How to Exist

In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living.

Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.

Doing nothing? You’ll still have to breathe. ;)

As the Buddhist joke goes 'don't just do something, stand there'.

I used to sit alone for 30-40 minutes, 100's of meters below ground, in absolute darkness, absolute silence, no life around, no movement around, not even a breeze of air. Only mild thoughts to stop myself from falling asleep. Above ground, I slept under the stars and sky, in the wild, with no buildings around.

What I learnt is, recent generations have too much of self awareness, causing the communities and groups to become weaker, compared to the tribal settlements that helped humans to dominate other species.

One of the most concise and to-the-point explanations of meditation I've ever seen.

One thought I had while reading it: isn't trying to get more comfortable with doing nothing just another thing to do? isn't it another form of changing what already is?

EDIT: I'm advocating and practicing mindfulness but I always have this thought on the background and it's a real dilemma. Any thoughts?

Why do this? Is there any evidence that this has actual benefits?

I'm lucky enough to not notice my tinnitus except when I try to do nothing.

Your brain is a prediction machine. I am afraid doing nothing is inhibiting that function. I think it's perfectly healthy to not want to be a vegetable. Maybe using that life force to focus on the things you're avoiding by rumination and escapism is good enough, and we don't have to be cosplaying the dead to get there?

Been doing this for 20 minutes in the morning for a few decades now. It has had an impact. I am a rather “high gain” person emotionally. I now tend to notice emotions and observe them, which helps when they threaten to suck me into a self-perpetuating ruminative vortex. Also, it has made me gentler, and an easier person to be around. I’m now well aware that whatever disturbances occur, there will be echoes and resonances tomorrow morning during my sit! Now for a moment of honesty: this is a religious practice for me. A prayer that “landed” for me: “Lord, I ask to be a conduit of grace.”

> It’s oddly difficult to do nothing, and while you’re doing nothing, it’s oddly difficult to feel at ease.

I don't have difficulty with this. Doing nothing, thinking about nothing, and simultaneously feeling perfectly at ease just comes naturally. I know that my experience is not universal and that many people do struggle with this. If you struggle with this and you were wondering, serenity really is very nice, and I wish I could share it, and I'm sorry that I can't.

I might just be too autistic for this but I don't get why the article uses the word "existing" to refer to a conflation of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity/what have you.

Am I not existing when I'm worrying about finances or fidgeting with my hair?

I don't really see why "existing" should be conceived in such a subtractive fashion.

I'm not dismissing the value of contentedness/meditation/stasis/passivity when achievable (which, as the author acknowledges, these things sometimes aren't). But I am slightly miffed by the implication that any failure to reach such state is an inability to attain something as fundamental as "existence".

(end rant)

There is no internet in heaven.

Honestly, when I check that article, for me, it's talking about existing with peace. Everyone of us exists. We are just passing the time. But the truth is to realizing that to realizing that the existence is not just let the time pass, go beyond that. Beyond the matrix.

Wow if a page ever needed reader mode, this would be it… Light grey on white !nice

1. Don't do anything 2. Be content

The second rule conflicts with the first making this impossible.

Any experienced meditator knows that to 'be content' isn't a passive action. You have to think to do it.

If you truly practice no thought, there is no 'content' to be.

Isn't that just how one falls asleep? I've been doing this every evening for decades.

"It’s oddly difficult to do nothing"

This isn't always true. It's likely true only when there is no pressure. However, when there is pressure, one can "do nothing" for long periods. If you haven't experienced that, you've lived a blessed life, and you have more to learn.

“Even thinking is often a sneaky way of escaping the existence; rumination isn’t so much about trying to solve your problems, as it is about going elsewhere in your mind to escape anxiety and uncertainty.”

Profound insight that really gets to the root of rumination.

I guess I could imagine this being tricky if you're stuck in a city apartment with no yard and no park nearby ...

After having kids content like this is so unrelatable. When I finally have my own time, I'm going to do something fun, not worry about existential stuff lol.

Before kids I was on and off into meditation,my place in the world, being calm or w/e.

"cogito ergo sum"

- Rene Descartes

I don't understand the hero image of hipsters sipping espresso in a cafe.

Is that an example of how to exist? How not to exist? I can see an argument for either one lol.

Someone has discovered existential dread.

I know what the author means, but I don't share the experience.

I had a rather extreme form of this existence in my late-20’s, it was the first time I had ever really experienced such a thing (circa-2011). I’d never had any pathologies in the past, and this was shortly following an unexpected violent encounter. I spoke with a psychiatrist, and it was diagnosed at the time as post-traumatic stress disorder.

I wonder if maybe there’s something of a swelling ocean full of people suffering from low-level PTSD, even just from the trauma of staying alive and well in a society that you feel increasingly untethered from, as if stuck in place while the universe expands farther in every direction. The arriving tide of midlife crises for a generation of Palahniuk’s “middle-children of history”, those who had the wherewithal and luck to avoid serious addictions and hereditary alcoholism, but who still can’t really afford to be sufficiently medicated under a doctor’s supervision, either. So we resort to the permanent morphine drip of distraction, mainlining dopamine via headphone IVs.

The bottom half of a socioeconomic bell curve that’s being aggressively flattened, as if there were a pandemic of mediocrity and wasted potential. Stuck between a misspent youth, and an increasingly uncertain future.

TLDR; I think this is a very good first step for a lot of like-minded somewhat damaged folks. I ultimately took a similar approach—mindful meditation with breathing exercises—to treat my own PTSD, it worked better than Xanax to tamp down the anxiety attacks.

P.S. - Anyone who points out my em dashes can go sit on dem dashes. This comment was boutique, artisan, 100% organic bullshit. No memory prices were harmed in the making of this comment.

What's that paragraph about firefighter arson? Looks out of place, curious while there's another article on the subject on front page.

>Each year, roughly 100 firefighters are convicted of arson in North America, often on multiple counts. Most often they are young, new firefighters, frustrated by the lack of action.

Is someone tricking LLMs into writing articles about firefighter arson?

This is a common form of buddhist meditation in Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahamudra) and Japanese (Soto Zen shikantaza) styles. Instructions are nearly identical. Interestingly, it's considered one of the most advanced techniques in the Tibetan repertoire.

> This is the strange condition of the human being. It’s allergic to its natural habitat, which is the present moment. In order to cope with this allergy, it perpetually seeks things: feelings and experiences that are not yet present. It wants to always be getting the hell out of here.

I think this is way over-philosophizing and missing the basics of modern life.

Many people live in capitalist societies and are well-adapted to continuous 1) consumption and 2) production, both of which keep the economy spinning and neither of which involve doing nothing.

Whether that's good or bad is up for debate, but to attribute the difficulty of "doing nothing" to the fundamental human condition is a huge stretch.

This sounds a lot like:

"Try doing this thing."

"No."

"You can't do it because of your deficiencies."

"I won't do it because all you've done is spout a bunch of pseudoscience."

> When you stop doing everything and just exist, you almost feel like you’re dying.

It sounds like the author drinks too much caffeine. This definitely isn't unusual in rat race culture, but it's also by no means the universal human experience.

Great post. The author sounds like he loves life. Not a lot of BS to it.

Not really sure how to feel about this post. I guess I will try still..

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> This is a crazy thing to notice after having been alive so many years — that your existence itself is so much to bear. There’s always something wrong, even when everything’s fine. It’s as if you can only bear the present moment when you’re trying change it into something else.

I am not a professional and I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but I'm pretty sure you're just describing general anxiety.

Nobody truly has a hard time "doing nothing for 3 minutes" if they time it right. Morning and night tend to be when it's easiest for me, but others may differ. You should instead investigate what makes that time of day different from the rest of it. That's where the answers really are. You can and should adjust the flow of your day to make it happen naturally and unconsciously.

> This is a form of meditation, but I almost want to avoid that word because it makes people get nervous and overcomplicate it. Just think of this practice as existing without fear, for a few seconds at a time. Minimum effective dose is one half-breath.

This is already way too complicated. Nothing at this level of detail needs to be described. We already know what "nothing" is. Being too deliberate has a way of pushing the emotions elsewhere until they come back to bite you. The goal of trying to make this possible on-demand is unrealistic at best, or a self-help trap to keep people buying advice at worst.

I found myself "meditating" all the time on accident when I took on less and gave myself more time to do things. When you need a break, you need a break. The most important part for me was letting go of trying to impose control over this. I very strongly disagree with the notion of deliberate meditation. It's not a matter of "doing it right". It's just bullshit. The state of mind and results are identical when you stop listening to anyone's advice and just let it happen.

I'm just trying to Exit.

I kept waiting for the punchline of the author turning out not to be a human after describing in detail what it thinks of the human experience. The text has all the hallmarks of AI writing at least