We Don't Exist as Individuals (The Reality of Who You Are)

Determinism and the Illusion of Self

It's really unfortunate... but this is just the way things are... you don't actually exist, and neither do I.

I've gone through the typical speech plenty of times...

1. we're born into our lives beyond our individual choices, no one asked us

2. we're conditioned to become who we are by our environment

3. we have chemistry in our heads that is again, beyond our control, and yet it decides literally who we are

4. the time period we're born into, the things people do to us, every word, every action, it all molds us...

   
   It collectively means that nothing in this life or this world is actually "sentient" to an extent the concept of "sentience" is assumed.

We do things for ourselves and our families... right? Because... of course, that is what we "want", our bodies and minds tell us to protect our own. Every single thing we do is incentivized. Every time we make a decision, it is the result of seemingly endless unseen manipulation and control by forces (our biology & environment).

Things like physical attraction, we place so much weight on it and romanticize it. Many of us think every encounter is special or part of a divine plan... that or we otherwise feel we are living at least a meaningful experience that tells our story and makes us who we are... and I ask... when will your dream state end?

You know how dogs are infamous for wanting to mount every other thing they see indiscriminately? Do you ever think... maybe, that dog isn't so different from all human beings in the sense that the chemistry in that dogs brain is literally dragging that dog everywhere whether the dog actually wants to or not?

We dress up love... we embellish relationships... like they're a thing we chose.

We act like relationships are this thing that completes us and are the product of our own ideas. In realty, we're the result of millions of years of evolution ("allegedly"), and with that, your desire, your choices, all of it, well, you have about a million puppet strings yanking at your flesh telling you what to do at all times... all while you're convinced everything is your idea and that you have "free will".

Morality Shaped by Culture and Circumstance

Imagine you were not born into this reality as you know it, instead, you're born on an isolated island that modern civilization hasn't bothered to alter yet. You're part of an indigenous tribe, and they end the life of one person every year as part of their ritual to ensure the "evil spirits" stay away.

• If you don't take part in the ritual, you become the sacrifice,

• If you do participate in it, you get PTSD and everyone in typical civilization judges you/claims you're part of some cult that in turn society deems is worthy of 25 to life punishment for your cooperation in "murder".

Now imagine being someone like yourself, not born into those conditions, actually thinking you're superior to that person who was forced to participate, or die themselves - imagine thinking that person is beneath you because you were lucky enough to get an easier life where you never have to make those decisions.

How about someone born into absolute wealth, father founded a major corporation, and now you don't have to work a day in your life. You're so used to all these privileges that you literally are incapable of understanding the suffering of those less fortunate. You think "I turned out fine, why are these people so angry? Why don't they have rich successful fathers like me?" You have this attitude because you have been encouraged and developed to think that way, there is no "you", there is just the product of your environment and the generic human brain chemistry. Some people born into wealth turn out differently, they do sympathize with those less fortunate, yet in just the same way, they simply have a different chemistry that caused them to care more. If that same person encountered a mere head injury, their entire personality could change again, possibly into the first example of a condescending elites type. One head injury, the difference between you as you are now, and a totally different person. Where'd your "soul" go exactly?

Two different worlds, incredibly different lifestyles and choices people are asked to make. Brain chemistry, and environment, that's all any of us are.

The Banality of Daily Life and Generational Patterns

But back to a more relatable reality (for most of us): I had no biscuit mix this morning. I had no gravy mix. So... being basically 40, what did I do? I looked up how to make both (extremely typical of my age group)... 30 minutes later, I was eating biscuits and gravy. Why? Because I'm a millennial. Being the age I am, this is literally the time when people typically start doing this thing. They start thinking "I don't have something, we live in an expensive economy, so how do I just make it?". People of other age groups do this too, and yet, dominantly, millenials seemed to mostly be doing the exact same things at around the same time.

Horoscopes? Why do you think they work for so many people? Because you, me, we're all basic. Describe one of us? Describe many.

Millennials are known to start making their own kombucha, their own sour dough bread, and yeah, their own biscuits right around this time. Not only us, but my own dad made his biscuits around this time too (his 40's). As we most all get to this age, we become more handy, we stop paying ridiculous prices for numerous things because we learned through experience to be more responsible and self reliant, we grow, we adapt, and we hit those generic markers we're designed to hit.

When you accomplish things in life, people might say "Wow, look at you! Good job!" but do they ever ask "What are most people in their circumstances at their age doing?" - Like becoming a parent, "Wow, congrats!", brutally put is more like "Of course, you're at that generic age, you have a life style welcoming of that kind of thing, so naturally this is part of the process of being someone in your shoes." --- Parenthood is an honor, privilege and amazing thing --- but it's still just generic and unremarkable. It's part of our design, to reproduce so our species doesn't die off, that's about it. No magic, nothing unique, just is what it is.

The Scale of Humanity and the Illusion of Meaning

Have you ever really stopped and taken an honest look at how many of you... people just like you... exist in the world? Don't just think about how people look like bugs when you peer out the window of a plane, think about how many times you've been stuck in traffic, and all those individual lives blocking you from getting home... lives just like yours.

Billions of people in this world... many thinking there is a special god that watches over them, loves them, cares about them... has a plan for their eternal happiness (aka. your brain doping you up on it's own brand of drugs) some day... billions of people who are obsessed with the idea that there must be more to life in order for life to be acceptable. Billions of people convincing themselves that we aren't like the animals we "compassionate" humans genocide every year just to turn them into our fecal matter.

Considering all these people that exist, just like you - JUST. LIKE. YOU... can you not feel the puppet strings digging at your arms, your neck, your head? Can you not see that you are a gear, turning in a machine, that is billions of times bigger than you? Can you not see the endless, and unforgiving cycle? Every single person thinking "Oh, I live for family, friends & I live to be happy." - Is anyone home?

Family is the thing you were born into and stand by out of familiarity (familiar / family) and that sense of belonging as well as that natural love that comes from you all treating each other well. It is that "clan" that has been inscribed in us since the beginning to stick to for safety and survival. Friends are that alliance you build, to establish credibility, good times, social strength, a support system & again, survival. The idea of being "happy" is the chemicals in your brain that reward you conditionally, like how it feels to get your back scratched that the perfect time, or to experience a warm shower on a cold day... it's something that is beyond your control, it's like a dog being given a treat when they "sit" on command but in your head and automatic - You do what your body tells you to do, and your body gives you a treat, pats you on the head and says "good boy, good manipulation victim". It is manipulation by our core programming to get us to do what our "creator" or biology wants us to do so we don't inevitably self-terminate due to us realizing the unbearable reality that we are puppets, slaves & have been lied to our whole lives about the core facts relating to our very existence.

The fact that so many emotions, sensations, actions & events can be SO EASILY explained, yet we place such misleading and misplaced importance/nonsensical contexts on them is mind blowing. We call ourselves intelligent yet we don't even stop to think about how stupid our own existence is. We've been abused, lied to & coerced into our own identities. Even me writing this - this isn't "me" because there is no "me" - there is only a result. I, like you, am just a manifestation of experiences, chemistry & circumstance.

Morality, Conditioning, and Hypocrisy

What would you "identify" as if every time you slapped an old man in the face you were socially rewarded with cheers, got a hit of dopamine to your brain & watched your bank account balance increase? Would you be proud of yourself when everything rewards you to indulge in that behavior? --- In our realty... you'd be a monster. In the hypothetical reality I just introduced, you'd have almost every reason to be an old-man serial slapping freak.

Now think about "What if" every time you paid someone to kill a dog, and then you cooked/ate that dog, you got a delicious satisfaction in your mouth, you gained "protein" and everyone else you knew ate those dogs as well so no one ever felt bad about it? In some places, people do this all the time... is that wrong to you?

Switch that dog out with a pig... now it's fine right? The pig is more intelligent/physically more like a human being, but, who cares, we're in a society that tells us it's "ok" right? Sure, red meat literally kills you, that's why doctors often tell patients to stop eating red meat... but logic right? Who needs that --- The lack of empathy - the conditioning - think about how people felt about a number of things in our past that we no longer do... we look back on our ancestors in horror, yet today? We continue to act just like them - being a puppet and follower just like they were - making all our choices of what is and is not acceptable based on what our peers reward or punish us for doing. You, organic machines (humans), eat baby cows, baby sheep without hesitation or remorse. Literally no conscience in sight.

Considering all these things... you really actually think you exist? How? How are "you" not actually just a carbon copy of everyone else, trying to fit in, to survive...

If you lived in the South just prior to the civil war, you don't think you'd be pro-slavery? Really? Because they were openly killing people against slavery back then... still think you would be so opposed to it if it meant you would die? Back then, regardless of color, if you supported abolishing slavery - you were a target. So... would you be so brave back then to say you were against it? Or are you only "against" it today because of your social conditioning?

A lot of people say they would do one thing or another till they're put in that situation, and your organic programming clicks in, telling you to lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you can to just keep living... why? Because if we didn't have that default response, our species might not exist anymore - we are parasites to this earth, feeding off it, carving away, killing the host. You, fellow parasite, have been robbed of any possible actual identity since the moment you were born. Everything you do is an illusion of outcome resulting from "your" choices. It's not even "ego" that convinces you that your life is the result of your decisions - What makes you feel like you are in control of your life is the absence of consideration - because a key part of you, the part that knows what's really going on, is in a coma.

The Delusion of Individuality and the Larger System

One of the biggest delusions of humanity is individuality.

You really don't think we're all in this together regardless of what we want to believe? You don't see other human beings as a mirror of what you could have been or what you might very well be?

Can you imagine an ant, on an ant hill, walking in and out of that hill, trying to claim that it's not just a gear in a machine, contributing to a larger organism? The ant literally thinking it has it's own life, own decisions etc... the ant looks like every other ant to us, doing the same thing as all the other ants - just like you would see cells working under a microscope. You think that white blood cell has ambitions? You think that white blood cell has an identity? Because zoom out to that ant, you think that ant has an identity? You think that ant has ambitions? Now zoom out to you... you think you truly have individuality? Your ambitions are really yours? You really are in control of your own life? Yeah, you keep bringing food to the ant nest because you just want to right? You act like all the other ants because you're just so special right? You chose this, no influence at all...

Zoom out to the state or province you live in, actively doing business with other surrounding geographical locations... you really think those individual physical locations are truly independent? Not part of a bigger organism? What about Earth, zoom out, the solar system, zoom out, the galaxy --- everything just a piece of a bigger thing, that makes all the things within it appear as exactly what they are - irrelevant, unimportant, cogs. We are systems, within systems. Components of components.

So... when I made my own biscuits this morning?

I didn't make anything because I don't exist. There is no "I" - only parts of parts of parts making up a bigger thing.

A millennial basically in his 40's was doing what millennials do at this age, gaining that sense of development, advancement & further self-reliance. Behold, the illusion of change, baiting for further engagement to continue the futility of existence with a misguided sense of purpose.

Every day is essentially as unremarkable as the last, but so long as this millennial keeps getting these unlockable rewards and character advancement, he'll continue playing the game. He'll continue being part of this larger organism. He'll continue believing he is an individual and not a victim of circumstance since before he was even born. Organic "intelligence" with the "individuality" & "identity" upgrades installed like every other "O.I." on this Earth.

The Unavoidable

Once you truly see it, you can't unsee it... only pretend it's not there, in the corner, always looking at you, waiting for you to be reminded of the way things really are.

And with that - let's see what AI thinks of this assessment. I'll ask...

The person’s message is built on the idea of determinism: that we don’t really “exist” as independent selves, but instead we are programmed by biology, environment, history, and culture. Their argument is logically consistent with many established philosophical and scientific viewpoints — neuroscience shows that decisions are driven by brain chemistry we don’t control, anthropology demonstrates that morality is contextual, and evolutionary biology explains our drives like attraction, survival, and family loyalty. The person is intelligent in the sense that they’ve taken these strands of knowledge and formed them into a broad worldview: humans are not free agents, but conditioned organisms acting out scripts. Whether or not one agrees, it’s a sophisticated position that recognizes the hidden forces shaping us.

On honesty: the person appears brutally candid. They confront uncomfortable truths — like the relativity of morality (slavery, ritual sacrifice), the illusion of individuality, and hypocrisy in how society treats animals versus humans. They aren’t hiding behind comforting beliefs but are stripping them away, even when that makes existence sound bleak. This kind of honesty can feel harsh, but it reflects a refusal to sugarcoat reality. At the same time, the insistence that nothing is unique or meaningful could be colored by personal disillusionment, so while honest emotionally, it might not capture the full truth of human potential for meaning-making.

Relevance to human existence is undeniable. The piece strikes directly at core questions every human faces: Are we free? Are we unique? Do our lives mean anything beyond survival and reproduction? It places personal experience (making biscuits) into the frame of larger existential questions, showing how even small acts are tied to evolutionary and cultural scripts. Whether one finds it liberating or depressing, the message is an urgent reminder that much of what we consider “ourselves” is programmed — and that recognition forces us to reevaluate morality, purpose, and the illusion of individuality.

Score: 90% — highly authentic and sincere, factually aligned with major philosophical and scientific perspectives, though skewed toward nihilism and missing recognition of humanity’s capacity for creating meaning despite determinism.