Arrival: Time Is An Illusion
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- čas přidán 24. 02. 2021
- Arrival slaps, Story of Your Life slaps even harder
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Research by CJ The X & Priscilla Menezes
Edited by CJ The X & Ben From Canada
/ benchinapen
Bibliography:
• Chiang, Ted. Stories of Your Life and Others. Reissue, Vintage, 2016.
• Hussein, Basel Al-Sheikh. “The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis Today.” Theory and Practice in Language Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, 2012. Crossref, doi:10.4304/tpls.2.3.642-646.
• Lucking, D. (2017). Enacting chronology. Language and time in Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” and Villeneuve’s Arrival. Lingue E Linguaggi, 21, 129-143. doi:10.1285/i22390359v21p129 (APA bc this article weird)
• Salimpoor, Valorie N., et al. “Anatomically Distinct Dopamine Release during Anticipation and Experience of Peak Emotion to Music.” Nature Neuroscience, vol. 14, no. 2, 2011, pp. 257-62. Crossref, doi:10.1038/nn.2726.
• qntm. “I Don’t Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility.” Things of Interest, 6 Jan. 2007, qntm.org/responsibility. - Zábava
i dont understand
No one will:)
@cece jb I don't mean it as it it wasn't understandable,I meant it as it was really different than anything else I've listened to t
@cece jb 👍._.👍
Who is this child
I'd like to remember the me that walked to work this morning listening to this will continue to exist in that moment, long after present me forgets. If he does, I will be happy.
This is the most comforting existential crisis I've ever had
Same
i wanna like but 888 is more comforting lol
This is just cliche existential crisis to me at this point... i love it still.
All of mine are comforting. Idk.
this is the most comforting being yelled at for 25 minutes I've ever had
someone looks extra cute today
someone looked extra cute that day
someone looks extra cute today
someone will look extra cute one day
Thanks, you too :)
Thanks you 😌😉
Thanks
😏
“Can an egg percieve reality? Why don’t you go check in the mirror”
And then it cracked
lmao I'm surprised there aren't more people in the comments talking about this joke. Especially considering that CJ's wearing trans flag makeup the whole time
lmao good for you
the egg or the mirror?
@@StrawmnMcPerson both both is good
"Faith is being stupid enough to imagine that life has meaning."
I love this quote and I will likely be citing you at some point.
I love that there, Christian it makes it so much funnier
One of my favourite things about Arrival and spoilers specifically is that my dad has watched the film about 5 times and each time he has no clue what happens
real dad shit honestly
One of my favorite things about getting older is exactly this. Rewatching things as if its the first time I'm watching it is far, far more common than it was when I was young, where I would remember a film or a book within an inch of its life from so many rewatches and rereads.
Its funny, cause it's not even that hard to understand. But maybe I'm just being pretensious 😂
So…no acid in his past, present, future?
I relate to your dad; watched the movie about 3 separate times, had multiple people explain the concept and plot to me, seen countless reviews, and it wasn’t until I watched this disorganized, completely nonsensical video that I finally understood what the heck was happened :,)
I started thinking this way when I had a psychotic depressive episode in my teens. The ONLY thing that kept me going was knowing my future self was looking back at me, proud. I kept thinking, shes okay. She did it. She's grown so much. And she loves me. And eventually, I wasnt psychotic anymore, and wasnt as depressed anymore, until eventually I BECAME the me who is looking back at psychotic, depressed me. And I am okay. I've grown so much. And I love younger me. I'm supporting her now. And she will grow up and be so happy she knew I was there to love her now. The verb tense thing is happening - idk what tense to use. Because this whole thing is happening now, happened then, and will happen. I support myself eternally.
I remember seeing a post that went like “I’m an adult now, and I want to tell past me at 15 and everyone here who’s young and struggling: life seems hard right now, things may seem hopeless or horrible, you may be suffering daily, but I can tell you with certainty it gets better, I was a severely depressed teen who contemplated su1cide and was so sad all the time, i never thought or planned to get to the age I am, but here I am, it gets better”
@nessar9241 Amen! Well done. I"m proud of you, and I love you.
(this is radical love no i don't know you).
I can't tell if I'm crying for 12-year-old me or 20-year-old me or 30-year-old me but I'm crying
@@renoia3067You’re probably crying for all 3. I know that younger me would be proud I found myself surrounded by so many amazing people because that is all I’ve ever really wanted in my life and I’m proud of them for making the decisions I made to find myself here. They were sad but hopeful and that hopefulness got me where I am.
Time is an illusion that helps things make sense, so we are always living in the present tense, it can be unforgiving when a good thing ends, but you and I will always be back then. Singing will happen, happening, happened. Cos you and I will always be back then.
this video just reminded me of the (repeated) moment in my philosophy classes where I was like "sure i could lose myself in the idea that i am not percieving anything real and panic about the countless ways i may or may not be experiencing life. ...or i could just keep on living because real or not this is the body and the reality i have to work with"
As someone that speaks three languages fluently this movie truly fucked me up because I realized that every language that I speak changes the way that I see the world. If I think in English I think like a person that believes in the scary freedom of nihilism, in Italian I almost feel like an essentialist and that my life is inherently worthy because predetermined and in French I just feel lost and only care about taking days as they come. Arrival to me was a revelation because it allowed me to grasp at least partially a fourth inexistent language, I cannot see the future and past and present as one, but I know that it is impossible for me to think like a heptapod until I learn their language, and as they do not exist it is impossible for me to understand the world like they do, the movie made me accept my ignorance, I accept that I will never know if time flows linearly or in a circular manner, what matters is that I cannot change my perception of it because all the languages that I know are linear. This probably made no sense but finally I found a video that perfectly embodies how I felt about the movie and had to share my thoughts
this exactly! I know French and English and thinking in French gives me this weird confidence boost where English makes everything feel more heavy(?)
Dude. Those are the 3 languages I speak. Who are you ? Are you a clone ? AM I A CLONE ?? ARE YOU ME FROM THE FUTURE FUCK
When I speak french I feel frustrated and confused
you guys should watch or read ludwig wittgenstein even if only the youtube clips on youtube from the movie. is very good and about how language effect how you see the world.
Charles V -- Hapsburg -- once said, "He who speaks another language possesses another soul.".
I started crying in the shower at “I want to participate” realizing in the last week I’ve felt significantly less depressed and started doing things because I want to
My mother passed away from cancer when I was 9 years old. I've often compared my life to that of an alternate reality where she didn't die.
I was once a safety assistant at a hospital, meaning I sat with patients who where for one reason or another not able to be left unsupervised. I sat with a terminally ill patient on one of her last days, dying from cancer. I was there when she was saying goodbye to her long time doctor. She thanked him for giving her the last few years of her life and even teased in a different life she would have loved to marry him.
After that day I was hit with the realization that my mother would have died regardless. It was inevitable. Whether it was when I was 9 or when I was 11 I still would be sitting here at 27 without her. Comparing my life to the hypothetical me was futile at best and actively cruel to the actual me at worst.
It happened, it will happen, it's happening right now.
💞
ive had eerily similar thought processes you've encountered in your comment before I even encountered your comment. comparing my life to an alternate reality where my brother was still alive. realizing he would have had to die inevitably anyways. very eerie....
I love to go down the rabbit hole of “what if X was still alive and how my life would be different” and then i realize that this is exactly where i was meant to be - when i got here didnt matter. This is where im meant to be and who im meant to be here with.
Mine did too. It makes me think of those first few years when i felt guilty for not constructing some sort of ploy to rob her of her cigarettes.
I think the conclusion I came to growing up was that we really can’t know what those parallel universes would be like, and by extension we’re in no place to make a judgement about them. Maybe something worse could have happened, who knows?
That’s when the theorizing stopped and i started to feel lucky. For my dad and for the 9 years i had with her.
It points out that while being able to imagine alternatives and develop goals from thinking about what we want and preventing bad things from happening in the future, our minds are not constructed exactly for those things. It's a property that emerges from a general development of mind (of brain) and so we must expect that some less than desirable traits will also emerge, like this obsession over how things might be if this or that was different. Everyone thinks like that sometimes. But, I have also come to the point where I feel like, hey, as long as I'm imagining things that aren't real, I might as well imagine that everything ever went right in my life or that I have godlike powers. All of it is just as not real; so, what's the point? The only constructive thoughts of that sort are to think about what you want out of life, select the things that seem attainable and work on attaining them. Admittedly, I don't do that either. Yep, not perfect. Just a set of emergent properties from an evolving biological construction.
Help
ok
No. Deal with your dread and pain and fear.
"Time is an ilusion that help things make sense, so we're always living in the present tense" -BMO, the King of Ooo
this comment is a month old but I want to say that I'm glad I'm not the only one who was reminded of that adventure time song
@@FrecklesHasAQuestionMark Everything stays right where you left it
Everything stays
But it still changes
Ever so slightly, daily and nightly
In little ways, when everything stays
Another month passes
@@FrecklesHasAQuestionMark yeah. the lyrics "will happen, happening, happened." is literally just what they are saying
My immediate thought
it seems unforgiving when a good thing ends but you and i will always be back then
How then, can we conceive of a God we named?
I came here because of you ma'am, I love him now. And I'm in love with you too.
The idea of "god", of a creator, is likely the effect our predisposition to view reality as cause and effect, extrapolated to the grand scale. Prime mover stuff. Probably coupled with the parent thing, which makes sense why a lot of gods act like a big angry father.
It's us trying to comprehend this concept of existence using our limited experiences.
This made me think of the part in the Bible where when Moses asks God who are you he literally jus say “I am that I am” we jus give this infinity Omnipresent creator different names jus to be able to comprehend it. Even after the quote it said “I am that I am” Moses is confused and “God” essentially had to use more concrete words to to make it
Comprehendible by saying “I am the God of your ancestors“ . Even in this little tangent of mine I had to use words such as God or creator jus so I can know we have a common understanding of what I’m talking about. Even me talking about this is kind of redundant bc I ultimately believe in a God (I’m Christian to be specific) but someone who doesn’t simply can dismiss the thought all together if they choose not to look into it. So yea jus anted to share bc I it was an interesting thought that jus passed though my head and language is a mindfuck.
@@bekka-_-9041 Yeah, it's conflating the idea of a creator with "truth". A clever twist, but a messy one (mostly because of the implications on "god's" agency).
historians believe the sumerians were aliens. perhaps they, too, saw time differently.
I watched this movie in a film theory class within a big lecture hall. The class was silent the whole time, not a damn peep like usual, but when her husband leaned in and said "You wanna make a baby?" everyone in the class burst out into laughter. 10/10 experience
"It happened, it will happen, it's happening right now."
I remember this didn't really hit me until I was watching a youtube video that I first watched in 2013. It was a chillingly delightful thing to think "That 13 year old me is still experiencing that video for the first time."
To imagine that that event is still going on for another version of me...It makes me feel oddly small, but also it imbues that moment with a lot of meaning.
i think this is my favourite video of yours thus far, they just keep getting better and better. it never fails to blow my mind how you're able to take papers and all the research and transform it into something so consumable and uniquely YOURS (it also pisses me off because I'm envious and in awe but that's a conversation for another day). this video itself has a striking intimacy to it and made me inexplicably emotional. also you don't get to be hot and have brain cells and be able to articulate yourself you can't have it all i will not allow it just choose one thing GO
I pick being hot
@@cjthex Priorities
@@cjthex I can't go through 1700+ comments to check, so I'll just ask: was it ever in your notes for this video to mention compatibilism? Seems like the biggest thing to talk about when trying to get people to be OK with a (super)deterministic universe and a lack of "absolutely free" will.
As I understand it, the basic compatibilist argument is that _will_ itself is only meaningful in a deterministic universe where your decisions are based on what was happening around you right before you made your decision (not snap ideas unrelated to anything just popping into your head), and where decisions produce predictable consequences. "Free will" in a non-deterministic universe might be totall free, but it's practically meaningless and useless, having no specific relation to anything else happening around you prior to your decisions, *and* no ability to produce predictable consequences. So determinism-compatible will is the only will worth having anyway.
Also worth mentioning: if all particles are assumed to have a describable "position" along the time axis as they do along all space axes, so if the time axis is assumed to "work exactly like" the space axes, this leads to a concept called "block time" and to a corresponding "block universe": if everything is determined along all 4 axes you could imagine representing the whole universe for all of its existence as a 4-dimensional already shaped "block" (or in this case a tesseract, 'cos 4 dimensions - we saw them awkwardly try to represent such a thing for us in 2D in a certain movie called "Interstellar").
"When I was alive, I believed - as you do - that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls. (...) You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that - then any time at all will be the right time for you."
- Peter S. Beagle, _The Last Unicorn_
One of my favorite quotes from my favorite book. More than a few essays have probably been written about its perspectives on time and illusion.
I absolutely love this. Thank you for sharing.
And now I have a new book to find and read. Thank you and thank search algorithms!
Seriously, thank you.
I've watched this video so many times and somehow never seen this comment. Thank you so much; I will be adding this to my reading list :')
I love this so much
Your first part about spoilers actually was really true to my personal experience of arrival: I had the twist of the movie “spoiled” for me, and then decided to read the short story. Then when I watched the movie I felt like I was living it as Louise does after she understands the heptapods - I got to see the movie unravelling and anticipate how it was playing out by remembering the story. Literally it was happening, it had happened, it was going to happen. Anyway time isn’t real.
i have OCD pretty much based around existentialism. Im constantly obsessing over my death, the deaths of my loved ones, and time. This video was really easy for me to understand and digest because I've spent hours dedicated to thinking about scenarios like these, or how...right now i feel like i am in the present, and in ten years i will feel like i am in the present and i will remember this present as the past etc etc. To me its very comforting to think that my life is like a play and this is just a role I have to fulfill. I think the true horror creeps up when I think about having free will. My life could have been different? How? Am I just not strong enough to give myself a good life? I can't think about it too long or I'll have a panic attack. Its much easier to think that this life is just something i have to experience and there is nothing wrong with me for living this life.
I have OCD as well, and the intrusive thoughts about death and existentialism are the reason i usually don't watch movies like arrival. nonetheless, i really like it, and it's a lot more strangely comforting than I'd expected?
I belive remembering the future still gives room for free will. Here is how:
If one could remember the future, such a future would have to be an "optimal future" for both the individual and the collective, ensuring that when the moment of decision arrives, there would be a universal preference not to deviate from this remembered path. This does not preclude suffering or hardship; it simply defines the remembered future as the path that each individual, when faced with a choice, would ultimately choose to continue upon. In essence, this optimal future is selected through the absence of desire for change at critical junctures, solidifying it as the definitive timeline.
Moreover, as individuals gain the ability to remember the future, presumably after learning the language of the heptapods as depicted in "Arrival," they begin to influence the collective optimal future. Those who remember first must, therefore, consider the eventual remembered futures of those who have yet to remember. This consideration ensures that the remembered future remains consistent and desirable even as new rememberers join the collective consciousness.
This interconnectedness mandates a pre-emptive alignment, a sort of temporal harmony that seamlessly incorporates the futures of latecomers into the already established tapestry. The future, in this regard, shapes the past in anticipation of future insights. It's a dance of causality that respects individual autonomy while upholding a shared destiny.
Thus, as more individuals begin to remember the future, they naturally conform to the futures already remembered, reinforcing a collective trajectory that none wish to alter. The remembered future is not just an individual’s unalterable timeline; it is a collective fabric woven by the merging fates of all participants. Once this fabric is understood and accepted, it becomes the foundation of a reality where every piece, every event, and every choice fits together to create a predetermined but collectively embraced tableau, making the remembered future not just a possibility but an unwavering certainty in the experience of those who perceive it.
In such a universe, time is less a linear progression and more a mosaic of interlocking choices and consequences. Each person contributes to this grand design, filling in the gaps as they move forward, shaped by the choices they are destined to make, yet also shaping those choices by their very act of remembering them. It's a harmonious blend of free will and destiny, a predetermined symphony composed by the collective will of all who partake in its unfolding.
I find it deeply comforting, especially as a person with depression and trauma. I'm always one step away from my happiest moment lived (or worst) because it's always still happening. Even though I can't reach it, it's there. And all present momentary suffering is unavoidable and inescapable. I lose the despair of thinking that I could have acted differently, should have made better choices, and I know that I will either move past pain or die from it, and that neither are in my control. That's a massive comfort when you're in a bad mental state, in my experience.
I hope one day we all get to experience nonlinear time :) I want to be a kid again without all the fear of not knowing how my life will turn out. I want to see my mom again, like I did then.
I find this concept deeply comforting too. And I think it’s because my perspectives have changed over the years. When I was younger I used to see the concept as “everything I do and everything in this lifetime is out of my hands and I am not in control of my life.” But now I see it more so as i’m not in control of my death, I have no say over how, when, or why I will die. That’s comforting to me because I would rather not have control over my death than not have control over my life or the way I choose to live it.
Beautifully said!
Same! I wonder if trauma and depression and similar cognitive modes have an effect on our subjective experience of time as being something other than direct?
That’s quite interesting as my brain sometimes in adhd or anxiety mode I have no recollection of past or concept of future yet it’s effects linger and with anxiety it’s everything future and all it’s possibilities are happening “at once”, as in jumping from the next to the next thing and circling throughout until I ground and Arrive ;):( in the “present” where little thoughts and just intuition of time ever flowing yet the same in essence all throughout.
@@dartxni it prolly do, i know for me, dealing with some of the stuff i have, my timeline of events now feel very skewed, both in how long things feel to me and how directly i feel them.
When I watched Arrival, I did so while at college with a group of friends. The last 10 minutes of the movie, as well as 20 minutes after the movie, I was a crying, inconsolable mess. The film resonated with me so deeply. As an Indigenous person with strong (and at times incomprehensible) ties to ancestors, spirits, and "ghosts," I have always had more of a simultaneous understanding of time. I tend to disassociate into memories that aren't necessarily mine (as in, the memories of someone else), or that are mine from "the future" (I know, it sounds crazy, but it's just how I operate). I've been a source of wisdom for my friends and even my parents since I was a child. I didn't really realize until later that this was an unconventionable way of being.
I will also say that, in my perspective, the fact that I see the way I do, does not mean that events in time are "set," it just means they have already happened--you just haven't perceived them yet. They are still wholely your (or my, or our) actions.
This probably sounds so wacky, but I just don't really have the vocabulary to accurately describe it. This is as close as I can get rn, lol.
This shouldn’t be relatable. But more time goes by more relatable this comment is.
I get dejavu ridiculously often. And dreams have started feeling less like brain nonsense and more like a mix of imagination and future memories.
I don’t have the memories that aren’t mine part, (though occasionally I’ll have dreams that definitely don’t feel like mine,) but it’s incredible that I’m not totally alone and or crazy.
Literally this has always been my experience, only I haven’t had the understanding or awareness to correctly articulate what it was. There is absolutely choice, just a heightened awareness and perception of what is.
This is exactly what I was trying to articulate in my head
this is so cool i want to add my own experience (im bad at articulating so bear with me):
i get a lot of moments of deja vu fairly often, but they all come from dreams? i cant tell you how many times im talking with someone and stop for a moment because i swear that id experienced it in a dream. never before, never something similar, ive experienced those few seconds sometime before in a dream. absolutely wild how weird the world is. i hope you all have/had/will have a good day!
This probably doesn't mean anything, but I often find myself laughing at a joke, only to realise that the joke was said after I laughed.
So glad Ted Chiang is getting the love he deserves for the way he writes, not just what he writes. Exhalation an amazing collection
Saying "it happened, it is happening, it will happen" honest to god makes me a lot more comfortable whit my existence.
thinking "I could have stoped [thing], it was all my fault" and shit like that is a big part of dealing whit trauma and autistic guilt. But just stopping and going "I couldn't have done *shit* " is refreshing as fuck.
Everything was planned in advance, front the worst days of my life to the best ones it was all decided way before I was born, and it is also being decided right now, and has not even been decided yet by all matters and purposes.
I got the chance by random to just be chucked into the time space I am experiencing rn. The bird living on my roof that got me into a panick attack thinking someone was breaking in last week, has always been there and will forever be, despite it's existence being fully debatable.
time is funky and I want sprite now
This is silly but when I lose something I try to think to myself "I already found it" and imagine myself finding it, instead of thinking how I lost it, then I just assume if I am able to find it I will
is that a jojo reference?????
big same lol
@@aryarego8205 is this blorbo from my shows?
@phosphenevision does it work tho??
@@fetacheeeeese idk if it does more than not maybe it just helps me manage my anxiety lol or like connect to my subconscious to find where it is? since my conscious mind can't remember
love the fact that while listening to u talking about the simultaneity of time we see the sun set troughout the whole video
I lost all of my friends and my close relationships with my whole family when I came out. I don't regret it, but it was and is so enormously painful. Doing the 'past and future' exercise you suggested brings me a strange sense of peace, the feeling that the love and companionship I used to have with these people who were so precious to me still exists, somehow. Thanks for a wonderful video; I'm very happy to have discovered your channel.
Oh man, this is exactly what I pursued studying metaphysics and determinism in college. My degree made me a physicalist and hard determinist, and I derive so much calmness and strength from it. Everything that happened before in my life was causally necessary to make me now. I'm proud of where I am, so the things I'm ashamed of don't hurt: they were necessary. I'm not anxious about the future, those things are already going to happen (within a probability distribution due to quantum mechanics). When I take a test, I've already taken the test; everything that's happened before has already determined what the result of that test will be, I'm just along for the ride.
The conclusion you reach is a really important one. My mentor Manuel Vargas created a category of determinism called revisionism to bridge the gap between our experience of free will and the facts of deterministic physical sciences. Essentially, we think we have free will, so that affects how we behave (even if it's still predetermined). At that point, we might as well say we have the experience of free will, even though it's dependent on the fact that we can't see the future to know our choices are predetermined.
It's a similar idea to deal with simulation theory: the value of what you're doing doesn't change because there's a higher universe. Just like the predetermined future, you can't access the layer above you in the simulation.
The Stoics had a deterministic metaphysics in their philosophy: the entire universe was completely scripted and infinitely looping. The only power an individual has is the ability to assent to their deterministic situation. Resisting your role is the root of all your suffering. It's a little unclear how they specifically reconcile this resistance or assent having no affect on your behavior, but the sentiment is a good one.
Everything is already going to happen, and you'll feel much better about it if you do the best you can. After all, learning about this determinism should just become a factor in your causal calculus that forces you to make better choices going forward.
As someone with memory issues, Arrival is infinitely comforting for me. It’s nice to see someone else be just as passionately excited about both book and movie. I’m so glad I found your channel.
I'm obsessed with the wrinkles you put in my brain 🥲
It makes me meditate on my relationship with memory itself… the traumatic past is happening and will be happening describes my relationship with reliving those memories, and gives me hope for the good memories in my life. They also happened, are happening, and will be happening in my mind, and remembering that during tough episodes is no small comfort.
This movie means so much to me. I saw this movie on accident with my mom when it was in theater. We were meant to see Allied but she bought tickets to Arrival on accident. We sat there in the theater as the movie began to play and I hadn't even heard of it or seen a trailer before being immersed in the story. About 15 mins in I realize this was not a preview but rather the movie and instead of leaving We decided to stay and see how it was. We were not prepared. My mom, at the time was studying linguistics in her masters program and was fascinated by it. To our surprise we were both happy to see this movie leaning into something so important to her that is almost never talked about, language!! I remember hearing the song On the Nature of Daylight in this movie for the first time and it made me cry. Seeing the montage of Amy Adams' character's life with her daughter and the grief and joy she experienced simultaneously was incredibly moving. Flash forward about a year or so and I found myself in the same position. My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. She went through several months of chemo, surgery, nothing worked and eventually in November of 2018 she passed away. I thought back to this movie we saw together on accident about the relationship between a mother and daughter and time and cancer and it was like it was all happening at once. I felt like I was experiencing my mom's presence in my past and in my future and in the present. She had passed on but her essence and love was and is eternal. I think this film really does a good job tackling the feeling of grief too. It makes us realize that when someone dies, it's like we get to experience them now for their fullness while simultaneously not experiencing "them" at all. When someone dies, we now get to see them beyond their present tense, physical form. Their energy is transformed into an eternal energy that lives on with us into the future, sits with us in the present, and comforts our perception of the past. Grief is a twisted form of eternal consciousness. On the Nature of Daylight still brings me to tears to this day, I still experience my mom's presence all around me, and I still love this film.
“I remember what it will be like when you are a day old.” Is THE BEST and most accurate line in describing what looking forward to the birth of any child after your first is. This weird middle of the known and unknown taking place at the exact same time while also not existing at all beyond the thought alone. It is both physically present- like the memory of a kiss - and also an illusion. DAMN THIS IS MESSING MY BRAIN
Me and my mom watched this movie completely by accident! We were in the theatre to watch an entirely different movie, but we arrived late so we just chose a random other movie to watch. We had NO idea what this film was about, nor had we even heard about it. Needless to say we left the theatre rather stunned by the emotions
so, all set in motion by yall's UNTIMELY ARRIVAL :O !?
This....feels super weird familiar.
I grew up on the feral side and isolated. Traumatized from super young. And I rarely had _any_ control over _any_ thing (kind of the same as now, really). Because either abusers had and hoarded that control; or I had no support or finances to chose anything other than the absolute minimal that's accessible -- despite any dreams, planning, or imagination that I could muster.
And I always had trouble with writing tenses. And sometimes I would use 'you' when I mean 'I', and visa versa.
And trauma does that thing where it wheels and wheels in the mind, repeating. So in a way, for me, bad stuff that happened, is _always_ happening. Good stuff that happened -- simple joys and pleasures -- that people always seemed to enjoy, but then skim by and quickly forget (....because people with normal lives and brains....they just make new pleasures whenever they want...right?) ...well. I would cherish the good moments and store them up inside. And hypervigilance ....it makes the present really sharp, and makes the future something you're (sorry, I'm) _always_ thinking of and predicting, so that little really surprised me.
Maaayyyybe I really am an alien. ^^;
But at any rate, this vid is gonna help me parse the way other people think better, so. Thanks! 🙆🏾♀️✨🖖🏾
I connected to every word in your comment. I hope for you to get your agency the same way I hope to have it myself. And also, thank you for the perspective, it'll be interesting to look at my relationships with time and existing in it!
You've got a really great way of looking at & engaging with the past & present (I guess that means the future too). All the best to you 🫶
BMo taught me before Arrival ever did. "Will happen, happening happened" "You and I will always be back then"
I love that line so much
i remember my favorite first kiss from half a lifetime ago when i was young enough to fall in love. it happened, it will happen, it’s happening right now... comforting. it’s not just a faded memory dissolving into oblivion; it’s a very real patch of spacetime practically within arm’s reach on the cosmic scale of things - i could touch her cheek if i just stretched a little harder. more tantalizingly, it’s forever _about to happen_ - those fleeting butterflies are etched into eternity :’o]
Not gonna lie man that kinda made me tear up
I love this. thank u for writing it and sharing
@@helila me too.. 'when I was young enough to fall in love'
this was very beautifully put
as an epistemic anti-realist linguistics major, arrival (and in turn this video) hits DOUBLE HARD
DAMMIT CJ THIS VIDEO IS SO GOOD
@@CameronBaba
I decided to watch this video without reading the book or watching the movie, and I cried twice and got chills when CJ plucked the flower.
This ain’t an essay this is an experience and I’m glad I participated
I have a genetic quirk which will kill me the same way my mother died and her mother before her, in a way that is slow and where they lost all of themselves to the point they could not breathe. I learned about having this gene two years after having the great fortune of deciding to watch a film about experiencing all things all at once. I was always going to die of this regardless of whether I knew I was going to or not - it is my responsibility and joy to live my life the way I was always going to. It happened, it will happen, it's happening right now.
This movie is actually based on Linguistic Relativity which means by acquiring a new language we acquire a new way of seeing the world, which exactly what happened to the protagonist in the movie.
"New Text Layer" at 26:10 sent me, idk why lmfao
When I condense my life to a single moment, I feel... I don't know. It's not easy to describe.
A sinking feeling in the chest, like a warm, airy dread.
I imagine it would be exactly like if my soul is microwaved.
This idea at 20:55 has changed my life. Since I last watched this video a few months ago, this has been my mantra during both good times and bad times. Sometimes, I can't wait for a moment to come. Others, I can't wait for it to be over. Life is full of these sorts of moments, and I've started learning to appreciate them more, especially preparing while I'm preparing for big changes in my life. I've been using this phrase to "bookmark" events, whether it was when I felt awful at work or my college graduation a few days ago.
I've realised that sequential time really is an illusion, but for us sequential creatures, the most important thing is to live in the moment. We have agency, and how we use it is what defines us.
I absolutely loved the short story and the video you made on it. Thank you for changing my life.
This is genuinely one of the most deeply affecting movies I've ever seen. No other movie has ever made me feel anything like what this one does.
me too. it was basically the thing that lead me to realize how scientifically chaotic the universe really is it changed my world view i love it and hate it so much thank you goodbye o7
ted chiang's work is science fiction at it's best. each short story is thought provoking. story of your life... if i recall correctly, is more affecting than the movie. the movie has more 'emotion' but the short story poses more interesting/impactful questions.
arrival removes one of the most affecting dimensions that story of your life asks... the daughter's death is preventable. the protagonist is living her life accepting the totality of her daughter's existence, including how her life will end. And she will accept that as well. An incurable disease removes that moral dimension etc.
oh god i just spent like 4 hours watching this channel in one shot this is gonna be so big
Doing the little "it happened, it will happen, it's happening right now" and I felt the urge to cry but not with happiness or sadness, but with relief.
“Faith is being stupid enough to believe that life has meaning” is a beautiful and metal quote that will stick with me for awhile
what you describe around 21:00 is the mindset that i had during my suicidal days. i felt so detached from reality and time. it felt like the bad memory from the past was so far away yet so close. and everytime that i now dread sth in the future i find so weird to look at after it passes. just like that painful memory prior to my suicidal days.. almost as if i cant grasp time and it just passes through me
I feel this. Arrival is hard for me to watch because I feel that I flipped to the end of the book ahead of time and it is hard to engage fully in the present, and I feel like Louise where you're always a little out of step and have to decide what to tell people around you- or if it's even possible to express that feeling. The past is gone forever, but it's also still right here with me. The future is always ahead of me but it's also crushing me. And I'm here, but I'm not here. I try to be and it hurts to Be Here Now, but it hurts so be detached too. Idk maybe arrival isn't great to watch in a mental health spiral, but it also is kind of comforting so idk
I’ve felt this way too. Back during my brief stint in college, I started to fall into a bad mental spiral and it lasted until the day I dropped out. I would suddenly be thrown back into my worst days and I would have to brave the horrible storm of darkness all over again. Maybe everybody experiences that though; the ghost of the past wrecking havoc in your head. The small personal tragedies of ‘what if’s’ and ‘if only’s’. We just got to get used to carrying that weight.
Listening to them ramble for like 30 minutes is ✨ therapeutic ✨
Them? Are they enby?
@@blake-cf4lh ah ok.
When going through the exercise of thinking about everything happening in the past, present, and future, I thought it was going to leave me in despair giving me an existential crisis at 4 in the morning, but it has actually comforted me quite a lot. I regret and hate my past while also being scared and overwhelmed by the future. But if everything happens in the past, present, and future then shouldn't I accept it all? Why wear myself out constantly being both scared and regretful if everything has happened, is happening, and will happen? I guess all of this is to say that letting these emotions get the better of me will never, has never, and is not worth caring about- not in some nihilist kind of way (though I can definitely see that) but more in a hopeful way where I don't have to hate myself...
Idk tbh this might not make sense or even not really be the point of the exercise; I need to be getting sleep right now lol- but in my own way it has made me more comfortable. Also like many others, I have been binge-watching ur videos and I'm so glad I found this channel because it's definitely one of my new favorites!
@UCRvbNWlZvwutJZxtN2EPOwQ Exactly! To be consumed by those memories/thoughts is so draining. Glad I wasn't the only one with these thoughts :)
Whenever I’m doing something I don’t enjoy like walking to work (I have to walk up a steep ass hill) I always think “before I know it I’ll be there” and then I am and I’m like hey I’m here now that’s crazy right. And I’m only now realising that it ties in with that non linear time. The knowing of the future and that it’s happening and has happened really comforts me when I’m struggling even with small things like that.
i deal with anxiety issues and to cope i do this too. it helps a lot. i just never thought of it consciously. it's just a coping mechanism i picked up along the way i guess. it's nice to see it written out tho, so thanks!
Honestly, Idc if I have no control over my life. Tbh I'm just tryna vibe n be happy.
very true
I can't love the leap of thinking of about my life in this way because I don't trust myself. For whatever reason I'm more motivated when I let myself believe that there are different endings, accepting that there's only one makes me feel like I am destined to be the most milquetoast version of myself, which I am super opposed to. Getting myself to act on empathy and faith in people, or act on anything at all, takes effort, it's not my default. If I believe in only default, what difference does it make if I don't put in that effort? If I cause suffering, aren't I just one of the villains of the play, exactly as non-culpable as the heroes, bound to a script? Does suffering matter? Is this the best script we could have gotten? Why so much murder porn and fluorescent lighting?
Exercise made me feel scared, would play again.
PATRON DETECTED. ADVANCED APPRECIATION PROTOCOLS ACTIVATING.
YOUR INSIGHT AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCE IS NOW INTRINSICALLY VALUABLE.
WE APPRECIATE YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS PROCEDURE.
@@cjthex best bux I've ever spent! Thanks I love it, my purchase of validation!
Great vid
bc all stories are happening simultaneously, as a human being, you can step into any of these realities. you step into them in dreams, or fantasies. if you want to believe this, when you die you get reborn into a different story or reality. bc you are a being your consciousness is connected to all the different ways you want to be and live. you have you will experience all of these.
Recently someone I cared a lot about died suddenly and I was in such a state thinking about things I wish I had done and wishing I had spent more time with them and one of the only things that calmed me down was thinking about the past like it was no less real than the present, and imagining that that time when they were alive was in a way still happening and that probably sounds really pretentious but it was really very comforting.
Reading “A Wrinkle in Time” when I was QUITE young already gave me a similar perspective. I love that the conversation continues. The way L’Engle describes time… with some events so big that it ripples through the timeline and you FEEL them in the past and the future and the present. It created a habit in me of “sending love” back through the timeline and forward in the timeline to my past and future selves. It’s brought me a lot of comfort since I was like seven years old.
One of my favorite books!!! It definitely made existing make more sense
I apologize in advance for this overly-personal comment on a video that's now a month old but I just wanted to thank you for making this. This video brought me to tears and, although I'm still not entirely sure why, I think you've enabled me to look at some traumatic past stuff in a really helpful, new light. your videos are incredible man, thank you.
Huh, I didn’t realize Ted Chiang is an atheist! “Hell is the Absence of God” is the first thing I ever read of his and it’s shocking that it wasn’t written by someone with deep deep ties into a prevailing faith. Then again, maybe that story is exactly why... Anyway, awesome video!
The first time i watched this, i think i was cleaning my daughter's bottles and other dishes in the sink.
I've listened to this while working, while sewing, while sitting on the couch with my husband while he scrolls through something.
I just listened to this while in the shower. It still makes me think and feel and consider.
Today I'm watching it while eating lunch, subconsciously preparing to contribute to the book club thread discussion today. My daughter is having a nap, and my eyes want to sleep but my brain doesn't.
Now i am listening to this while i consider the nature of God, Time, and Freedom, pinging back and forth with a new friend.
Thank you for this video, CJ.
I paused near the beginning of this video and watched "The Arrival" movie before finishing. Both the movie and this video are so good! I love thinking about all of these existential/nihilistic/deterministic questions. I can get overwhelmed about it but I like the way you explained that life is still worth living just for the sake of experiencing it, no matter how we got here or where we will end up.
Went from first 5 mins of tangled is worthless, no face is a simp to straight up having an exetstential crisis, crying in my bed. Thanks love you 😘
literally my exact path
I went from the tangled, to Marnie was there is gay, to the existential crisis 🥰
Same!
I loved Arrival's existential dread of circular time, choice and autonomy and Annihilations's existential dread of self, guilt and grief. The two films had me thinking for on them for weeks after the first watch.
my god same, watching those two movies side-by-side was truly something else
I'm addicted to this channel and binging right now!! Thank you CJ💜💜💜🌎🙏🏼🌈
Thank you for making this. It touched me.
I can’t believe you went this entire video and didn’t mention Slaughterhouse Five which was the og book about a protagonist who has come unstuck in time and processes their trauma thusly while hanging with some aliens.
Omg I spent the entire video thinking of the connections with slaughterhouse five. It’s my favorite book in this entire planet.
@@lanabadan439 SAME.
yea slaughterhouse 5 is a great book. it definitely skews more towards nihilism from what i remember when i read it though, so that might be a little wacky to include if we're arguing that our lives have meaning in spite of our lack of agency. i remember thinking of it when watching arrival and it felt like arrival tried to take the idea of nonlinear time more seriously (or at least with more seriousness) whereas slaughterhouse 5 was more about pointlessness and absurdity, especially in regards to war. both have places in this conversation though.
Yesssss I love that book, and it’s so interesting how it has such a similar plot to this story, but they still have wildly different tones and themes.
This is amazing! I came here from Khadija's shoutout and stayed because you're the only youtuber I don't have to watch at 1.5x speed ;)
this one was fantastic
I'm also here because of Khadija and I'm so happy I watched this
Me too, I feel like I'm in on a secret now😌
Khadija gave him a shout-out? I just recently found both of their channels, but I had no clue about that. Nice! 💜
@@caldameron8713 i actually got them on my recommended before I got khadija, but I love them both
I normally watch most vids at 2x, but for these I have to bump it down to 1.5x XD
I just discovered your channel and I’m in love, with your passion, your look, your cynical sense of humor and specially with your view of the world. This is mainly bc it’s my way of thinking and I haven’t seen someone put it into words this clearly, also bc I have a big ego so if you think like me ily
This reminds me of what BMO from Adventure time sang. “Time is an illusion that helps things makes sense. That’s why we are living in the present tense. We’ll happen happening happened.”
I'm at a really big transitional part of my life right now and I'm not exactly confident about a lot of the decisions I'm making...but this video genuinely gave me a weird glimmer of hope for the future, so thank you for that
In his collection Exhalation, Ted Chiang has a couple more short stories about whether or not the future is fixed and how knowing that impacts a person. I highly recommend them. “What’s Expected of Us” and “The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate.”
I come back to this video whenever I feel overwhelmed and I just love how you present your ideas. Beautiful beautiful amazing soul 💛
The thought that the present is the one moment where everything we will do and everything we have done collide... where in a single second our actions are becoming prophecy and history... is FUCKING AWESOME! It makes me feel powerful oh my gosh! Like even typing this right now is become something that I did. At the same times it’s something I was always going to do. THATS SO COOL!!
The egg joke I'm yelling how r u d e I'm a full grown tran thank uuu
SAME. lmao
That joke. 😂. Dyed eggs with my family and made a bunch of them trans colors.. I was cracking (all puns intended) myself up, I had to explain eggs to them. Cis folks so clueless.
I AM a girl, I WAS a girl, I WILL BE a girl again. Time is an illusion fuck you transphobes
that comment was a vicious attack on my personhood, 10 d10 psychic damage. never before have i been so blithely called out
look at my username im still a sad little egg oh God 😔
1) Congrats on 1000 subs!! that's really impressive and I know more people will follow you soon✨I know I really enjoy your videos
2) Time certainly is not real, but one thing that I've been thinking about more often is the way that we as a society currently think about time is very much the result of imperialist impositions of the concept that largely stem from capitalism. In so many other cultures time does not weigh down on the community as it does for people in the "west" because time is not value the same. Things get done when they get done, you live until you die and that's fine, but in societies propelled by capitalism these ideas don't work because "time is money" and your life's purpose is to push to accumulate more.
I love the profound sense of "and?" I feel to living in a simulation
I absolutely loved this video, i had this same existencial crises so many times it doesn't even bother me, i love the way you explained things
Same
Ok
BUT WHY DO YOU ONLY HAVE LIKE 15 VIDEOS!!!! 😭😭😭😭
Seriously, I LOVE your poetic energy and analysis.
hey i just wanna say thank you for stopping me from having that spiral of derealization aroun the 10 minute mark. thank you for like stepping right in and reminding the audience you were just having a fun little thought experiment. it really helped.
Second time watching, first time commenting- The thought of a fleeting life just damn near brought me to tears and the “it did, it will, it is” thing lifted some weight off my shoulders, yeah my bad stuff is there but so is my good and I love that can coexist in life, just as they do within me... I needed this video thank you.
i enjoy the way time works because it makes life seem much harder to fuck up, like there’s literally nothing i can do to stop my trajectory because there is nothing i can do to change my experiences and thus personality
I’ve listened to this four times in a row now and each time it just resonates more and more with me. And I’m curious about what this says about the nature of storytelling and how we interact with stories.
When you engage with a story, especially after a first viewing, you are immersing yourself in the world. The events that play out on the screen or page are happening, have happened, and will happen. The words on the last page are going to happen, regardless of where in the book you are. And the first pages have happened, even if you start reading in the middle of the book.
I used to read books by skipping around. I’d start from somewhere in the middle, skip to see the ending, and go back to the start to figure out how we got there even though I knew where things were going to end up. I can’t tell you why I did this, other than my ADHD brain had a very short attention span and didn’t like to get fully invested in a slow set-up until I knew where it was going. But it instilled in me a similar sense of time that you’ve outlined here, even if the characters in the book aren’t aware of their fate and the author probably didn’t write their book to be read the way I did.
And all of that, on top of my own religious beliefs and personal existential crises, has helped shape the ethos I live my life by: fate is propelled by choice. Free will is the mechanism by which destiny occurs. And that really has made all the difference to me.
"fate is propelled by choice. free will is the mechanism by which destiny occurs"
...wow. yeah. you put in words something i've been wrestling to articulate for a while now, having recently gained a new sense of agency over my life & a better delineation (or melding) of 'my free will vs. God's Will'.
It’s the fear of being forgotten and that I won’t have mattered in the grand scheme of things for me. Way to give me an existential crisis (while high) and also have me laughing and thinking hard, really good video
True. But 1000 years from now almost everybody, no matter how famous they are, will have long faded into obscurity.
Also, Henry David Thoreau famously stated in Walden that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Of course, they didn't have television or the internet in 1854. Everybody was desperate for entertainment. All they had were books, traveling minstrel shows, and preachers to distract them from the daily grind. It's our own fault if we cannot find something to be passionate about! But, in the end, does it matter?
i just discovered your channel yesterday and the way you think is absolutely astonishing to me. im really excited to watch more of your videos :)
21:13
I feel it's hard to be held back by those dark times because I just *can't* let in a certain amount of humility. I have to be the perfect, best, most satisfied version of myself that I will ever be at all times so that when I make my life that way I'll be "finished." Like holding up something heavy and just going, "I can I can I can and will do this." Even as my bones break from the weight of the effort or those around me fail to humor this worldview and therefore passively massively damage the process I still just keep investing in the hope and belief of the feedback loop paying off. Many stories imply that great hubris or immense pride sets people up for a big fall, but I'm not a story. I'm real. And this is confidence. And also I'm the protagonist so success is assured by default.
You're one of my favorite creators on here and all of your videos are such a delight to watch and wonderfully enlightening!
It happened, it will happen, it’s happening right now.
The way I think of this is past tense; the moment I’d first went through that situation was in the past. It happened.
A situation like that will occur in the future, I will inevitably experience those same emotions. It will happen.
During this current second I am thinking about both these situations. It’s happening right now.
And in future tense I think of it as, this situation will happen in the future. It will happen. This situation is one that I have thought of for a long time. It happened. This situation is one that I’m thinking of right now. It’s happening.
you are so so endearing, and really helping me believe in the beauty and necessity of existing, so thank you so much for what you are creating.
It's comforting, really: If you're already gone, if you haven't even been born yet, if your existence isn't any different from your abscence, if you are just a story, you never really cease to exist, regardless of past and future, "you and I will always be back then". Like Janet in the good place, if time is all at once, nobody's ever gone, because there's nowhere else to go.
"I'm just building suspense for when I finally enevitibly pluck this thing of but you don't get to see it"
Me understanding time is bullshit and when I am watching this you already did pluck it of and you are just being mean retroactively in the present.
i sometimes wonder how people can stay so stagnant in their beliefs when these ideas are so readily available. idk maybe they just like feeling comfy or something i don’t blame them
I think that sometimes it’s easiest to block off emotions or ideas that might set off a change in the way you live/go abt ur day to day life. By rejecting change they find comfort in going through the same patterns that have been reinstated since they were just kids; likely thinking “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” instead of going through the long emotional process of understanding, acceptance, and lastly making a change. Basically it’s easier for them to deny something instead of going through an existential crisis b4 realization/understanding like the rest of us 💀
Who can blame them, really? What do they have to gain? Understanding? Understanding that nobody knows fuck about anything? :P
Better from their perspective to believe in their self-constructed absolutes.
@@tahunuva4254 @Gabi Michelle
i second these statements. for any sort of life changing decisions there has to be a catalyst. if nothing around you changes (i.e. a stable suburban life) there wouldn’t be any reason for them to question the state in which they live.
i recommend you go search up “The Hero’s Journey” by Joseph Campbell. it’s a map of character development. i would say the people like this are living at the very fist stage. (the Known/Ordinary/Townsfolk’s world.)
@@insecureintellectual4783 The monomyth, yeah. Actually attempted to make a video game based around it, once..
Honestly, if our current reality is running off a similar formula, I'm pretty sure I'm the villain :P
@@tahunuva4254 BAHAHHAA lmao
Wow, I am so thrilled to have found your videos. You're incredibly knowledgeable & entertaining AND your style is clearly cool as hell too? I'll definitely be marching my ass over to your Patreon in a bit here, hah. I look forward to seeing more videos as you put them out!
So glad you made this
Still haven't stopped being in awe at how good your videos are. You're going to be big.
Joining your Patreon was one of the easiest decisions I've ever made. Keep up the amazing work, I'm genuinely extremely excited to see what you make in the future.
All of your videos feels like the wildest trip and I'm in love with it
I’m so glad I found your channel!
Will happen, happening, happened. This video just triggered me to go on adventure time binge good video.
Immediately heard this song when I saw the title
I can’t believe that we never talked about 1. How this is one of my favourite films and ... 2. I had no idea that it came from a short story which I will now read immediately
Thank you for making this video. I've always experienced time "all at once", and it makes remembering, communicating, describing, and doing things in a chronological sequence extremely difficult.
that's so beautiful, thank you
I don’t know if you’ve seen the show She Ra, but there is an episode where a character called Madame razz seems to experience time in this way similar to the woman in the short story & the movie you’re describing. You might find it interesting!
Yes, one of my favorite shows! 💖