One Thought Can Change You Forever 

Does anyone else have moments where you see yourself in the mirror and you realise you are you. Like a strange distance is created between your consciousness and your material body/mind. I sometimes have these moments and they are interesting to say the least. It's like an intermission between one part of a play and another.

Dog: *sniffs the ground* Casey: *Has existential crisis*

"If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." - Neil Peart

I've come to a realization. If you think about something for long enough, it can become a paradox.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ― Oscar Wilde

"You have already made the choice. You are here to discover why you made it." -Somebody

Things start to lose their meaning when you think about them hard enough. Nothing is all that exciting anymore.

"Maybe it's time you stopped asking questions and started having Fun" -A certain talking Cat

"So why are you ordering this fish that you don't like?" Casey: *INHALES* Well a week ago I watched a RU-vid video and-

The most freeing words: "oh well".

"inevitably, he sounded pretty crazy" How my every attempt at meaningful conversation goes. The best part about the coinflip, aside from it completely lacking free will, is that even the outcome of the coin toss is not at all random, It's determined by weight, rotation, air resistance, etc. Random only exists down at the quantum level. But even those random outcomes may only seem random to us at this point of our understanding of it.

The meaning of life is what you find meaningful. If you want your life to have a purpose, you must place the purpose yourself. This is the real beauty of life.

"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills." - Schopenhauer

"The only bad thing that can be done is taking it too seriously" - Alan Watts

It's like he puts thoughts I've had into words perfectly.

We are all Sisyphus, pushing our stones up the mountains of our lives against the absurdity of the universe.

Casey's face when he'd realized that all events were predetermined: 👁👄👁

NEVER REGRET A DAY IN YOUR LIFE: Good days give happiness Bad days give experiences Worst days give lessons And Best days gives memories

Casey’s friend: “But technically, didn’t you still did what you wanted?” Casey: ... fuck! Me: *wheezing a storm*

“Why there are so many quotes in cmt section”- me

Casey's boss: "why didn't you come to work for past 2 days? You didn't even send a notice?" Casey: I was staring at a wall...

"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj

It feels so nice to watch this video having already had, and beaten, this particular flavour of existential crisis.

This has always seemed pretty obvious to me. I've always thought about things deeply, but I always thought everyone thought that deeply, but recently I've been finding out that not many people out there thinks like this.

One thought can be sufficient to torment you for your whole life. Such is a thought, such is the mind, and such is life.

Plot twist: Casey soon realised that he was figment of writer's imagination, who existed only till the story lasted.

I can relate so much to him. The string of questions keeps bothering me every day and every night I fall into an existential crisis. Sometimes I wish I could turn off my brain and focus on the moment instead of pondering over the questions that have no answers. It's depressing.

"The only thing he now had was a meal he didn't want." Great line.

The quest for meaning has led many people to insanity, and, especially if you have an over-analytical brain, you can fall easily into the trap of obsession. Don't let the absurdity of this world consume you. Smile, laugh at it, be strong and enjoy every aspect of the ride.

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

When I zone out and people ask me what I’m thinking about and I say no or I’m thinking about what I wanna have for lunch this is what im actually thinking about

Then Casey watched a video about quantum uncertainty and realized the universe isn't an unbroken chain of cause and effect but a probabilistic mess. This still didn't prove he had free will. It just removed the comforting notion of certainty and replaced it with the discomfort of not really being able to know anything for certain.

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." -Albert Einstein

"Good afternoon, good evening and goodnight" - Truman

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it Fate." - Carl Jung

I went through an extremely similar experience in 8th grade. I was really into math at the time, and had self-assigned myself the problem of dividing by zero. Now, there are a lot of jokes about dividing by zero, and often times the flat-out answer of "you can't," but I seriously and legitimately threw myself into it using every tool I had at my disposal. Then, one day while I was heading home on the bus, I did it. I had spent such a degree of effort rearranging formulas and dissecting concepts and visualising the math that I began hallucinating, having visions of limits and singularities in the fabric of existence. In addition, I realized simultaneously just how constructed and arbitrary all these concepts are, not just of math but of human ideas and language: that there is no universal truth, that everything we know and are is just an arbitrary, tremendously complex construct formed over millions of years. The experience was so intense I ended up walking home in a daze. I lost all willpower and motivation, and essentially operated on habits and preprogrammed survival instincts until my mind basically rebooted and I came up with a new philosophy for living. Nowadays, I can say that that experience ended up contributing greatly to my interest in philosophy, psychology, and artificial intelligence. In addition, I have a much simpler perspective on life now, directly evaluating and choosing things in life that I evaulate will be most fulfilling. *tl;dr* In 8th grade I threw myself into a math problem so hard I ended up deconstructing reality and had an existential crisis where I lost all will to live, but eventually came out of it a changed person.

to give up on life is like throwing out a game because we lose sometimes. as if the game would be worth playing if we already knew we'd win

When I was 14, I essentially lived this video. Growing up, my parents talked about god and heaven, but we were never religious or church-goers. I went to a school that was not a religious or catholic school, but we sung hymns every day. Growing up, throughout all my years, I was surrounded by talk of the Bible, God, Jesus and heaven and hell. I wasn't super religious and didn't go to church and pray, but I accepted that there was a god and there was a heaven and hell. I believed that if you were a good person, you went to heaven. If you were bad, you went to hell. If you were both, you waited in purgatory for a decision to be made. I never really questioned it. I never really asked the obvious questions - what's good and what's bad? I just accepted it as it was always something I'd known. When I was 11, a friend of mine got in an accident and had a near-death experience. He saw the tunnel and the light at the end of the tunnel and then he felt like he was floating upwards towards something big and something really great, before being brought back. This was all the more reason for me to believe in an afterlife. Everything changed on Christmas Day 2011, over Christmas dinner. We had my grandparents round, and one of them was 90 years old and was talking about how he almost died storming Normandy Beach on D-Day, but God knew it wasn't his time yet and let him live. We then started talking about the afterlife and heaven and God. That's when my sister chimed in. "I don't believe in any of it", she said. I had never known anyone NOT believe in an afterlife. "All that light at the end of the tunnel, it's all an illusion created by the dying brain releasing chemicals. When you die, you die. That's it. Nothing. You disappear, you cease to exist, back to the way you were before you were born". And that's when absolutely everything changed. My sister's explanation.... I knew. I knew INSTANTLY that she was right. It just... of course! It felt so intuitive and correct and made so much sense........ but it is NOT what I wanted to believe, and it's NOT what I had grown up believing, and I found the idea of disappearing wholly depressing. I was very much unwilling to accept it. 14 years, my entire life's belief system about what happens when we die, tossed out the window in one short conversation. I knew in my deepest of hearts that she was right. But I was unwilling to accept it. I did not want to accept that we just disappeared and our time on Earth was all we had. I couldn't accept it. That night, I lay in bed all night, just thinking about what it's like to just... cease to be. To lie in a hospital bed and disappear. How when we died, there was NO heaven. We were dead. I was never afraid of dying before this, because I believed I'd live on in heaven. But suddenly, that was gone. Just like that. I lay there, a terror unlike any I'd experienced before or since, and had the biggest existential crisis of my life. I realised like the tooth fairy and santa claus, the afterlife was just another lie I'd been told as a kid, to make me not be afraid of dying. I was HORRIFIED. It was ALL I could think about for the next few days. Weeks. All the time, all day every day all I could think was dying and what comes after, if anything. Eventually, I tried to refute it. I tried to find evidence that my sister was wrong and there was, in fact, an afterlife. I was not able to let that belief go. I found stories, watched videos, read books of anecdotes of people dying and going to heaven. I read "Heaven is for Real", and did everything to convince myself heaven and hell existed. But with this came a whole NEW load of fears. The Bible, and the internet, stated being a good person was not enough to go to heaven. I needed to believe in Jesus as our saviour. I spent many sleepless nights just lying in my bed, so afraid I couldn't move, just absolutely terrified of ceasing to exist or going to hell. And then I became a full-blown Christian. I started going to Church. I started going to Bible studies. I started going to religious groups. And I felt so much better in doing so. I felt safe again, I felt I was no longer going to sink into oblivion and cease to exist someday. This heaven place WAS real all along and my sister was wrong. I was willing to do ANYTHING to prove my sister wrong. It was April 2012 by now, and it was still on my mind all the time. Not 10 minutes went by where I didn't think of what came after. By August 2012, I was still constantly thinking about the dying process and where I was going to go when I died. I was still attending church and still trying to prove that my sister was wrong. ANYTHING to cling onto the belief of an afterlife. When September came around and the next school year started, I actually really enjoyed Religion and Philosophy. But..... I also got into science. I was lying to myself this whole time and I knew it. I did not believe in Jesus as our saviour (come at me, evangelists!) and I had been lying to myself the whole time. I knew, deep deep down, even on December 25th 2011, that I believed my sister's explanation and my entire beliefs about religion and the afterlife had changed in one conversation. I just couldn't accept it yet. I knew all along I wasn't a Christian at heart and didn't really believe the anecdotes - I was just trying ANYTHING to still believe in the afterlife. But I knew all along there was a logical and scientific explanation to almost all these anecdotes that didn't involve any divinity. I just didn't want to believe it yet. Gradually, slowly but surely over the years, I came to accept the idea that there was no afterlife and to make the most of my time on Earth. My attitude about life changed with it. The belief that I will exist forever meant I did not make the most of my time. When I realised how limited my time truly was, aided by the sudden death of my father, I made sure to never waste a day. Make every single day count and charge any opportunity like a bull, as I never truly know when it will all end. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. Every day is precious. My entire belief system and outlook on life changed forever, because of one brief conversation over a Christmas dinner many years ago.

For me, having realized just that a few years ago, it felt like the heaviest burden was lifted from my shoulders - while it is not freedom in our general understanding, to me living in this illusionary real world feels like the greatest gift of absolute freedom in itself. Not having a free will is so reassuring, it got me to pursue happiness for myself, to live my life however I felt like. This truly is my fondest realization

Beautiful. This sums up thoughts I’ve had for years. Whether life is predetermined or not, it doesn’t matter; I am fortunate enough to be able to choose my outlook in life, and I choose to enjoy it, and to spread that joy.

"The answer is don't think about it." - Rick Sanchez

Plot twist: Casey didn't want to want his desire to want what he wanted when he decided he wanted to stop wanting everything.

‘A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings’ -Sam Harris

it's eerie how every video of this channel I stumble upon manages to be that one video I need at the moment. Thank you for this, this helped a lot

I’ve a feeling that Casey watched video from Pursuits of wonder😂😂

Carl Jung said, “If you do not make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it destiny.” We do not have control over our past or desires, but we do have willpower. We can choose to do anything. Random or meaningful things. We do not have control over what is meaningful to us, but there is no sense in acting randomly either. I think we should pick and choose from our desires who we want to be as often as we can. I think the best example of this is selfless service or sacrifice.

I just discovered this channel and I am totally and completely absorbed in every video that you post, this one being no exception. This is fantastic.

Meditation is a clear answer to this riddle. I suffered from dissociation after having these thoughts for too long. I eventually started to meditate and focus on stoicism. I began to find myself in the moment, subject to my environment and not shaken by this fact. The thing is, everything that happens is going to happen, or not. You have no control over this, but you do have control over the attitude and perspective you take on life. This is where free will lies I believe. In the fact that we can choose our reaction to anything. Even the thoughts of determinism. You can be in the moment, and choose to be grateful for life, choose to appreciate this beautiful world. You choose those things, that’s free will. It’s all we have, but it’s incredibly powerful.

" i am not this body nor this mind, these are just tools , I am who is experiencing this world by these tools"

I have no idea who you are or what your name is, but you deserve to go down in history as one of the true philosophers of our time. Your work is consistently great and life-changing.

I just recently found this channel and wow, I had no idea how much MORE I'd be interested in things when they're told as a brilliant story. 10/10

Thank you. Please continue to make these videos. They are truly thought provocative!

I especially appreciate how your soundtracks are able to disorient you: they lack any refrain, they're not sad nor happy,they are just what they are

I haven't seen the video yet but I am more than sure it will be a masterpiece as always!

Great story, reminiscent of Eckhart Tolle's teachings. "Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it."

I'm not sure why, but I just found myself laughing uncontrollably after the conclusion of this video. A good hearty laugh for seemingly no particular reason. I've been made aware of this truth before, but eventually you can forget it and return to ignorance, after a while. However, I really like the relation to games that is made as the final piece of the puzzle. I'm a new subscriber to the channel, and I quite thoroughly enjoy the story narrative you write to explain and entertain these complex philosophical and psychological concepts!

"How did you get over your crisis?" Casey: "I played an old video game"

Sometimes I wonder how much IQ/knowledge it takes to make such a video. I can't even begin to think like this forget about putting it in a though provoking and meaningful manner. The idea of randomness and determinism of Universe has bothered me for a while now. It just so happened to be when I felt ill and was depressed. When times are good you don't think, you just act. But bad times teaches you to stop, think and care for yourself and beings around you. I hope everyone who goes through rough times comes out a stronger and better person and weaker and bitter one unlike me.

Wow. You just described my life... Until the ending. I'm still in the phase of sitting and doing nothing, unless I necessarily need to. I can't really seem to comprehend the ending though weirdly enough, although I watched the video.

I’ve felt all of this before, the choice of free will I remember being a kid and looking at my hands and raising one up and questioning did I raise this or was this just a chain of events. I was a weird kid to say the least.

The whole free will problem still bugs me because we will never know if our future actions are truly predetermined or not. Just like the video game with its predetermined programming, begins, and endings, life follows predetermined rules and always has the same beginning and ending, birth and death. However something that you didn't seem to acknowledge was that even though the video game had a predetermined structure, there are still a potentially endless ways you can play it, even if all the tasks are still the same, you can move differently, complete the tasks differently, and fail to complete the tasks differently. I feel the same thing applies to life, and it very well may be that it is all predetermined and or deterministic, but maybe, just maybe, there is something about conciousness that let's whatever conciousness is, to choose how to interact with the illusion, how to play it. What path to go down. Maybe conciousness itself is the missing piece that collapses the infinite quantum probabilities in an infinite universe into one single, determined recording of reality captured through our nervous system. Is life a video game, or a movie? At the end of the day, whether concious decisions are predetermined or not, we cannot escape the fact that when confronted with a decision, something chooses between the two, causes one outcome or another. Maybe thats just the laws of nature playing themselves out, or maybe something outside the laws of nature, not defined by them, like say conciousness, is actually what is determining those outcomes.

Imagine watching this and your internet cut off at minute 15, leaving you with no answer.

An excellent way to express the philosophical view points of causal determinism and free will. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Thank you!

Thanks man! Your videos just give me the best kind of existential crisis which makes it somewhat easy to navigate through life having some insight on it :)

“Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities” [Voitaire]. Evil comes from the abuse of free will 🖖

Its amazing to think that all the things that happened in this universe lead up to you reading this exact comment, and led me to write this comment. While you're here all I got to say is Enjoy your life, treasure and give meaning to every experience that you went thru. Life is about the experience after all.

Great story. Even if life is predetermined, it is indeed irrelevant to your experience in life. There is still the illusion of choice and joy.

Thank you for the video! That was the missing piece in my crisis. Thank you!

I had these thoughts as a teen and shared them with people around me and they all told me I'm crazy for thinking that way

“It issss what it issss” simple as that

“Still does as he always has”. This is the solution to my woes. I’ve been trying to figure out what I want for years only because I judge the things I’ve always wanted since I was around 14. I’ve always wanted a simple life playing video games, spending time with friends and family, eating an okay diet, and spending a bit of time in nature each week. I’ve been sucked into the hustle culture crap for years and it’s made me feel bad about being myself and my desires. This video helped me accept it’s completely okay, healthy, even inspiring to spend my time doing the things I’ve always enjoyed. There are times when I question whether I should “get shit done”. I’ll just remind myself this is the toxic coding of hustle culture and once I follow my true dream of a simple life for long enough those thoughts that I’m wasting my life will go away.

This is really got me sitting here questioning everything I'm kind of having a crisis like our main character. But at the same time I'm also trying to understand the situation, the beauty of this illusion we call life is to experience it.

Casey has way too much time on his hands lmao

Thank you for this video, amazing work!

this is what I'm actually going through right now, it gives me the creeps on how accurate this is. It's like this video is narrating my current experiences, sometimes I feel like I'm actually going insane

A few months ago, I was discussing about the concept of free will and determinism with my then boyfriend, and since he was a gamer, I used the concept of video games to explain him about the juxtaposition of free will and determinism, and seeing that being used here too really got me! The only difference was, I used the concept of a video game which offers you choices atm that leads to different endings, but all of those being determined, in the grand scheme of things.

Notification: Pursuit of Wonder Me: *clicks immediately*

There's a lot of self-improvement channels on RU-vid that follow along the trend of self-improvement that trails through the rise of industrialization and capitalism. This concept of self-improvement for the sole purpose of becoming more successful is one of the most toxic and damaging things I have experienced that breeds guilt and self-hatred in people who are already prone to these things, as they try to follow regiments that they don't understand and don't need. Toxic, addictive self-improvement relies on diminished self-compassion and fighting against what it is to be just a clump of atoms on planet Earth. THIS channel, however, follows along the kind of self-improvement that I feel DOES work and DOES good for you. It makes you think, puts things into a perspective, where you don't need to be a MAN who takes LIFE and DISCIPLINE by the BALLS and rams it down his throat. This video is the epitome of a perspective that I feel far more people NEED to see and understand, that there isn't a point to this life and that this statement isn't a bad thing. You come from nothing, you will become nothing, as the universe did and as the universe will do. Believing in free will is railing against the concept of existence itself, which has never and will never produce a reason for free will to exist unless something really, really big happens. Have compassion for yourself, have compassion for others. Being human is an ordeal, no matter how much the gurus call it a gift and the damaged a curse. It just happened to all of us. The only point is finding a way to die at peace and making the process of conscious existence easier for the people you care about. Peace.

Hello!!! This was awesome! Thank you for the amazing videos!!!

So I hope I got this right: Consciousness is knowing it’s an illusion, yet still finding a reason to playing it’s game.

I love these videos. But I didn't have a choice anyways- I was predetermined to like them.

"But Blithe, the only hope you have is to accept that you're already dead" - Band of Brothers

I honestly love this channel, because everyone here has some small thing with big meaning and everyone here is the type of person who wants to comprehend the entire concept and the channel itself has interesting concepts that the comments are all trying to understand.

You just basicly materialized a good part of my life with your words, with me only realising that after i heard them.

Your videos have brought me to tears so many times.. they contain the exact words I need to hear. This year has been really hard, but also one full of experiences I’ll never forget. Thank you for this reminder

Every Deed, every word, even your personality once began with a thought. Be careful what you think!

All your videos both terrify me and comfort me

Man I just randomly picked this video to listen to and I gotta tell you Casey is relatable af.

The amount of effort..THE AMOUNT OF EFFORT that my guy puts in these videos is unimaginable..thank you so much ❤️

Freud demonstrated the lack of both free will and destiny more than a century ago, instead, he said, there is what we call "the determinism of the psyche/psychic". When I learnead about it, it was a revelation, a thought that changed my mind the way this video describes, except for one thing: I didn't feel anxiety, I didn't try to negate what Freud had just taught me and keep my attachment to my until then dearest ideal of free will. The reason is, at the same time, iun the same course, I learned about the concept of responsability, meaning that "you must assume the consequences of your actions." So, yeah, I do things not because I have free will, but because I can act upon the world, and my actions are determined by my situation in the world, what came before me. But what I can do, freely in a manner, is take responsability, not blaming the people. I am not responsible to have been born. But Instead of blaming my parents for bringing me to a world where I can't have a plenty life, I can instead try to achieve that life, or kill myself. If don't do one or the other and stay stuck in a life I hate, that's on me just as well, that's my choice, and being responsible means it's a valid choice, because nothing guarantees struggling to get a better life will be successful, and it's likely it wil not, only making you feel frustrated and like you wasted you life trying... enter assuming the consequences. If you choose to stay, the consequences of not improving your life conditions are on you. If you try and don't get it, the consequences are on you. If you try and suceed, the consequences are also on you! As for the struggle to find/make meaning of the world and life, I was fortunate to have read Nietzsche before. At the time, I didn't understand, but in restrospection, it made a lot of sense: existence ins meaningless, which doesn't mean you'b be better off dead, but means you can make meaning and choose meaning. Feudal period peasants didn't have a say on the meaning of their lives: to work the earth, to pay taxes, to live in poverty and die to be happy with god. Sad and brutal as it may be, it was at least a meaningful, not an empty life. But I'm convinced it's better to lack meaning if that meaning is being a slave! Finally, other two authors to helped me to understand the meaningless of the world, and be happy about it, are Alan Moore with his masterwork Promethea, and Grant Morrison, with his masterwork The Invisibles: Everything is an illusion, art, knowledge, politics, life... but that doesn't make it less real. Might as well enjoy the ride!

This video summarised my thoughts in philosophy class in high school. Took me longer than 10 minutes to get to that conclusion though. I was sad for weeks before I realised that it didn't matter how it is, that you just have to make the best of it.

Oh my god this is amazing. I've been thinking about this my whole life...never really able to explain it to anyone. Now i'm seeing a lot of this on YT. So cool.

It's almost scary how I've been thinking about determinism for two days & now, u uploaded this video. Is the universe trying to tell me something?

"blip blop, blip blip blip blop flop sop". -Albert Einstein

Love this. Thanks so much!!

This video is helping me so much! I’ve been so confused about this

‘... his active participation was entirely necessary to the experience...’ - even though there’s no free will, we still need to participate in this game. That’s the missing puzzle piece and it’s genius.

Love that he jumps right into the story.

“Don’t think about it too much, too much, too much, too much” - Drake

I have been watching these for years.....best one yet hands down. I am taking a ride and it is my job to be present. There is no so- called "free will" because everything is a response/reaction to predetermined stimuli....but so what. Riding this thing until the wheels fall off. Good, bad or indifferent. Life is not what you make it. Life just is. Beautiful message and it came at the right time. Doesn't mean we are to live recklessly but just to live and know that we aren't doing anything wrong, we are just manifestations of cause and effect, just like everything else on earth.