Hi Tarantula,
I didn't know that you had these feelings of angst. I have felt angst, fear and loneliness, too, and I know it is difficult and miserable to suffer like that.
Now that I know how you feel, I am afraid that my previous comments may have only made things worse for you. I am sorry if that is the case.
In reply to your post, I can only say that I feel like this world is real, no matter what may or may not be beyond. I feel that our lives are meaningful and that we matter. I have not always felt this way, and I think it is common for people to go through times in life when things feel bleak.
I do not like to give unsolicited advice, so I will not do so now. But if you feel like you want advice, would you consider letting us know? I and other folks could perhaps give you suggestions if you need them on how to deal with your struggles. Or, if you just want to express your feelings more, we will be here for you. :)
Thank you.
What you said is specifically what I need, it strikes my heart very deeply and strongly. Thank you.
What you suggest and provide are the most important things in my life. Hard to explain in several sentences.
I want, eager to talk and listen, the only problem is that my work has some problem and is very busy, that's a long story. I'm a Java programmer, now doing a project that's a supply chain order management subsystem web application. After this project is done, I have a great possibility to need to change another company, not my own choice, two thirds of this project's developers, testers, business analysts have already left. Hard to explain in several sentences. I focused on Java codes with Spring Framework and MyBatis (a framework for database connectivity) for the last several months but I haven't touched webpage front-end codes for quite long time, so if I need to change another company within several months now I should be quite worried about reviewing and improving webpage front-end codes.
The above is just my explaining why I didn't visit skeptiko-forum often in one or more years before. Bitter smiling.
Dear Dan_LastName your words are very needed and warm. I do have tons of words to say, about the source of our existence and determination force high beyond, and the answers to fate, suffering and wonderful life experiences, illusions and realities, the essence of our "self", ultimate, near death experiences, reincarnation, extraterrestrial lives, dark conspiracies, etc, etc, etc, etc.
I haven't finished writing my ideas. I'm not sure whether it is proper to post what I have written or wait for more thinking and afflatus.
I will visit here often, and try to express what I want to say step by step.
I decided to post my unfinished ideas below, it is very badly written, if anyone could find it funny in a stupid way, then feel free to have a read, not serious though ha ha. I need to improve my English writing to make my ideas better expressed.
Below is what I wrote this weekend:
Sadly this Saturday I was asked to do overtime work again, and Sunday went to do some social affairs.
Posting before I myself having sorted my own thoughts, seems impolite, like what I posted earlier, badly written sentences in a hurry tiny time. I'm sorry on that. My English skill is not sufficient for me to express these ideas ideally. However I will try to say them.
Before this discussion, I insisted on that "reality that we can touch is all information", these days, I reconsidered this statement, and now I still insist on, "reality that we can touch is all information".
I don't know whether there would be "something that is all of or part of reality and is not categorized into anything we call information", and now I can't see there would be a way for me to know. I'm not saying "something that is not information but belongs to reality" doesn't exist. I'm not saying that, in any future humans won't be able to know whether there can be "something that is not information but belongs to reality". It is possible that "there is something that is not information but belongs to reality", and it is also possible that the future humans or other consciousness can touch those "not-information-reality". But I can't touch or imagine "not-information-reality".
The above sentences are very verbose and hard to read, I don't know how to say them better. In short, our consciousness can and only can touch "information" when we try to know reality.
Let me use a scenery analogy(simile, metaphor) to further express my idea:
Imagine that our consciousness is inside of a space confined by a hull, like inside of a house, and there is a glass window to see outside. When one's consciousness was created from nothingness to start being existent, its memory is initially empty, a situation like when we were born, one sees that glass window as opaque.
All the information there is and there will be and there could have been and there could be, is like lights projected on the outer surface of that glass window, but the inner surface, being opaque at one consciousness' commence of being existent, doesn't yet reflect and refract the reality into that house - representing one's "self" and heart.
Along with this consciousness' growth, it experiences and learns, like wiping that glass window cleaner and cleaner, more and more transparent, the inner surface of which becomes more and more corresponding to some zones of the outer surface. This is the process we get to know more and more about the reality, by wiping that glass window, aligning the pattern(information) of the inner surface to that of the outer surface, and seeing the information shined on the outer surface through our accumulated observation and understanding memories represented by the inner surface.
All the reality we can touch, is the information projected by the lights on the outer surface of that glass window. For the outer surface of that glass window and the lights gilded onto it, are they the whole and all what the reality is? I don't know, there is no way to know, or currently I can't imagine there could be a way to know, because the outer surface is the most out stretched demarcation that my "self" and my consciousness can reach, in all imaginable possibilities.
The world outside the outer surface of that glass window may not exist at all, but fairly speaking it also possibly exists and has something inside of it, whatever, those are not "information", and "not-information-thingy" is not anything a consciousness and spirit can touch. Therefore, speaking to a consciousness and spirit, the outer surface of that glass window is the only and is the totally all the reality there is to explore.
No matter how hard and how long the one dwelling in that house wipes the glass window, the inner surface of the glass window is remotely far from as clean as the outer surface. The zones which have been wiped generally clean if roughly glanced at the inner surface of the glass window, are actually not clean in tinier sporadic details if maximized the view trillion times. There are also almost boundlessly large expansive zones which haven't been wiped at all. So, the clean part of the inner surface of the glass window is always a subset of all there is on the outer surface. The clean part of the inner surface can be relatively large or small, but is nonetheless daunted comparing to the extreme vast size of the outer surface. This is to symbolize the fact that the reality that we have grasped and recognized - represented by the inner surface of the glass window, contains far too less amount of information than all the information of reality has - represented by the outer surface of the glass window.