The Greatest Weight

[godtehalmighty]

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great

Comments

[cataphract_40]

If you knew exactly what was going to happen (because you've lived it already), then wouldn't you be able to change it?

[imperator_spqr]

There is no such thing as choice. Choice is an illusion. Everything is predetermined. So that demon was predetermined, and thus your choice was predetermined. You just have to go with the flow.

[cataphract_40]

I fail to see how you can actually think such things

[imperator_spqr]

The fact that our whole lives are set about before us.

[kova]

STOP IT

[godtehalmighty]

Did you read it? It says you wouldn't know when you "start again". But everything will be exactly the same, at that exact instant you will speak to the demon again, and live the rest of your life with that knowledge.

[cataphract_40]

I wouldn't mind too much. I'd be say something to the effect of "Oh, that's good news. I shall live forever."

Oh, and yes I did read that...and nowhere does it say that your memory will be lost with each reset.

[godtehalmighty]

You don't live forever, you will feel pain and death just like everyone else, the greatest weight refers to every little thing you do, is this something I wish to repeat an infinite amount of times? Everything that you have done determines what you will repeat forever. Shawn I find it hilarious that you brought up God, because the original quote is from Nietzsche

[cataphract_40]

Yeah, I know what you mean, Brendan---but I would still not be too upset. Eventually I'd die, start it over again, and not know a thing about it. So I'd be able to live at least a portion of my life in sweet ignorance.