Thinking on Infinity
The Nausea of Endlessness
Another banger accompanying track by my brother J.P. De Veer. This week’s song is called “Boss Battle” and is designed to be listened to with this essay. Enjoy.
I’ve been thinking about infinity again. Usually until the point of being sick. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid.
The story goes like this: one night, when I was about four years old, my parents were just sitting down for The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. During the opening monologue, I walked into the living room with a look of pale terror on my face. Being almost two hours after my bedtime, my parents leapt off the couch and huddled around me to see what was wrong. Was I sick? Did one of my brothers beat me up? Did I accidentally set something on fire? They grabbed my shoulders and implored me to say what was wrong, the force of their jostling increasing each second I failed to speak.
At long last I looked up at them with tears in my red eyes and shrieked:
“I’m going to die!”
They unhanded my shoulders and - understandably confused - interrogated me further to find out what exactly the hell I meant by that. Per custom, my father began to replace surprise with the more familiar mode of anger that he used to bully answers out of anyone who was hesitant to give them up. By this time, I had now started scream-crying as reality began to snap back into place, adhering again with the parts of my brain previously masked by the hypnosis of childhood sleep.
Eventually they calmed me down enough to talk, and between gasping sobs I explained that no, I did not mean that I was presently going to die, but that I had (for the first time) realized that I was eventually going to die. Not only was I going to die, but I was also going to then go to heaven and, per the homily at Sunday mass, I was then going to live forever in heaven.
My father, whose brusque delivery consistently reveals itself as eloquence over time, responded with an appropriately bewildered rejoinder of “well why the hell are you crying about that dummy?”
It was then that I threw up.
I hate mentioning Sartre, and yet here I am again mentioning Sartre. Let’s just get it over with: I have always been annoyed at Sartre’s conclusion of La Nausée, and his insistence that nausea lies at the bedrock of all human experience and understanding. And though I have previously outlined why I think nausea isn’t quite at the bottom (but maybe three or four tiers up from there), I definitely understand why most people would stop at nausea and declare that the bottomest bottom. At least in my experience, it is by far the most difficult sensation to tolerate. Worse than the feelings of burning, biting, ripping, breaking, pinching, or cutting. In fact, I always thought that the Gom Jabbar test from Dune should have induced nausea rather than pain.
Little bit of backstory: I was once stuck on a small boat during a storm in the middle of Lake Superior and the motor went out. Before the captain was able to “rig up the sails” (I don’t think that’s the right term, please educate me in the comments if you’re a seaman/seawoman/seamatinx), our boat just sort of violently floated along with the ebb and flow of the brackish* water. Within minutes, almost everyone onboard (including myself…definitely including myself) started to throw up over the side of the boat. But unlike throwing up after a rollercoaster ride or an Oculus Quest session, the boat just kept on going, and there was literally nowhere to run. Up and down, down and up, rolling left, rolling right, left again, now going up, now down, back up, down once more, scoop, crash, tilt, roll, back down again, etc.
I threw up again and again and again. I threw up until there was nothing left to throw up, and then I dry heaved a bit, and then I did that little ugly cry adults do, and then I finally just draped myself over the side of the boat looking down at the dark water and wondered: could someone die from nausea? Hard to say, and legitimately curious as I write this, but not enough to drum up a link. Nonetheless, I did not in fact die that day, but I did go away from that experience thinking, other than perhaps falling from a great height or having your fingernails ripped off with pliers - nausea must be among the most unpleasant human experiences out there. It’s certainly one that I’d go to great lengths to avoid and, given the choice, would rather have my ankle broken with an aluminum baseball bat than repeat my experience that day on the lake.
For this reason, I try my best to avoid any situations that entail even the slightest possibility of nausea. So thinking about “forever” or “infinity” or even “everlasting life” in heaven has always been a topic I visit only while horribly depressed or, well… high. The idea of sitting around somewhere forever, even if that “somewhere” was filled with friends and family and singing angels, or unlimited mana and quail and ambrosia, is still utterly nausea inducing. I remember interrogating my mother about this one day to the point of annoyed dismissal (not an easy feat to achieve with my endlessly patient mother):
Little H.P.: “So like, after a thousand years up there, I have to be up there another thousand years??”
Mommy H.P.: Yep!
LHP: And a million?
MHP: Yep!
LHP: And a billion years?”
MHP: Why don’t you go watch Nick@Nite? I think Dragnet is on. It’s your favorite episode, the one where a guy is arrested for “doing drugs.”
(She didn’t say that last part, but I’m not kidding I remember an episode of Dragnet where a guy name “Blue Boy” got arrested for just like…being high? Maybe?)
Mommy H.P. was frustrated that I wasn’t excited for eternal life like she was, she was especially frustrated because I always seemed to be so worried about dying. She endlessly reassured me that being in heaven meant perfect happiness, a satisfaction of all my desires and the extinction of all pain and suffering. But I wasn’t having it. I wasn’t having it for the simple reason that I don’t think there’s any sort of feeling that I’d want to endure for more than a year straight, let alone a million years, or a billion, or a trillion, or INFINITY FUCKING YEARS OF JUST SITTING AROUND!!!
This fear of infinity, more than anything, has affected my cosmology. The idea of having to endure an endless experience of being led me to my first break with my Catholic upbringing. Naturally, the obvious antidote for the fear of endless existence was the promise of non-existence. Ah yes, the sweet release of endless darkness and non-being…sounds like a relief, too bad I won’t be there to enjoy it!
This wish led me to my “dark years” of atheism in my 20s, a period of theological rejection for which I matched the fervency of the time (think ~2008). I am still embarrassed to have been so supportive of twats like Richard Dawkins, who I thought were just so damn COOL for trouncing on believers using cold, hard, rational syllogisms. I cringe when I think about the version of me who elevated rhetorical quips above considerations of ultimate meaning, and it is for this reason that I have never been able to get on board with Ben Shapiro, even in the moments I agree with him. Repeatedly shouting about “facts!” and “logic!” triggers some sort of visceral response in me that I can’t overcome, and the truth is that I don’t wish to overcome it. I think it’s a waste of time to holler about the ultimate state of reality, given that we don’t even nearly understand the many sub-ultimate states of reality around us.
(This sort of arrogance - the arrogance of ontological monopolization - lives on today in an unexpected host of the “pro-Science” liberal left, all seemingly indifferent to the limitations of science, or the repulsiveness of a dogmatic adherence to a concept that is in direct opposition to dogmatic adherence. I digress.)
Growing an adult brain doesn’t mean putting away the “fairy tale” of religion, nor does it mean giving way to a religion that one subscribes to only for want of comfort or the extinction of fear. Rather, it’s finding comfort in a place of not knowing, or knowing just enough to realize that this whole thing is so beyond our understanding that humans trying to figure it out is a fool’s errand; a task so futile that it should be giggled at, like trying to guess the image presented on a 5 billion-piece puzzle by very closely inspecting a tiny corner of the underside of one of the pieces. When will we ever stop acting like we know? Nobody knows. That’s the point of faith.
But this is not about faith or religion, per se, it’s about infinity, and my lifelong struggle to metabolize the fact that infinity does exist in some form or another and I - as of yet - have no way to deal with it. The best I can do for now is to understand that forgetting might be the ultimate gift in this whole ordeal. If I were to persist forever, I’d hope that I would at least be blessed with a dose of forgetfulness. I’d want to be dosed with just enough forgetfulness so that I didn’t have to consider the vastness of “forever,” and instead could just recycle my consciousness into new minds, each one thinking they are the first edition. Reincarnation, at the very least, would allow me the perceptual illusion of eternal novelty.
But that doesn’t unlock the big picture, doesn’t untangle the problem of ye ole “lazy eight” himself:
What am I supposed to do with this guy? Why does he disturb me so much? While most people cling greedily onto the hope of persistent consciousness, the clinging is the thing that scares me the most. I actually take comfort in the idea of ending, but then have to deal with the ennui of considering that the movie is going to keep playing but I’ll no longer be in the theater. Ego death through hallucinogenics has helped with some of the emotional baggage of this entanglement, but when it comes down to it, it doesn’t solve the actual problem here. The actual problem is not one of quantum entanglement or spiritual enlightenment. Nor is it one that can be solved via facts, logic, math, spirituality, or rhetorical maneuvering. The problem is fear. I am afraid. None of these systems can deal with the fact that I am afraid of dying.
I am afraid of death. I am afraid of not knowing what happens after death, of not knowing how or when it will strike, and not knowing why it happens. I am afraid of the pain that often accompanies the death process. I am afraid of the possibility of it happening unexpectedly, or suddenly, or quietly, or violently, or especially that it could happen when I am alone.
But alas, fear is an inversion of love, a truism that gives me some comfort as I approach the wall of nausea that I encounter as I move closer to any “real” answers to this question. I must really love being alive, or at least love the idea of being alive, enough that I am afraid to lose it. And yet, how much of my life do I spend playing rogue-like games, or masturbating, or googling my exes? It’s a curious thing, being afraid to lose something that you take for granted. Almost makes you want to not take it for granted…
But let’s be honest, the human mind is a wonderful tool, and also a dumb fuck. Life is not an RPG - if it were, then I would just select the option of “live to the fullest!” each and every morning. But it’s not. Life is not a lever. It is a million little switches.
A million switches that must be toggled every day, all day, sometimes more than one at a time. Right now I flip the switch that says “keep writing.” There is another next to it that says, “end on a positive note.” Another that says “end on an earnest note.” Another that says, “stop writing and delete this piece of shit essay.” I flip one, and it branches into a dozen others choices. Endless flipping of switches, so many that it’s sometimes easy to lose track of why I’m even doing it in the first place.
Sometimes.
Sometimes it’s not as daunting, and that’s usually when I slow things down. A compulsion to pull a switch is a switch in and of itself, and though it beckons me with urgency, I need not satisfy its call. When I slow down, I realize that I can savor moments. I can savor the t y p i n g of each w o r d. I can luxuriate in the fact that more than a hundred people read what I have written here. That some might even like it or comment on it or - my GOD - some could even start a paid subscription!
It’s not about the goodies though, really. It’s about the connection. It’s about shouting into the void and hearing someone shout back. Even if they shout back - “Hey! Shut the fuck up!!” that still means someone else is here in the void with me. And when I slow down, when I just appreciate the comfort of not being alone, of these many conversations that happen across time, I realize that infinity exists in every moment. You can slow down a second so that it lasts a century. It’s not anything to be nauseous about because, in a way, it has nothing to do with me.
Let’s try a weird switch to close things out…
I’ve been reading The Entangled Life this evening, a book about fungi. Fascinating reflection not only the history and biology of fungus, but also the relationship that humans and animals and plants have with it. After reading a good deal of the book, I don’t think it’s too far out for me to say that the mushroom kingdom seems to have something resembling a neural network. Though it’s not quite the same as our own circuitry, it does represent a way of being that is quite different than our own, and therefore may not be fully appreciated for its intricacy.
Whatever it is, this “network” has been at it for way longer than humans. In fact, it has been doing it longer than animals, and even trees. In fact, for a long time, fungus was the only reason plants were able to stay anchored in the ground (until they eventually figured out how to make their own roots to avoid being washed away). Before there were ever forests, around four hundred million years ago, the surface of the Earth was covered with Prototaxites, which were basically fungus trees taller than houses.
Wait, stop: Four hundred million years ago. What does that even mean? What could it possibly mean to me? My mind really can’t make sense of it. The whole universe deals on a scale that, while numbers can technically be assigned to it, my squishy human brain still just thinks of these timeframes as “a really really really long time!” If I were to actually try to calibrate the mental yardstick of chronology in my mind to fully consider this time frame, I would be approaching that infinity idea again, and then the nausea would be sure to follow.
But for you, dear reader - I will grab my barf bag. Look at what I do for…how could you ever repay me for my courage?
What is it? What is beyond that wall? It must be something so scary that my mind has created a physical reaction to stop me from thinking about it. But when I was on that boat in the lake, being tossed about on indifferent waves, unable to escape this nausea, I think I did glimpse just the smallest smidgen of the other side. And…I don’t think it is my mind that is stopping me from penetrating through it.
Though my thoughts are trapped by the finite, bound by the limitations of the human mind and even more so by the limits of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc…I still can squeak out just four measly sentences on the matter, useless for you as they may be:
On the other side of nausea, there is God.
God loves us.
The wall of nausea is there to keep us here for now.
If the nausea wall wasn’t there, nothing would stop us from racing toward God as fast as we could.
Feel better? I’m not sure I do, but at least I’m not puking.
Thank you for this reflection and sharing. Rigging the sails (attaching them to the rigging I.e. the functional structure of the boat - the mast/stay and sheets) is generally what you do before you hoist them with a halyard. You were definitely understood by this sailor! Nausea in my experience is sometimes fended off by staring at the horizon and/or a decent pulling of rum. I’m so sorry you had that experience- that reads like a really nasty one.
As for infinity... you reminded me of the first time I meditated on it as a child too, around 7 years old when I’d learned the term at school. I left my body and flew as far into the universe as I could. I almost passed out and when I came back to consciousness I remember thinking ‘I could explore endless worlds!’ I’ve always been a spiritualist though, talking to trees and stars. And, in my deeply traumatic youth it was fantasy that kept me sane. Perhaps that’s why it’s always been more about potentiality than fear for me? I’ve also been around a great deal of death in this lifetime and for me it has molded the clay of my perception and appreciation of life, and kept my curiosity alive around what happens once we transition.
This beautiful world has my heart, while I’m here - once I’ve left the flesh behind I can only imagine the wonders of returning to ‘source’ and the infinite possibilities of a body-less existence. Or simple nothingness. Either way infinity feels like more of a dream than anything and I do still delight in the world of dreaming...