According To TikTok, Einstein Thought We're Already Dead — And It May Be True
Everything is an illusion.
Vladimir Gjorgiev / Shutterstock As time goes on and things in life appear to get progressively weirder, the theory that we’re all living in a simulation seems more and more realistic.
Now, another TikTok video is taking it a little further, claiming that maybe it’s not all a simulation. Instead, we’re already dead, according to Albert Einstein himself.
Are we already dead?
As conspiratorial as that question sounds, Einstein’s theory of special relativity explains his belief that we can be both alive and dead at the same time. The theory presents time as being relative to the observer with all time and space existing at the same time.
According to the video, Einstein believed that, despite us perceiving time as linear, time actually happens at once.
“The distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent,” he wrote in a letter to his best friend’s family after her death.
This theory of time is now known as the block universe theory.
As the theory goes, the four-dimensional block universe contains everything that ever has and ever will happen at once.
Time doesn’t actually pass, there are just specific moments and they’re all happening at the same time, even though you may only be experiencing one of them.
This means that, on some plane of time, yes — you are already dead.
At the same time, death is an illusion.
Just as Einstein tried comforting his friend’s family with the idea that his friend was still alive somewhere out there in the universe, it may be comforting to you to know that you will also always be alive.
Though you may be dead in one section of the block universe, you’re currently living and breathing in this one.
Other physicists believe the soul never really dies.
Some physicists also believe that we carry quantum information in our brains that releases upon death.
So while the physical body may no longer be alive, all of that information we have stored enters the universe and lives on indefinitely, meaning in some ways, you’re actually immortal.
That information is also believed by some to simply be memories of the life you’ve lived, which may help to explain why we get déjà vu.
While these theories can certainly be hard to wrap your head around (especially if you’re like me and became a writer because you failed physics in high school), it’s the takeaway that’s important.
What’s going to happen has already happened, so there’s no sense in getting worked up about things you can’t control.
In fact, control is just as much of an illusion as time, because just as we can’t change the past, we can’t change the future because, in the block universe, it’s already happening.
So the next time you find yourself worrying about what’s going to happen, remember the bigger picture: you’re already dead and will also never die.
Micki Spollen is a YourTango editor and writer, as well as a frequent traveler. Follow her on Instagram and keep up with her travels on her website.