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28 13

What If You Were Never Born.....

Take a moment to think about this before you answer!

If you were never born and did not exist, what are some
negative affects of you never existing?

I have always believe that everyone has a purpose, Some times that purpose is significant, and sometimes not so much, but as humans we affect each other in many ways without realizing this often times.

If you are a Parent, Please Don't state the obvious :
"My children wouldn't exist"

I would like for you to think about all the family members, friends, lovers, co workers, homeless people, customers,
etc, that you have encountered in your life time and tell me:

what would be some negative affects of you never connecting with these people, using your current life as an example.

Me:

1.If i had never been born, the very first negative impact of this would be that my mom would most likely be in a nursing home with an amputated foot or leg. My mom lived alone up until last year. She did not know she had diabetes and chose to conceal the fact that she had lost one of her toes because of it. One weekend when i visit her, she must have forgotten to put on some socks, and when i look down and saw her foot, it was obviously infected and missing the second toe. I immediately took her to the ER. Turns out the infection had spread to her bone in her foot causing Osteomyelitis. Mom was in the hospital for 2 months on IV antibiotics to kill the infection and save her foot. Thankfully, it was successful. My point to this story is that I am the only child of my mom who has a medical background out of 11 siblings, and i am the closest to my mother. If i did not exist, i know for a fact my siblings would not take care of my mom, because most of them can barely take care of themselves and are self absorbed. I have my mom with me and i will have her until she or i Die.
2. If i had never been born, my niece would not have be an FBI Agent. Her mother, my sister discouraged her from doing something she really wanted to do.Not only did i encourage her to follow her dreams, i would also assist financially with her education. Once she finished college, she did 2 years as a peace officer, and applied, and was accepted to the FBI academy and is currently a local agent!
3. If i had never been born, i would have not have had the opportunity to encounter literally Thousands of patients i have had the pleasure of treating their cancers and watching their tumors shrink to remission, and also the patients who unfortunately did not make it due to cancer progression. I cannot put a number on how may family members of patients i have laugh and cried with during and after treatments and i am very thankful to have experience this in my life

"No matter who you are, I believe we all have a purpose and we are all connected on some level"

twshield 8 June 12
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28 comments

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6

Can't agree with your idea of ''purpose'' because (to me, anyhow) it implies predestination and that's not a concept I embrace. So..had I not been born, the world would go on just fine. The people I've helped would find someone else and my friends wouldn't laugh quite so often...but they'd be fine.

5

I don't believe we have a purpose, but potential. I don't think very many humans have ever done something that wouldn't have been done without them. The whole idea of having a purpose for being born, and reeks of a divine plan.

Our purpose is ours to determine, and not some preordained destiny determined at the beginning of time.

JimG Level 8 June 18, 2018

@twshield I think we, the planet, and the universe exist via the anthropic principle, purpose is what we assign.

I don't associate purpose with religion in as much as I ascribe it to a creator. A dam has a purpose, whereas a mountain is merely a geographic feature that stands wherever tectonic plates and/ or volcanic activity placed it.

5

Hmm, lots of inspiring comments here. Good question to consider. I actually have, since a very young child wished that I had never been born, and was pretty pissed off about it, and felt it was a rather selfish act to bring me into this domain. So full of injustice, cruelty and suffering. The mad and bad are rewarded and the truly good stomped upon. I am here, and a teacher, so I know people’s lives have been positively affected by me, and I made some significant discoveries at university, so added a bit to archeological and ancient glass knowledge! However, my annoyance at being born into a giant shit show made me choose not to have children myself. And when my body starts to fail from some shitty disease, I will go to Switzerland and check out on my own terms.

Livia Level 6 June 13, 2018
5

I'll try to think about this some more, but the first thing that comes to mind is that how if I had not been born Little Debbie's profits would have been much less. those are beautiful things you've described @twshield. great post.

I went and thought about it a bit.... I think the main thing is it a lot of my friends would have been less loved, that some of my family would have been less loved, and a couple of cats and dogs too. there might have been some fewer laughs, and some fewer tears. that's what it seems to boil down to it for me.

@twshield thank you sir, I'm sure many have fuller and better, and longer lives because of your generosity. ✌️

4

If I had never been born my children would never have been born _ I was the first woman plasterer in the U.K and helped set up 'women in manual trades' so that mght not have happened.

jacpod Level 8 June 14, 2018
3

When you stop and think about it, we touch 100s of lives every day and we've been essential in the lives of at least a few. Yeah, job wise I know I'm replaceable, but my personality, my caring has made a difference in many lives. Hell, two grandchildren wouldn't be here if not for me. Think of the old movie "It's a Wonderful Life". You do make a difference.

3

If I had never been born, nothing would matter. My absence would not be missed.

@twshield You seem to be confusing two states of being, one in which I exist and one in which I don't. They are not in any way equitable. The fact that I do exist, yes, I've had an impact on the lives of many other people (hopefully more for the good than the bad). But if I had never been born the vacuum of my absence would have been filled with others, I would be unknown and unknowable -- so where's the harm?

@twshield Indeed that is true. But any such alteration in time & space, & human relationships would have nothing at all to do with me. So I couldn't be held in any way responsible since in such a scenario I wouldn't exist, or in any way be missed, not even by my non-existent self!

@twshield Who knows my friend? Just as good, if not better I'd hope.

2

i would love to never have been born but how would i know lol still it is a wish

@twshield I also have a huge ass family very prolific bunch and I have been blessed in so many ways but its been a hard life full of bad shit lol my grands hate when I say I won't be here much longer and won't be long ill have great great grands polluting this world lol

2

Richard Dawkins says it best; Basically; we're extraordinarily lucky to have been born. If anything is an unexplained miracle, its the fact that we're alive for short time, as a human being....considering the 200 million sperm our father had, and the hundreds of eggs our mom had - the odds of us being alive are incredulous. Be thankful...to no-one in particular. If you're #Religulous then being in this body is "a short visit to heaven"....so thank god...whoever she is....

[commonsenseatheism.com]

2

There would be one less human to wreck it all!

2

There would have been a lot less sarcasm and silliness.

2

My mother was a drug addicted alcoholic teen who slept around and couldn't get her life together. If I hadn't been born she'd be dead.

@twshield that's what she and my grandparents say

1

My nonexistence may affect a few lives, but nothing significant.

1

Today has been mostly awful. The love of my life, who loves me just as much as me her, didn't get in touch all. It transpires that of all the people getting conceived and coming into existence over the years, she wasn't one of them. To make matters worse, I was hoping to find an envelope in the street today containing £0, but the person who shouldve dropped it never turned up due to being existentially unavailable. On the plus side though, I didnt get hit by a bus as the company couldnt find their ideal driver and had to hire somebody else who had done the whole being born thing. He was late due to not skipping a red light like the other guy wouldve and I'd already crossed the road

Salo Level 7 July 1, 2018
1

When you die you will return to the state you were before birth, that is atoms. No consciousness or anything else.

1

I have spent a fair amount of time pondering the nature of existence: mine and existence itself as well as what those two things have to do with each other.

On the surface of it, I want to say if I never existed, then I would never even have known that existence existed. But wait - it feels like it can't be that simple. How could existence itself exist and not insist on me knowing about it?

I mean...in previous ponderings I have come to an inescapable conclusion: nothing is impossible. No I do NOT mean that ANYTHING is possible! I mean it's not possible for there to be nothing. Let's face it, though, particle physics is a search for something and an effort to prove that something really truly exists and as yet it's yielded no results.

1

I heard something once that stuck with me.

"It may be that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others"

Seems right.

dellik Level 6 June 29, 2018
1

Being not ever born is similar to there being no universe in which to exist. Keep in mind that we exist within our mind. Apart from that we may not even exist at all.

Dwight Level 7 June 24, 2018
1

Just think of the infinite number of creatures that have never been conceived!

1

For anyone with depression or feeling like they don’t matter, this is an excellent question.

For one thing, if I weren’t born my mom would likely be depressed as she was and still does struggle with the sibling born before me who has severe mental health issues. My gay brother wouldn’t have an unconditional ally. And I have done animal rescue for decades. There’d be an advocate and hands on rescuer missing for many cats and dogs.

Thank you for asking this. Perspective is always helpful.

1

If any one of us had never been born, then an entirely new dynamic (or series of inter-related dynamics) would have come into existence. The set of circumstances which required you to be the one to take mom to the ER, counsel your niece, and provide care to thousands of cancer patients, would not have unfolded in the way in which they did. For myself, I don't really think that the consequences of my absence or earlier departure from the planet could be neatly laid out as in 'It's a Wonderful Life' - better just to appreciate the good (and try to ameloriate, or at least minimize, the harm) you've accomplished thus far.

[commonsenseatheism.com]

@twshield A great idea. I was just arguing that if anyone of us had not existed, there would have been no me-shaped void in the fabric of time. When I retired, I was reminded of just how dispensable we are once we have departed (or, in your example, never existed to begin with):

  1. Take a bucket and fill it with water
  2. Plunge your arm in as far as it will go
  3. Remove your arm from the water
  4. Observe the empty space in the water left where your arm had been
  5. The hole left in the water is the full extent of our individual indispensability

@twshield It's simply a metaphor, included to demonstrate the point that, if we ourself had not existed, events would simply have flown on without us, as will the school from which I have retired that is, unlike the metaphorical bucket, filled with consciousness, albeit adolescent and young adult.

@twshield I think there are some sailors who may disagree with that idea of water having no consciousness! I don't know what it means but I know a couple of longtime professional seafarers who have strong views on that point.

@twshield I have no doubt, speaking personally, that our lives are without any meaning other than that which we give them.

1

Well, that family in Poughkeepsie would probably still be alive.

Honestly, it's a totally moot question. To speculate on what the world would be like if you never existed is like asking what is the density of blue?

1

If I had never been born, my mother would probably have died from skin cancer several years ago.

Deb57 Level 8 June 13, 2018

@twshield In my view...a happy coincidence!

1

Great and profound post TW.. I will need to think about this..

1

If I had never been born and did not exist then my parents would not have had the fun of making me. I would never have learned the beauty of close friends and I would not have learned anything. I think that at some level we are all connected but that's nothing to do with religion. Whether there is a 'purpose', I think it depends on circumstances and finance (or the lack of it).

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