizzas and enough popcorn that people forgot about too, but they’re probably all mouldy by now.

@Fyrius lol

@josie So, what did it feel like, then? The point is that no one knows what it feels like, regardless of whether or not we have experienced it in the past.

@josie I didn’t mean that level of imposition. Just in the context and framing of the question.

Maybe I’m just tired. How were we experiencing oblivion before? We just didn’t exist then; and then we were born. I get the after death, oblivion thing…but before? We just weren’t anywhere, not even oblivion.

(Oblivion is, of course, not really an experience. It’s only the absence of any.)