What Were You Before You Were Born? (Consciousness)

What were you before you were born? Nothing. Not a soul waiting in the sky, not a spark drifting through the dark. For 13.8 billion years the universe went on without you, and nobody noticed you were missing. Then, out of all that nothing, a light came on behind one pair of eyes. Yours. How does nothing turn into someone? And why did it happen to you? Ask where you were before you were born and you walk straight into a trap. This video follows the question all the way down: the years of your life you can't remember, the hard problem of consciousness, the near misses that almost erased you, and why the nothing before your birth may be the clearest picture you will ever get of what comes after death. 📸 Follow Lumen Theory™ on Instagram:   / lumentheorytv   🧠 IN THIS VIDEO What you were before you were born, and why "where" is the wrong question Nabokov's empty pram: the world that never needed you Childhood amnesia: the years you lived but never kept The mirror test and the moment a child first says "I" David Chalmers and the hard problem of consciousness The four billion year chain of life that never broke to make you The odds against your birth, and Derek Parfit's nonidentity problem Plato, the atman and the brain as a radio for consciousness Epicurus, Lucretius and Mark Twain on the nothing before birth Thomas Nagel and Schopenhauer: why you fear death but not the time before birth John Locke, David Hume and the self that can't be found Parfit's teleporter: if you were copied, which one would be you? Miracle or curse? Schopenhauer against Camus Nietzsche's demon and the greatest weight 📚 SOURCES Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory (1966) Plato, Phaedo David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind (1996) Thomas Nagel, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (1974) Thomas Nagel, "Death," in Mortal Questions (1979) Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (1984) Epicurus, Letter to Menoeceus Lucretius, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things) Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818) Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851) John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739) Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (1927) Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (1882) Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) Mark Twain, Autobiography of Mark Twain (dictated around 1907) 💬 YOUR TURN If you could choose right now between never having been born at all, or living your exact life one more time, which would you pick? And why? Tell me in the comments. I read them. 🔔 Subscribe to Lumen Theory™ for philosophy that refuses to look away. #BeforeYouWereBorn #Consciousness #Philosophy #Existentialism #Schopenhauer #Nietzsche #Camus #Epicurus #Parfit #Nagel #Nihilism #Pessimism