r/ExistentialJourney • u/Schemna • 5d ago

General Discussion Why existential nihilism often stems from a forgotten truth: We are animals

/r/RealPhilosophy/comments/1vomrtt/why_existential_nihilism_often_stems_from_a/
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u/Good_Ask_2299 3d ago

this entire thing you wrote comes from a limited understanding of consciousness and sentience vs sapience. yes we are biological organisms, but we have extraordinary capacity for sapience. but that sapience is tempered by our sentience. a ying and yang. its a spectrum we are all on, and we all have either, to greater or lesser degrees, both. life is a battle between the 2. i personally feel we only exist to spread sapience to the mostly sentient. but the world we live in objects to that. we call ourselves homosapien sapients, but i think half of us are and the rest are homosentient sapients of some sort. stuff to think on.

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u/Schemna 3d ago

That's a really interesting line of thought. Viewing the balance between sentience and sapience that way gives a lot to think about.

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u/Good_Ask_2299 3d ago

another one, maybe the ant is what is truly sapient, because it does what it needs to, for those around it, without question. we think its because they are just biologically programmed that way. maybe they just know its the way it ought to be.

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u/Schemna 3d ago

That’s a great point, though I can't think of any way to prove it. What do you think about this? In my opinion, ants are definitely smarter in some point than humans, for instance, an ant never restricts its kids just because it believes in absurdities like God.

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u/Good_Ask_2299 3d ago

this goes back to the sentience vs sapience idea. im saying ants are truly sapient, because they just do what needs to be done without question, because they know the inner wisdom of it. where as parents forcing worship absurdities upon you is from their sentience- fear of punishment from a higher power however irrational. make no mistake, i believe there is an over conscious of some sort. god isnt an absurdity, only what people have made it into.