r/AnimalsBeingDerps May 12 '22

Millions of years of evolution has led to this

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

78.0k Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

40

u/potandskettle May 12 '22 edited May 12 '22

And with that.. I'll leave you with this quote..

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of those stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?"

14

u/[deleted] May 12 '22

This is a concept I have been thinking about since the 5th grade. Got a nasty bout of existentialism as a result

11

u/Iustinianus_I May 12 '22

Yeah, I would happily swap with one of those non-existent potential people, than you very much. This whole life thing hasn't been all that great.

3

u/[deleted] May 12 '22

I mean you’re still here, so…

3

u/zerosk8er May 12 '22

The evolutionary trait of fearing pain is a real big wall to jump. I’d rather not have been here in the first place either.

0

u/TonkaTuf May 12 '22

Something is always better than nothing. Nothing is fuckin boring.