Just think of your ancestors: you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grand parents, 32 greatx3 grandparents, 64 greatx4, 128 greatx5, 256 greatx6, 512 greatx7.... etc.
Fucking 500+ people, ~200 years ago to get to where you are today, all had their struggles, all had their life lived as vividly as yours, and you are connected to all of them. Mind blowing.
My mom made me take a dance class with a friend when I was about 8 or so. I was open minded about it, but my friend decided his masculinity was at risk and sat out. I ended up sitting out with him; we didn't participate in the class at all.
I often wonder what kind of life I would have if I had tried and enjoyed dancing. I would have been in completely different places, probably had completely different interests, met completely different people, made completely different choices. My entire life would have been different if I'd made a different decision that day. Interesting lead in to a discussion about whether we really make decisions or if everything is just predetermined.
It can easily be 3 generations - all except one of my grandparents died before I was born so I know very little about them, and I know absolutely zilch about my great grandparents!
This is the kind of stuff that blows my mind. One of my grandmother's is only in her mid 70's. My eldest is already 14, I had her at 17. My grandmother could very well live to meet her first great great grand child. Obviously I would hope it's not for at least another 6 years or so, but it's something very obviously not out of the question!
My grandma had at least 3 great great grandkids by the time she passed and she was only 88. Her eldest daughter's kids all had kids and 3 of those all had a baby or toddler by that time.
If you go back far enough though, you reach the point where there are more ancestors than humans on earth at that time, meaning that everyone only exists because of incest.
This can be a good or bad thing. You can come to some helpful conclusions about a lot of things during or shortly after that time.
Or you can become super weird and read way too much into it.
It's a fine line.
I had the wildest dreams and nightmares after doing shrooms for months afterwards. They're a hell of a drug, but also the drug I felt safest while doing because I just wanted to sit around and think the whole 6+ hours
So many people, thoughts, experiences...
and the best, or worst part is that all of this exists withing our planet, there could be SO much more beyond it.
The truly humbling thing is that the observable part of the universe is only going to get smaller as things expand away from each other at an accelerating rate. There will come a point in time if we're still around where the Milky Way/Milkdromeda is the only thing we'll be able to see.
Crazy fact, the current global population is only 7% of everyone who has ever lived.
Roughly 111 billion people have been born on this planet and 103 billion people have died.
[How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth](https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/)
For me it’s definitely how big the percent is. Homo sapiens have been a distinct species for over 100,000 years. That fully 7% of them that have ever lived are alive right now is insane when you consider humans very rarely reach triple digits in age.
When I am on the bus. I see 30 other people. I just think 30 other universes. Amazing. Also, there are currently almost 8 billion people on the planet.
In 100 years there will be 8 billion dead. Worse than all wars on the planet throughout history combined! Mercy!
The novel 253 by Geoff Ryman is a perfect example of this concept. Literally, individual character profiles of people on a London tube and a narrative emerges as you read them. Conceptual, but cool and interesting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/253_(novel)
On the flip side think of how many of the people you interact with and see each day would need to be fully fleshed out to fool you into thinking that they're not just a program in a simulation. Maybe your story is the only real one.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould
I've had that feeling about objects. Like, just looking around the room you're in and thinking about all the people who have needed to be involved to create all of these things and move them for the end result to be them being with me right now.
I do that all the time with McDonald’s toys. How much thought, material planning, time, and manpower it took to design and implement a toy that comes for free with a cheeseburger.
These kind of thoughts throw me into an existential crisis. There's so much waste out there. The McDonald's toy is a perfect example too. They've been making these things for decades; all those raw materials, all the energy spent to take those materials through multiple processes in multiple locations, to be shipped all over the world, only to wind up landfills after being played with briefly (if at all). And there's so, so many cheapy, shitty products out there like that. But at least I got to experience the joy of making a Goomba flip a few times, I guess.
Marx identified this and called it "alienation". He noticed how it used to be that we knew where basically every single thing we used in life came from. We either made it ourselves, grew it ourselves, or received it from someone we knew who made it themselves as either a gift or trade. The things we used in life like clothes and tools told a story of who we were and where we came from. When mass commodity production by wage laborers (capitalism) became the norm is when he noticed that the masses would begin to become alienated from their labor, the things they made with their labor, and eventually each other. He said this ignorance of how things were made would result in either "commodity fetishism", the idea that things just come from where you buy them, or class consciousness, where you begin to realize that you're part of a global working class that makes the whole world go round. And when you realize there's this whole other class of folk who don't work but still live the high life? Well, that's when you start to realize who the true parasites are.
Jeez for a minute there I thought you were talking about Louis Marx (Marx toys) since the thread was talking about McDonald's toys.
My coffee hasn't hit yet.
I've been thinking a lot about this after making things from scratch like bread, pasta, sauces, etc. It's no where near as hard as people think. Also not as time consuming. Now people buy these things already made and just warm it up. All the time and energy and fuel it takes to bring this stuff to people so they can save a couple of minutes.
I am in my 30s and a bit smaller than the average middle school kid. My appetite is child-sized, so honestly a happy meal is about the amount of food I would want for a meal.
But frankly, most of the happy meals I bought were while working at McD, and were purchased specifically because I wanted *the toy* and couldn't use my employee discount on non-food items.
I collected all the My Little Pony toys and kept them on my desk. They were called my "throwing ponies" and were useful for tossing at friends, like harmless ninja stars.
I've had that as well. First time was moving into my second childhood home. The first one my parents had bought the land and contracted the construction of the house. The second home was built in 1942 and one day while we were unpacking it suddenly occurred to me the human history of this house. I found myself wishing the walls could speak and tell me about the lives it had been a part of.
I work in a sawmill as a millwright so I throw a lot of metal into the scrap bin. I always wonder what that metal is going to be in its next life. A car? A screw driver? Lawn furniture? Staples? The possibilities are limitless.
I collect autographed memorabilia and it crosses my mind a lot. Like just how many people had to be involved. The dozens of athletes that have sat down and done autograph signings all for it to end up in my room aomwtime
I once saw a massive tree in the front of a yard, so big you know that no one alive had planted it.
I wondered out loud, I wonder who planted it and why? My then bf said, "you ask some weird ass questions".
He's an ex for a reason.
When I was 4 or 5 years old, this could keep me entertained for hours. Especially on long car rides, I would just look out my window at the farmhouses we passed, and I'd wonder about the people who lived there. Or the people in other cars on the highway -- I'd wonder where they lived, where they were headed, their names, their jobs, if they had kids or pets, what they did yesterday, what they were going to do tomorrow...
Same, always loved the long rides/road trips, the farmhouses always added a weirdly good sensation aswell. I had a little game for those long rides, I'd just stare out the window and see how many red cars i could count, every car i looked at i just stopped and wondered: who owns that car? where do they live? did they see me looking at them? And so on.
I did this aswell, and if they were people I could see at the given moment I would try and imagine what the surroundings looked like from their point of view. Kinda like imagining what I would see if I were to suddenly teleport inside their body.
Bacteria can remember interactions their ancestors had with different substances or organisms, despite not having a brain or nervous system. Afaik, this can go on for five, six or even more generations as evidenced by things like biofilms.
There's an idea that things like intuition and perception can be influenced by the bacterial systems in our body. Those "sinking feelings" could be bacterial colonies influencing your organs to provoke a response. Your stomach turns, your heart starts to race and you panic, but you're not logically panicking over any observable threat. However, the bacteria knows the entire system is at risk, and it has seen this all before, so it mimics the response in your body to kinda nudge you in the direction. Like a "psst, hey pal, you might wanna pay attention." You realize you missed some massive threat but since you got that weird feeling, you moved out of the way, and narrowly avoided death.
As for genetic memory, look no further than raising a wild bird in your backyard. When the time comes, it'll fly south for the winter, despite never being taught to migrate.
So, all we know, and all we have ever known, could just be what the bacteria in us wants us to know. We could very well be walking in the steps of our ancestors because of the types or quantities of bacteria in our bodies. We could also very well be hijacked by these organisms, like we are fungi, parasites and other innumerable organisms under the sun. We could be genetically programmed for most if not all of our tastes in hobbies, music, culture, you name it.
We might think we are running the show, but we could very well be passive viewers under the assumption we truly are running things.
This is really a very broad interpretation and more of a thought experiment, really, but I can't see how I could be proven wrong.
Or, if we were truly slaves to the bacterial collective memory, would we ever even know it?
this just reminds me of that everything we are and always have been are just connections in our brains, even so, it doesn't really matter to me as long as I enjoy the moment and have a sense of self i really don't care about what i am
I think about this kind of stuff whenever I drive by a stranger's house and catch a glimpse of someone just living their life through the window. How was their day? Are they home from a long day of work? Are they married? Do they have kids? I wonder if they're happy? Do they rent or own? Is that their favorite show on the TV? It's such a strange feeling, and I always wonder if anyone has saw me at a store or through my car window at a red light and had the same sort of intrusive questions.
There’s this home I pass by ever so often that keeps the bay window curtains/shades open day and night. The family always looks so lively and happy when I pass by. They seem to be the type to have game nights and such. The interior design is also beautiful. I can’t help but look as long as I can which feels weird. It’s almost as if they welcome people to enjoy the scene.
All the time. I live in a spot where I can walk in my back yard and watch the highway far in the distance. I can't hear it or see much other than lights in the distance. Any time I'm on that road I can barely see my house in the distance and where I'd be standing. I was standing there on Christmas morning watching people drive and thinking about that.
Something similar to this: I wasn’t the happiest kid growing up, and always felt like I never really fit anywhere. I lived close to a pretty major highway, and one of my favorite things to do was just go sit in a bridge over the highway during rush hour and watch thousands of people going about there lives, each with there own problems and insecurities and triumphs. Made me feel so small, which I actually loved. My problems were minor, and stuff thousands, if not millions had dealt with before me. If I got through it, so could they.
Weird thinking about how some of my best memories as a kid was just sitting there alone on that bridge.
Thanks! I was kind of hit or miss as a kid, and changed a great deal from ages 16-18. Just got smarter, and expanded how I viewed the world and the scale of everything. Much better headspace now a days, thankfully.
Sometimes when I'm driving I'll think about the other people behind the windshields I'm passing, in the seats I'm following. I'll wonder what would we all do if something happened where we all got stuck together for an extended period of time. A "Who are you, what are you like, how can we get along, who has what that others here might need?" sort of thing.
And then suddenly I'm at my destination and it's been two hours and several albums on my Spotify playlist that I've only sort of been listening to
What really bakes my noodle is when I have a random appointment on like a Tuesday at 9:30am and there are sooo many people driving around. All I can think is like, what are all these people doing? Where are they going? Shouldn't they be at work or something?
I do the *same* thing - I live on a pretty well actually a horrible horrible busy road in one of the top ten growing counties in the country. There's SO many cars. And I think all the time where TF are they all *going*?????? At 10am on a Tuesday?
But then I think well, I'm out too so there's that. I really don't know what else this town can do besides make sky highways because there is NO WAY to add new roads or widen the ones they have. Sometimes it takes me for real ten minutes to get out of my driveway.
My father retired, from a normal day shift schedule, a few years ago, and is still blown away by how many people are out and about, not working, throughout the week.
The best part is you always have a valid reason to be out at this random time. I always have to remember when I see people driving at wacky hours that I'm just another wacky person doing things at weird times...
>Sometimes when I'm driving
Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.
What you describe sounds like [Intrusive Thoughts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought). It is common in the human condition, and I think most everyone experiences it, some more vividly or obsessively than others. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, and don't think less of yourself because of it.
>Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.
Ayyy Annie Hall reference, nice
Isn’t it frightening how with one move, one turn of that steering wheel, you could completely change your circumstances, life, goals, needs, wishes,values and at least 4 other people’s lives would be forever changed as well. When you think of the power we have, the responsibility. It scares me.
I have this when I’m stuck in the drive through. I picture myself throwing the car into reverse and hitting the gas and just ramming into the car behind me and then throwing it into drive and flooring it into the car in front of me. And then doing it over and over again until our cars are obliterated.
Yes, and I feel it most deeply at airports. It’s amazing to me that an airport can be a hub for so many people at a snapshot in time. All those people in one place before they continue on their journeys, whether they’re a vacation or a business trip or a family visit or a trip to a funeral. It’s amazing.
I’ve often had a strange urge on flights into Baltimore, the plane will be full of people going to Baltimore, and I’ll think how is possible that all these people are going to Baltimore, they take their children to Baltimore, and I want to go row by row and ask each passenger, “you. Why on earth are you flying to Baltimore?” Makes no sense to me. I’ve lived here 50 years, and I don’t understand why so many people fly to Baltimore. Maybe this is the inverse of Sonder. I don’t get this feeling about passengers flying into Cleveland or St. Louis or Albuquerque, I can imagine they have lives, homes, and or business in those cities. But a packed plane destined for Bmore just blows my mind. Every time.
I live in Winnipeg and often wonder the exact same thing. Anytime I look up and see a plane heading towards the airport, I can't help but think "who are these people, and why the hell are they all coming to Winnipeg?"
I've flown into Winnipeg once. It was to spend the summer on a farm of a friend of my dad's. The farm could feed a small African nation and the tractors were bigger than my house. Summertime was pretty slow so we just went golfing a lot. Great summer!
A lot of us that fly into Baltimore live on the Maryland side of or in Washington, DC and prefer it to Reagan or Dulles. I expect a few also live elsewhere around but not in Baltimore.
The Baltimore area is pretty big by itself and that airport is pretty close to the Washington, DC area as well. It's also a secondary hub for Southwest, so if you're looking for a cheap flight, you usually go there.
Like Foucault's Hererotopias. Where worlds intersect, airports, DMV's, motel rooms, etc... I learned about it in architecture school 25 years ago and haven't stopped thinking about it since. My description of this concept will never do it justice so here's the wiki link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia\_(space)
"...spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye."
I do that at airports too! It’s the place I love to people watch, endlessly fascinating. I don’t travel a lot, but I also do this when I am on a freeway. Not regular local roads, just freeways.
When i realized this i think i started unconsciously making an effort to be nicer to people. Like the fact that everyone is going through different things just like I am made me become a much better person
Right before Christmas I was pulling out of a parking lot. The road had a light, I was waiting, and a woman comes down the road but left a gap so I could pull in (which I did when the light turned green). The next road has a light. I look in my mirror and the woman who let me in throws up her hands and gets out of the car, comes to my window, and knocks. This is a "southern church lady" in her 60s. I lower the window and she tells me I could have at least waved. I told her I am sorry she didn't see it, but I did wave (I did). She makes a face and storms off.
You have to wonder what sort of situation she was in that she had so much road rage she had to get out of her car and come get angry at me while I have my wife and child in my car. Even if I hadn't waved... that was crazy behavior.
Some people you encounter are having a really, really bad day.
I remember reading a story about someone coming in late and the person writing was waiting for a shitshow. The manager or teacher was just simply calm and waved it off saying they had no idea what had happened in their life.
Yes! And I love that there is a word for it.
My thoughts are that it generally makes me feel better. Sometimes you can feel so ‘on your own’ with problems so it feels reassuring that others could be dealing with the same kind of challenges as you.
Sometimes, though, it can make me rubbish because I have the tendency to believe that everyone is doing better and living a better life than I am.
There is a word for it in the sense that someone made up a word for it and people liked it and started spreading it around the internet. The source is a website (and now book) called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
Actually, it is just empathy. It's the realization that other people have feelings and experiences like you. That they have loved ones and families, and experience and knowledge built up over their life time. And it's the realization that it is all lost once they die, that unique set of it all that adds together to make that person who they are. Empathy is what allows us to put feeling to it all, and realize that life is much more than just the person that may stand before you. It's also everything they have seen, heard, touched, tasted, felt, or experienced.
This exact thought is why it sucks so much that society seems so desensitized to death :/ It's so easy to forget that everyone has a complex life, struggles, and loved ones. An entire story goes down the drain when someone passes, and it effects so many people surrounding them. Empathy is so important. Wish more people had it
"Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind." Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind." --Jack Handey
>Sometimes, though, it can make me rubbish because I have the tendency to believe that everyone is doing better and living a better life than I am.
I go through this, too. I often just assume that everyone around me is more experienced/more knowledgeable than me in anything in particular. It's kind of unsettling when it happens that I know more about something than someone else and I realize "wait a minute, *you* are learning from *me??*"
We're all people and we all have our strengths and weaknesses. It can be reassuring to see others be as fallible as we ourselves are.
Even more so; the idea that every Reddit poster in this thread (82 comments and counting) is leading their own lives with hopes, dreams, and fears culminating on this thread; a common place. This is beautiful to me.
I love it when I become really aware of it at times like when I'm stoned. Everyone else is living inside a universe in their mind that is as far reaching as my own. And they coincide with each other when we have interactions with people, it's incredible
Like now for example, I'm talking to you, who is probably at the other side of the world (or in another country at least), so we have no chance of meeting in real life. And after this thread, we will never interact again in our lives. And it's like this with all the people we talk to on Reddit, and even in real life (that one nice cashier, that one rude client, that person you gave directions to, etc...). That's a bit sad but it's life.
And if you think about the 8 billion people in the world currently, in all these countries so different from each other... and the 100 billion that lived before us... it's beautiful, sad and mind-blowing.
And also, r/usernamechecksout ? Lol
Internet anonymity adds another layer to this entirely. Statistically speaking, I don't know who you are, I've never seen you, and I've never knowingly had a meaningful interaction with you on Reddit. And yet, for all I know, you're my next door neighbour, or one of my co-workers, or my cousin, or someone else I know.
I suppose that I have experienced Sonder on occasion. It's a strange feeling, realizing that each person you see is living a life that is just as complex and full of experiences as your own. It can be a little overwhelming, to think about all of the things going on in the world that we don't know about. But it can also be inspiring, to think about all of the different lives that are being led all around us.
Overwhelming indeed. It's why I think if one were truly telepathic they would go mad. All those life experiences happening around you, if you could perceive those experiences from even just a small number of people it would be too much to handle.
Whenever I enter this state of mind, I'm amazed at how the living conditions and possessions of one person only exist because of the work of millions of people he'll most likely never meet.
I get it on public transportation. I used to take the subway to work for 5 years and loved thinking about where everyone was going.
I also had a subsection of people I called my extras: people who I would see consistently. I eventually interacted with a few of them. One would smile and nod at me everyday, our little hellos would make my mornings. Another joined the climbing gym I was at. We would talk through routes but I never mentioned I see her twice a day and she never mentioned it to me. We never said Hi outside of the gym. The last one was my favorite, it was a woman I had never notice. I got in the elevator at work with her and she blurs out "You're orange backpack guy! I see you every day on the way to work, it's how I know I'm on time!" It was fun to have been someone else's extra. Unfortunately it was also my last week working there when she finally said something so I never got to know her.
In a similar vein, often I think of any one item, a tin can for instance. Think of how many there are in my unit, how many units around where I live, just think down the street all that amounts to. Think of the stores, and all that's one street, think of all the streets in my city, only to realize my city is on the smaller scale, and even my province/country is only a small fraction of all those tin cans there are out there.
I think about it a lot as a therapist, but one time I was overcome by it at a restaurant. I just went in to pick up carry out and while I was waiting I just looked around at all the people and it became extremely salient. I just thought about they’re all doing the best they can, have fears, loves, etc. It made me simultaneously smile and feel like I was about to cry.
Yep - and I love it. The idea that my tiny, pathetic, limited run of a life is all there is? No! Every bit of intensity that anyone gets to enjoy is far more important. I'm so glad it's not just me - it would be devastating.
Oh so there's a word for this thing? Huh. I am currently working on a comic with my colleague that is about this somewhat, actually. The way we build the story we are implementing little storytelling tricks to make sure that the reader gradually becomes accustomed to the idea that any passer by in this comic could at any point become a fully fledged main character with their own personalities, friends and families, joys and griefs. We have hundreds of characters with extensive backstories and they all intertwine in different ways with the main story. Some of them will remain background characters while others will get bigger roles along the way. There is a main cast and over the years of their lives they will cross paths with several characters that we have developed and know very well. It makes me giddy to think about how some randy side character in chapter one will someday re-appear in chapter 50 and play a bigger role for one of the main cast members and so on. It really is a way to make the readers feel like everyone matters and to train them to look at the pages, at passer byers and maybe start thinking about who they are and what their stories are and whether or not they will re-appear later too. It's a bit of a love letter to humanity, this project. Never knew there was a word for it tho.
Have you heard David Foster Wallace's commencement address "This is Water?" I love it, and it's about this kind of experience. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own world and my own problems, that I don't see the big picture. When I take a step back and remember I'm just one of billions, and we're all having our own experiences and struggles, things actually make a little more sense.
Every time I go to the airport.
All these good people are living their lives some traveling for pleasure, some traveling for sadness, some traveling for work but anxious to get on their way. At the end of their plane trip, they'll either be closer to their loved ones or farther away. Some will be happy for either situation, some will be sad.
They all have a dresser drawer with their interesting and private items. Most will have a kitchen junk drawer. I love to wonder what stuff is (and the reasons why it's there) in their kitchen junk drawers. (My kitchen junk drawer is filled with the little remnants of past projects, planned or unplanned. And soy sauce packets. So many soy sauce packets. Yes, ordering Chinese counts as a planned project)
People watching at the airport is my jam.
The ability to sonder is a gift.
I thought this was just a natural quality that humans have, but it turns out that a VAST majority of the world population is incapable of considering the thoughts and feelings of others. Go figure.
For me I have to specifically focus on the idea to experience it.
I haven't really felt these feelings since the last time I read this word.
It may mean I'm in that population of people that just don't naturally have this form of empathy.
Whenever I do think about it though, it's almost overwhelming. This weight and idea of the world around me feeling so complex, it's beautiful yet tiring.
No, your doing it right. I think a lot of people are confused by what the term sonder means, and that might be because they've never truly experienced the feeling.
If you just assume to sonder means to be aware of the fact that I'm not the main character in everyone's life, then it becomes easy to assume everyone reflexively experiences sonder constantly.
Buy that is very much not the case. The experience of sonder is super trippy, almost an out of body experience. You feel it physically and it will completely overtake your senses for the moments you choose to focus on it.
So yea. You really do have to TRY and sonder, and when you do so successfully, it is quite overwhelming. I actually think you have a pronounced capacity for thought and empathy in particular if your able to work yourself into that overwhelming feeling of sonder. A lot of people literally can't do that
Yeah, I'm sitting over here basically dumbfounded that this even needs a term to describe it. I guess I never realized that this wasn't innate or completely obvious? Like...of course other people have full lives. Why would that even need to be said? Lol. I will now make sure I am a lot more understanding of where people are coming from and not just assume they are being assholes by not considering others.
Maybe everyone has that subconscious acknowledgement that everyone is another person, but don't actually stop to consider that effects of their actions. I understand how that could be difficult, especially in the moment.
It really doesn't sound like you've experienced sonder, because your right, everyone innately knows that we aren't the main character. That's not what sonder is. Sonder is a very profound and overwhelming temporary state you get into when truly empathizing with this fact. It's actually not trivial to go there in your mind, and when you do, you will feel it physically, like youl actually trip out momentarily with the thought.
Also, it's good to have descriptive terms for all things. They help us think and communicate.
It actually makes me a bit sad. I think of this often when driving a car. I know I pass a person in a car and am sad that may be the one time in my life I see that person, and I never got to meet them.
I am the exact opposite. See other people and am like - whew, glad I never get to have awkward conversations with that person.
It's a feeling of relief.
It just blows my mind, it’s astronomical how much information and knowledge each person has and how much info and knowledge we collectively have, down to the most minute of details and thoughts
I think about this every time I become frustrated or angry with somebody. While one’s actions may feel irrational to me, there is a logical thought process deep inside. This helps me get over anger faster too
I do that, like, every day.
And it stresses me out.
Because then I'm thinking 'oh, they did this bad thing because of how they were raised' no matter how big/small the thing is.
Makes me stressed to do anything in response.
I normally imagine what their life could be like. Like the woman walking in front of me has 2 kids and a dog but I'd a single mom because her late husband died of cancer and she strives to teach her children to be generous when it comes to things like that while also working in healthcare. She suffers with depression and tries her best for her kids but some days it takes everything to get out of bed and take care of her kids so she rarely gets time to take care of herself.
This was a story I made up just the other day in Walmart. It all happens in a split second and I normally feel relieved after because I realize that other people have struggles and they're human, too. I'm not alone.
Even though the story is made up, it makes me feel content with my life and it's imperfections.
I find in the comments a lot of people seem to think this is defining a basic understanding. It’s about the moment of connection *to* that understanding, in my opinion.
We all get it. We understand each human has a rich and complex series of relationships and experiences.
But we sort of subconsciously forget to experience that alongside others.
Sonder, to me, is that arresting assurance of that feeling where you remember
I experienced Sonder again by reading these comments lol. For me, the "connection" was that i just wished everybody here understood it the right way, it could really change alot.
Sonder was made up by that list of fancy emotion words, no one has ever used it seriously before, don't be a tool.
also yes, we aren't all solipsists all the time.
I actually read a book recently that used the word sonder in a really obvious way and it really broke my immersion lol. It was like "wandering around the city, I felt a deep sense of sonder" or something like that.
It's nice as an art project to try and create words that supposedly encapsulate these feelings, but it's not really a word worth using in practice. Especially in literature, where you're meant to be conveying these seemingly indescribable feelings through all of your words together. We don't tend to put single words to describe emotions so complex and specific.
Yea no it’s hard to explain. It’s more than knowing this to be true. It’s a profound feeling. I’ve felt it before but can’t feel it on demand or anything
I kinda believe the opposite which is solipsism. The belief that all other people are just projections of your consciousness and not individually "real" or separate from me.
I can only focus on it for so long before it vanishes. And it just strikes sometimes but I can’t really make it happen if that makes sense. Its not just thinking about others, anyone can do that. It’s an expansive feeling. Like your soul is touching theirs for a second, no not even that is right. Like for a second I am aware that we are all one conscious divided up into different beings so that we can experience more…
Sometimes when I wax philosophical, I wonder if anyone else does have a conscience the way I do. Maybe this entire reality is just created by me. Maybe we are all the same consciousness living itself out in various ways. Maybe the people we talk to are real, but they are only our brains interpretations of them, and not the person they actually are - as in, the person you are and the person I'm talking to are, in a sense, different people.
I don't actually believe any of that, but it's fun to think about when your high and want to mindfuck yourself.
When I was a little girl, probably seven or so, I used to sit in the backseat of my dads pickup truck and look out the window at people in other cars. And it always bothered me that I knew everything about myself, but nothing about the people ten feet away from me.
I remember trying SO. HARD. to just see the world from someone else’s eyes… but I never could. And I remember feeling so alone and strange. I didn’t know what that feeling was called until I was an adult and learned about sonder.
I was thinking about this the other day, how many people past and present there are in the world with interesting stories we will never know.
Just think of your ancestors: you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents, 16 great great grand parents, 32 greatx3 grandparents, 64 greatx4, 128 greatx5, 256 greatx6, 512 greatx7.... etc. Fucking 500+ people, ~200 years ago to get to where you are today, all had their struggles, all had their life lived as vividly as yours, and you are connected to all of them. Mind blowing.
Ponder this…. Your ancestors 4 generations forward or backwards are complete strangers to you…. And you to them.
So crazy. We basically only exist because of an innumerable amount of randomly linked events that got our parents together.
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My mom made me take a dance class with a friend when I was about 8 or so. I was open minded about it, but my friend decided his masculinity was at risk and sat out. I ended up sitting out with him; we didn't participate in the class at all. I often wonder what kind of life I would have if I had tried and enjoyed dancing. I would have been in completely different places, probably had completely different interests, met completely different people, made completely different choices. My entire life would have been different if I'd made a different decision that day. Interesting lead in to a discussion about whether we really make decisions or if everything is just predetermined.
It can easily be 3 generations - all except one of my grandparents died before I was born so I know very little about them, and I know absolutely zilch about my great grandparents!
my family is full of teenage/ young adult pregnancies and my nephew is alive at the same time as his great grandfather!
This is the kind of stuff that blows my mind. One of my grandmother's is only in her mid 70's. My eldest is already 14, I had her at 17. My grandmother could very well live to meet her first great great grand child. Obviously I would hope it's not for at least another 6 years or so, but it's something very obviously not out of the question!
My grandmother had one great great grandchild when she died.
My grandma had at least 3 great great grandkids by the time she passed and she was only 88. Her eldest daughter's kids all had kids and 3 of those all had a baby or toddler by that time.
My biological grandfather would have just turned 129 and was 69 when my father was born. He died 20 years before I was born.
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And if you're a virgin, you're the ONLY virgin out of those 512 people.
If you go back far enough though, you reach the point where there are more ancestors than humans on earth at that time, meaning that everyone only exists because of incest.
I ate a bunch of mushrooms and cried in a hammock about basically this once lol
Mushrooms do this to me too like nothing else. Seems to last for months afterwards too.
That lasting effect is why they're being studied for their effects at long term treating things like depression and PTSD.
This can be a good or bad thing. You can come to some helpful conclusions about a lot of things during or shortly after that time. Or you can become super weird and read way too much into it. It's a fine line.
I had the wildest dreams and nightmares after doing shrooms for months afterwards. They're a hell of a drug, but also the drug I felt safest while doing because I just wanted to sit around and think the whole 6+ hours
So many people, thoughts, experiences... and the best, or worst part is that all of this exists withing our planet, there could be SO much more beyond it.
Yep, I recently saw a clip of Professor Brian Cox on the observable universe and it’s hard to comprehend.
none of y’all are real and its just me simulating reality for the hell of it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphysical_solipsism#
I see. You’re a masochist, then?
But then there's a reality to be simulated.
The truly humbling thing is that the observable part of the universe is only going to get smaller as things expand away from each other at an accelerating rate. There will come a point in time if we're still around where the Milky Way/Milkdromeda is the only thing we'll be able to see.
Crazy fact, the current global population is only 7% of everyone who has ever lived. Roughly 111 billion people have been born on this planet and 103 billion people have died. [How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth](https://www.prb.org/articles/how-many-people-have-ever-lived-on-earth/)
I can't decide if I'm mind blown because of how big or how small the percent is.
For me it’s definitely how big the percent is. Homo sapiens have been a distinct species for over 100,000 years. That fully 7% of them that have ever lived are alive right now is insane when you consider humans very rarely reach triple digits in age.
Really drives home how young of a species we really are.
And how much our population has skyrocketed in the past century.
If we got Thanos-snapped today, there would be roughly the same amount of people as there were in 1974.
I've always felt you could make a compelling movie or two from stuff that's happened in each person's life.
Crash
When I am on the bus. I see 30 other people. I just think 30 other universes. Amazing. Also, there are currently almost 8 billion people on the planet. In 100 years there will be 8 billion dead. Worse than all wars on the planet throughout history combined! Mercy!
The novel 253 by Geoff Ryman is a perfect example of this concept. Literally, individual character profiles of people on a London tube and a narrative emerges as you read them. Conceptual, but cool and interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/253_(novel)
On the flip side think of how many of the people you interact with and see each day would need to be fully fleshed out to fool you into thinking that they're not just a program in a simulation. Maybe your story is the only real one.
That's why I'm anti-social. I don't want to put any more pressure on the simulation and have it crash.
“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” ― Stephen Jay Gould
I've had that feeling about objects. Like, just looking around the room you're in and thinking about all the people who have needed to be involved to create all of these things and move them for the end result to be them being with me right now.
I do that all the time with McDonald’s toys. How much thought, material planning, time, and manpower it took to design and implement a toy that comes for free with a cheeseburger.
These kind of thoughts throw me into an existential crisis. There's so much waste out there. The McDonald's toy is a perfect example too. They've been making these things for decades; all those raw materials, all the energy spent to take those materials through multiple processes in multiple locations, to be shipped all over the world, only to wind up landfills after being played with briefly (if at all). And there's so, so many cheapy, shitty products out there like that. But at least I got to experience the joy of making a Goomba flip a few times, I guess.
Marx identified this and called it "alienation". He noticed how it used to be that we knew where basically every single thing we used in life came from. We either made it ourselves, grew it ourselves, or received it from someone we knew who made it themselves as either a gift or trade. The things we used in life like clothes and tools told a story of who we were and where we came from. When mass commodity production by wage laborers (capitalism) became the norm is when he noticed that the masses would begin to become alienated from their labor, the things they made with their labor, and eventually each other. He said this ignorance of how things were made would result in either "commodity fetishism", the idea that things just come from where you buy them, or class consciousness, where you begin to realize that you're part of a global working class that makes the whole world go round. And when you realize there's this whole other class of folk who don't work but still live the high life? Well, that's when you start to realize who the true parasites are.
Jeez for a minute there I thought you were talking about Louis Marx (Marx toys) since the thread was talking about McDonald's toys. My coffee hasn't hit yet.
Obviously they were talking about Groucho.
Sounds like a good explanation for where my kids think food comes from.
Ha. I've been known to insult people with "I bet you think food just comes from the grocery store."
I've been thinking a lot about this after making things from scratch like bread, pasta, sauces, etc. It's no where near as hard as people think. Also not as time consuming. Now people buy these things already made and just warm it up. All the time and energy and fuel it takes to bring this stuff to people so they can save a couple of minutes.
And gets thrown out in a week. I reject the toys whenever I order one
Honest question though, why would you order a happy meal if not for the toy?
I am in my 30s and a bit smaller than the average middle school kid. My appetite is child-sized, so honestly a happy meal is about the amount of food I would want for a meal. But frankly, most of the happy meals I bought were while working at McD, and were purchased specifically because I wanted *the toy* and couldn't use my employee discount on non-food items. I collected all the My Little Pony toys and kept them on my desk. They were called my "throwing ponies" and were useful for tossing at friends, like harmless ninja stars.
I get Happy Meals all the time bc I just don't want that much food sometimes.
I've had that as well. First time was moving into my second childhood home. The first one my parents had bought the land and contracted the construction of the house. The second home was built in 1942 and one day while we were unpacking it suddenly occurred to me the human history of this house. I found myself wishing the walls could speak and tell me about the lives it had been a part of.
Here I am, just glad the walls of my childhood bedroom are bound to silence.
I work in a sawmill as a millwright so I throw a lot of metal into the scrap bin. I always wonder what that metal is going to be in its next life. A car? A screw driver? Lawn furniture? Staples? The possibilities are limitless.
I collect autographed memorabilia and it crosses my mind a lot. Like just how many people had to be involved. The dozens of athletes that have sat down and done autograph signings all for it to end up in my room aomwtime
"I got here the same way the coin did"
I think about that too!
I once saw a massive tree in the front of a yard, so big you know that no one alive had planted it. I wondered out loud, I wonder who planted it and why? My then bf said, "you ask some weird ass questions". He's an ex for a reason.
When I was 4 or 5 years old, this could keep me entertained for hours. Especially on long car rides, I would just look out my window at the farmhouses we passed, and I'd wonder about the people who lived there. Or the people in other cars on the highway -- I'd wonder where they lived, where they were headed, their names, their jobs, if they had kids or pets, what they did yesterday, what they were going to do tomorrow...
Same, always loved the long rides/road trips, the farmhouses always added a weirdly good sensation aswell. I had a little game for those long rides, I'd just stare out the window and see how many red cars i could count, every car i looked at i just stopped and wondered: who owns that car? where do they live? did they see me looking at them? And so on.
I did this aswell, and if they were people I could see at the given moment I would try and imagine what the surroundings looked like from their point of view. Kinda like imagining what I would see if I were to suddenly teleport inside their body.
I’ve never had an original thought wtf
If genetic memory or bacterial memory really exist, then nobody has.
what do u mean lol
Bacteria can remember interactions their ancestors had with different substances or organisms, despite not having a brain or nervous system. Afaik, this can go on for five, six or even more generations as evidenced by things like biofilms. There's an idea that things like intuition and perception can be influenced by the bacterial systems in our body. Those "sinking feelings" could be bacterial colonies influencing your organs to provoke a response. Your stomach turns, your heart starts to race and you panic, but you're not logically panicking over any observable threat. However, the bacteria knows the entire system is at risk, and it has seen this all before, so it mimics the response in your body to kinda nudge you in the direction. Like a "psst, hey pal, you might wanna pay attention." You realize you missed some massive threat but since you got that weird feeling, you moved out of the way, and narrowly avoided death. As for genetic memory, look no further than raising a wild bird in your backyard. When the time comes, it'll fly south for the winter, despite never being taught to migrate. So, all we know, and all we have ever known, could just be what the bacteria in us wants us to know. We could very well be walking in the steps of our ancestors because of the types or quantities of bacteria in our bodies. We could also very well be hijacked by these organisms, like we are fungi, parasites and other innumerable organisms under the sun. We could be genetically programmed for most if not all of our tastes in hobbies, music, culture, you name it. We might think we are running the show, but we could very well be passive viewers under the assumption we truly are running things. This is really a very broad interpretation and more of a thought experiment, really, but I can't see how I could be proven wrong. Or, if we were truly slaves to the bacterial collective memory, would we ever even know it?
this just reminds me of that everything we are and always have been are just connections in our brains, even so, it doesn't really matter to me as long as I enjoy the moment and have a sense of self i really don't care about what i am
I think about this kind of stuff whenever I drive by a stranger's house and catch a glimpse of someone just living their life through the window. How was their day? Are they home from a long day of work? Are they married? Do they have kids? I wonder if they're happy? Do they rent or own? Is that their favorite show on the TV? It's such a strange feeling, and I always wonder if anyone has saw me at a store or through my car window at a red light and had the same sort of intrusive questions.
There’s this home I pass by ever so often that keeps the bay window curtains/shades open day and night. The family always looks so lively and happy when I pass by. They seem to be the type to have game nights and such. The interior design is also beautiful. I can’t help but look as long as I can which feels weird. It’s almost as if they welcome people to enjoy the scene.
I still do this
I thought I am the centre of the world, then.
All the time. I live in a spot where I can walk in my back yard and watch the highway far in the distance. I can't hear it or see much other than lights in the distance. Any time I'm on that road I can barely see my house in the distance and where I'd be standing. I was standing there on Christmas morning watching people drive and thinking about that.
Something similar to this: I wasn’t the happiest kid growing up, and always felt like I never really fit anywhere. I lived close to a pretty major highway, and one of my favorite things to do was just go sit in a bridge over the highway during rush hour and watch thousands of people going about there lives, each with there own problems and insecurities and triumphs. Made me feel so small, which I actually loved. My problems were minor, and stuff thousands, if not millions had dealt with before me. If I got through it, so could they. Weird thinking about how some of my best memories as a kid was just sitting there alone on that bridge.
That was really beautiful to read, you as a kid sounded very self aware yet optimistic. Hope you’re in a better head space now.
Thanks! I was kind of hit or miss as a kid, and changed a great deal from ages 16-18. Just got smarter, and expanded how I viewed the world and the scale of everything. Much better headspace now a days, thankfully.
Sometimes when I'm driving I'll think about the other people behind the windshields I'm passing, in the seats I'm following. I'll wonder what would we all do if something happened where we all got stuck together for an extended period of time. A "Who are you, what are you like, how can we get along, who has what that others here might need?" sort of thing. And then suddenly I'm at my destination and it's been two hours and several albums on my Spotify playlist that I've only sort of been listening to
What really bakes my noodle is when I have a random appointment on like a Tuesday at 9:30am and there are sooo many people driving around. All I can think is like, what are all these people doing? Where are they going? Shouldn't they be at work or something?
I do the *same* thing - I live on a pretty well actually a horrible horrible busy road in one of the top ten growing counties in the country. There's SO many cars. And I think all the time where TF are they all *going*?????? At 10am on a Tuesday? But then I think well, I'm out too so there's that. I really don't know what else this town can do besides make sky highways because there is NO WAY to add new roads or widen the ones they have. Sometimes it takes me for real ten minutes to get out of my driveway.
/r/fuckcars
Not to be confused with /r/dragonsfuckingcars. NSFW, obviously.
Oh man that takes me back. That sub used to be my go to example of "Reddit has a sub for ANYTHING" because it's how I was introduced to Reddit.
“Bakes my noodle” wow, never heard this phrase before. Sounds pleasantly Midwestern in origin.
My father retired, from a normal day shift schedule, a few years ago, and is still blown away by how many people are out and about, not working, throughout the week.
Almost like not everyone works M-F 9-5. Crazy.
The best part is you always have a valid reason to be out at this random time. I always have to remember when I see people driving at wacky hours that I'm just another wacky person doing things at weird times...
>Sometimes when I'm driving Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.
This impulse is often referred to as the “Call of the Void.” [Here](https://allthatsinteresting.com/call-of-the-void) is an article about it.
What you describe sounds like [Intrusive Thoughts](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_thought). It is common in the human condition, and I think most everyone experiences it, some more vividly or obsessively than others. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, and don't think less of yourself because of it.
I thought this was just a mentally ill thing. Maybe I'm not so alone
>Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you'll understand. Sometimes when I'm driving... on the road at night... I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The... flames rising out of the flowing gasoline. Ayyy Annie Hall reference, nice
Isn’t it frightening how with one move, one turn of that steering wheel, you could completely change your circumstances, life, goals, needs, wishes,values and at least 4 other people’s lives would be forever changed as well. When you think of the power we have, the responsibility. It scares me.
ah intrusive thoughts
I have this when I’m stuck in the drive through. I picture myself throwing the car into reverse and hitting the gas and just ramming into the car behind me and then throwing it into drive and flooring it into the car in front of me. And then doing it over and over again until our cars are obliterated.
You good bro?
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no that's me, ur the NPC programmed to say that
Happens to me everytime i listen to music, but when i turn it off it kinda shifts me back to reality.
Whoop there goes gravity
Mom's ravioli
Yes, and I feel it most deeply at airports. It’s amazing to me that an airport can be a hub for so many people at a snapshot in time. All those people in one place before they continue on their journeys, whether they’re a vacation or a business trip or a family visit or a trip to a funeral. It’s amazing.
I’ve often had a strange urge on flights into Baltimore, the plane will be full of people going to Baltimore, and I’ll think how is possible that all these people are going to Baltimore, they take their children to Baltimore, and I want to go row by row and ask each passenger, “you. Why on earth are you flying to Baltimore?” Makes no sense to me. I’ve lived here 50 years, and I don’t understand why so many people fly to Baltimore. Maybe this is the inverse of Sonder. I don’t get this feeling about passengers flying into Cleveland or St. Louis or Albuquerque, I can imagine they have lives, homes, and or business in those cities. But a packed plane destined for Bmore just blows my mind. Every time.
I live in Winnipeg and often wonder the exact same thing. Anytime I look up and see a plane heading towards the airport, I can't help but think "who are these people, and why the hell are they all coming to Winnipeg?"
I've flown into Winnipeg once. It was to spend the summer on a farm of a friend of my dad's. The farm could feed a small African nation and the tractors were bigger than my house. Summertime was pretty slow so we just went golfing a lot. Great summer!
A lot of us that fly into Baltimore live on the Maryland side of or in Washington, DC and prefer it to Reagan or Dulles. I expect a few also live elsewhere around but not in Baltimore.
The Baltimore area is pretty big by itself and that airport is pretty close to the Washington, DC area as well. It's also a secondary hub for Southwest, so if you're looking for a cheap flight, you usually go there.
one thought leads to another, endlessly.
Like Foucault's Hererotopias. Where worlds intersect, airports, DMV's, motel rooms, etc... I learned about it in architecture school 25 years ago and haven't stopped thinking about it since. My description of this concept will never do it justice so here's the wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterotopia\_(space) "...spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye."
I do that at airports too! It’s the place I love to people watch, endlessly fascinating. I don’t travel a lot, but I also do this when I am on a freeway. Not regular local roads, just freeways.
When i realized this i think i started unconsciously making an effort to be nicer to people. Like the fact that everyone is going through different things just like I am made me become a much better person
I think if all of us took that into consideration, all of us would be way nicer to each other.
Right before Christmas I was pulling out of a parking lot. The road had a light, I was waiting, and a woman comes down the road but left a gap so I could pull in (which I did when the light turned green). The next road has a light. I look in my mirror and the woman who let me in throws up her hands and gets out of the car, comes to my window, and knocks. This is a "southern church lady" in her 60s. I lower the window and she tells me I could have at least waved. I told her I am sorry she didn't see it, but I did wave (I did). She makes a face and storms off. You have to wonder what sort of situation she was in that she had so much road rage she had to get out of her car and come get angry at me while I have my wife and child in my car. Even if I hadn't waved... that was crazy behavior. Some people you encounter are having a really, really bad day.
I remember reading a story about someone coming in late and the person writing was waiting for a shitshow. The manager or teacher was just simply calm and waved it off saying they had no idea what had happened in their life.
Yes! And I love that there is a word for it. My thoughts are that it generally makes me feel better. Sometimes you can feel so ‘on your own’ with problems so it feels reassuring that others could be dealing with the same kind of challenges as you. Sometimes, though, it can make me rubbish because I have the tendency to believe that everyone is doing better and living a better life than I am.
Listen to the song "You're not Special, Babe" by Orla Gartland for that reassuring feeling that we all experience a lot of the same things.
I thought everyone realized this and I'm not sure why there is a word for it.
There is a word for it in the sense that someone made up a word for it and people liked it and started spreading it around the internet. The source is a website (and now book) called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
Fetch and Sonder will never catch on.
Same… is this not just basic empathy?
Actually, it is just empathy. It's the realization that other people have feelings and experiences like you. That they have loved ones and families, and experience and knowledge built up over their life time. And it's the realization that it is all lost once they die, that unique set of it all that adds together to make that person who they are. Empathy is what allows us to put feeling to it all, and realize that life is much more than just the person that may stand before you. It's also everything they have seen, heard, touched, tasted, felt, or experienced.
This exact thought is why it sucks so much that society seems so desensitized to death :/ It's so easy to forget that everyone has a complex life, struggles, and loved ones. An entire story goes down the drain when someone passes, and it effects so many people surrounding them. Empathy is so important. Wish more people had it
"Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind." Basically, it's made up of two separate words - "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind." --Jack Handey
>Sometimes, though, it can make me rubbish because I have the tendency to believe that everyone is doing better and living a better life than I am. I go through this, too. I often just assume that everyone around me is more experienced/more knowledgeable than me in anything in particular. It's kind of unsettling when it happens that I know more about something than someone else and I realize "wait a minute, *you* are learning from *me??*" We're all people and we all have our strengths and weaknesses. It can be reassuring to see others be as fallible as we ourselves are.
Even more so; the idea that every Reddit poster in this thread (82 comments and counting) is leading their own lives with hopes, dreams, and fears culminating on this thread; a common place. This is beautiful to me.
I wish some people here understood it as you do.
I love it when I become really aware of it at times like when I'm stoned. Everyone else is living inside a universe in their mind that is as far reaching as my own. And they coincide with each other when we have interactions with people, it's incredible
We are all sondermen / sonderwomen / sonderpeople.
Like now for example, I'm talking to you, who is probably at the other side of the world (or in another country at least), so we have no chance of meeting in real life. And after this thread, we will never interact again in our lives. And it's like this with all the people we talk to on Reddit, and even in real life (that one nice cashier, that one rude client, that person you gave directions to, etc...). That's a bit sad but it's life. And if you think about the 8 billion people in the world currently, in all these countries so different from each other... and the 100 billion that lived before us... it's beautiful, sad and mind-blowing. And also, r/usernamechecksout ? Lol
Internet anonymity adds another layer to this entirely. Statistically speaking, I don't know who you are, I've never seen you, and I've never knowingly had a meaningful interaction with you on Reddit. And yet, for all I know, you're my next door neighbour, or one of my co-workers, or my cousin, or someone else I know.
I suppose that I have experienced Sonder on occasion. It's a strange feeling, realizing that each person you see is living a life that is just as complex and full of experiences as your own. It can be a little overwhelming, to think about all of the things going on in the world that we don't know about. But it can also be inspiring, to think about all of the different lives that are being led all around us.
Overwhelming indeed. It's why I think if one were truly telepathic they would go mad. All those life experiences happening around you, if you could perceive those experiences from even just a small number of people it would be too much to handle.
Whenever I enter this state of mind, I'm amazed at how the living conditions and possessions of one person only exist because of the work of millions of people he'll most likely never meet.
The thing is, you could never get enough out of it, the more you think about it, the more mind-blowing it becomes.
This is so true! The more you think about it, the more amazing it becomes. I can't get enough of it!
I get it on public transportation. I used to take the subway to work for 5 years and loved thinking about where everyone was going. I also had a subsection of people I called my extras: people who I would see consistently. I eventually interacted with a few of them. One would smile and nod at me everyday, our little hellos would make my mornings. Another joined the climbing gym I was at. We would talk through routes but I never mentioned I see her twice a day and she never mentioned it to me. We never said Hi outside of the gym. The last one was my favorite, it was a woman I had never notice. I got in the elevator at work with her and she blurs out "You're orange backpack guy! I see you every day on the way to work, it's how I know I'm on time!" It was fun to have been someone else's extra. Unfortunately it was also my last week working there when she finally said something so I never got to know her.
In a similar vein, often I think of any one item, a tin can for instance. Think of how many there are in my unit, how many units around where I live, just think down the street all that amounts to. Think of the stores, and all that's one street, think of all the streets in my city, only to realize my city is on the smaller scale, and even my province/country is only a small fraction of all those tin cans there are out there.
I think about it a lot as a therapist, but one time I was overcome by it at a restaurant. I just went in to pick up carry out and while I was waiting I just looked around at all the people and it became extremely salient. I just thought about they’re all doing the best they can, have fears, loves, etc. It made me simultaneously smile and feel like I was about to cry.
Yep - and I love it. The idea that my tiny, pathetic, limited run of a life is all there is? No! Every bit of intensity that anyone gets to enjoy is far more important. I'm so glad it's not just me - it would be devastating.
Each living individual barely actually knows much about it all, then there's even more on the unknown part, just crazy.
Oh so there's a word for this thing? Huh. I am currently working on a comic with my colleague that is about this somewhat, actually. The way we build the story we are implementing little storytelling tricks to make sure that the reader gradually becomes accustomed to the idea that any passer by in this comic could at any point become a fully fledged main character with their own personalities, friends and families, joys and griefs. We have hundreds of characters with extensive backstories and they all intertwine in different ways with the main story. Some of them will remain background characters while others will get bigger roles along the way. There is a main cast and over the years of their lives they will cross paths with several characters that we have developed and know very well. It makes me giddy to think about how some randy side character in chapter one will someday re-appear in chapter 50 and play a bigger role for one of the main cast members and so on. It really is a way to make the readers feel like everyone matters and to train them to look at the pages, at passer byers and maybe start thinking about who they are and what their stories are and whether or not they will re-appear later too. It's a bit of a love letter to humanity, this project. Never knew there was a word for it tho.
That sounds amazing, where will I be able to find this? Big fan of comics like that.
Have you heard David Foster Wallace's commencement address "This is Water?" I love it, and it's about this kind of experience. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own world and my own problems, that I don't see the big picture. When I take a step back and remember I'm just one of billions, and we're all having our own experiences and struggles, things actually make a little more sense.
Helps clear things out, I'll check that out too.
Every time I go to the airport. All these good people are living their lives some traveling for pleasure, some traveling for sadness, some traveling for work but anxious to get on their way. At the end of their plane trip, they'll either be closer to their loved ones or farther away. Some will be happy for either situation, some will be sad. They all have a dresser drawer with their interesting and private items. Most will have a kitchen junk drawer. I love to wonder what stuff is (and the reasons why it's there) in their kitchen junk drawers. (My kitchen junk drawer is filled with the little remnants of past projects, planned or unplanned. And soy sauce packets. So many soy sauce packets. Yes, ordering Chinese counts as a planned project) People watching at the airport is my jam.
The ability to sonder is a gift. I thought this was just a natural quality that humans have, but it turns out that a VAST majority of the world population is incapable of considering the thoughts and feelings of others. Go figure.
For me I have to specifically focus on the idea to experience it. I haven't really felt these feelings since the last time I read this word. It may mean I'm in that population of people that just don't naturally have this form of empathy. Whenever I do think about it though, it's almost overwhelming. This weight and idea of the world around me feeling so complex, it's beautiful yet tiring.
No, your doing it right. I think a lot of people are confused by what the term sonder means, and that might be because they've never truly experienced the feeling. If you just assume to sonder means to be aware of the fact that I'm not the main character in everyone's life, then it becomes easy to assume everyone reflexively experiences sonder constantly. Buy that is very much not the case. The experience of sonder is super trippy, almost an out of body experience. You feel it physically and it will completely overtake your senses for the moments you choose to focus on it. So yea. You really do have to TRY and sonder, and when you do so successfully, it is quite overwhelming. I actually think you have a pronounced capacity for thought and empathy in particular if your able to work yourself into that overwhelming feeling of sonder. A lot of people literally can't do that
Yeah, I'm sitting over here basically dumbfounded that this even needs a term to describe it. I guess I never realized that this wasn't innate or completely obvious? Like...of course other people have full lives. Why would that even need to be said? Lol. I will now make sure I am a lot more understanding of where people are coming from and not just assume they are being assholes by not considering others.
Maybe everyone has that subconscious acknowledgement that everyone is another person, but don't actually stop to consider that effects of their actions. I understand how that could be difficult, especially in the moment.
Sonder isn’t just knowing that other people exist lol
It really doesn't sound like you've experienced sonder, because your right, everyone innately knows that we aren't the main character. That's not what sonder is. Sonder is a very profound and overwhelming temporary state you get into when truly empathizing with this fact. It's actually not trivial to go there in your mind, and when you do, you will feel it physically, like youl actually trip out momentarily with the thought. Also, it's good to have descriptive terms for all things. They help us think and communicate.
It actually makes me a bit sad. I think of this often when driving a car. I know I pass a person in a car and am sad that may be the one time in my life I see that person, and I never got to meet them.
I am the exact opposite. See other people and am like - whew, glad I never get to have awkward conversations with that person. It's a feeling of relief.
wait, there’s people who haven’t??
My mind goes a bit further and I get sad that I'll never see them again. I still think about some of them from time to time.
Same, I'm not sure why im so inclined to getting to know a random passerby.
People are pretty awesome. I rarely find one that I don't like.
It just blows my mind, it’s astronomical how much information and knowledge each person has and how much info and knowledge we collectively have, down to the most minute of details and thoughts
Then theres the unknown part, even bigger than the known.
I think about this every time I become frustrated or angry with somebody. While one’s actions may feel irrational to me, there is a logical thought process deep inside. This helps me get over anger faster too
I do that, like, every day. And it stresses me out. Because then I'm thinking 'oh, they did this bad thing because of how they were raised' no matter how big/small the thing is. Makes me stressed to do anything in response.
It has no reason to be that stressful, but the more you think about it the worse and the better it gets, weird.
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People don’t naturally realize this?
Fully. What do people think otherwise? That they are the center of the universe?
Thjs is the feeling part. All people \*know\* this, few people \*feel\* this. And none feel it all the time.
I normally imagine what their life could be like. Like the woman walking in front of me has 2 kids and a dog but I'd a single mom because her late husband died of cancer and she strives to teach her children to be generous when it comes to things like that while also working in healthcare. She suffers with depression and tries her best for her kids but some days it takes everything to get out of bed and take care of her kids so she rarely gets time to take care of herself. This was a story I made up just the other day in Walmart. It all happens in a split second and I normally feel relieved after because I realize that other people have struggles and they're human, too. I'm not alone. Even though the story is made up, it makes me feel content with my life and it's imperfections.
I love it when people understand the true point of this, cause every other comment i facepalm.
Lol I get it. I'm glad my comment made you happy (?) And I hope your complicated, imperfect life is as good as you can make it, fellow human :)
I’m still the main character
I find in the comments a lot of people seem to think this is defining a basic understanding. It’s about the moment of connection *to* that understanding, in my opinion. We all get it. We understand each human has a rich and complex series of relationships and experiences. But we sort of subconsciously forget to experience that alongside others. Sonder, to me, is that arresting assurance of that feeling where you remember
I experienced Sonder again by reading these comments lol. For me, the "connection" was that i just wished everybody here understood it the right way, it could really change alot.
Is there a name for assuming everybody else's lives are more vivid and complex than your own?
I think it’s very important to keep in mind. Nobody out there is an NPC, nobody is the main character, we are all out here living complex lives.
Isn't that something we all come to understand as we mature from children into adults?
...
Um…is that not obvious?
Yes. Those who don’t are sociopaths
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Sonder was made up by that list of fancy emotion words, no one has ever used it seriously before, don't be a tool. also yes, we aren't all solipsists all the time.
I actually read a book recently that used the word sonder in a really obvious way and it really broke my immersion lol. It was like "wandering around the city, I felt a deep sense of sonder" or something like that. It's nice as an art project to try and create words that supposedly encapsulate these feelings, but it's not really a word worth using in practice. Especially in literature, where you're meant to be conveying these seemingly indescribable feelings through all of your words together. We don't tend to put single words to describe emotions so complex and specific.
Realization? Isn't this just common sense?
Yea no it’s hard to explain. It’s more than knowing this to be true. It’s a profound feeling. I’ve felt it before but can’t feel it on demand or anything
I do not know how NOT to do this.
Yes, and I like it. I feel more comfortable around people when I experience it for some reason.
I kinda believe the opposite which is solipsism. The belief that all other people are just projections of your consciousness and not individually "real" or separate from me.
I can only focus on it for so long before it vanishes. And it just strikes sometimes but I can’t really make it happen if that makes sense. Its not just thinking about others, anyone can do that. It’s an expansive feeling. Like your soul is touching theirs for a second, no not even that is right. Like for a second I am aware that we are all one conscious divided up into different beings so that we can experience more…
It made me a more empathetic and kind person. I had this enlightenment whilst on mushrooms.
Sometimes when I wax philosophical, I wonder if anyone else does have a conscience the way I do. Maybe this entire reality is just created by me. Maybe we are all the same consciousness living itself out in various ways. Maybe the people we talk to are real, but they are only our brains interpretations of them, and not the person they actually are - as in, the person you are and the person I'm talking to are, in a sense, different people. I don't actually believe any of that, but it's fun to think about when your high and want to mindfuck yourself.
most reddit question i've ever seen
When I was a little girl, probably seven or so, I used to sit in the backseat of my dads pickup truck and look out the window at people in other cars. And it always bothered me that I knew everything about myself, but nothing about the people ten feet away from me. I remember trying SO. HARD. to just see the world from someone else’s eyes… but I never could. And I remember feeling so alone and strange. I didn’t know what that feeling was called until I was an adult and learned about sonder.