Do you ever wonder about the issue of your own personal significance and is it useful to question?. — Jack Cummins

If I had not existed, then I couldn't have a chance to think about the possibility that if I had not existed.

A nullification of the butterfly effect. — jgill

It strikes me as wishful thinking or a useful narrative device rather than a genuine possibility. — Banno

(From a personal perspective, someone would have come along a little later and advocated turning rock climbing into an athletic, gymnastic sport. No question.)

Going back in history there are very few female philosophers and it was only in the twentieth century that the voices of women became present. Also, there are issues of dominance by white people too. Even on this forum there are far less women. Whether this is marginalisation as such is hard to know. I once remarked to a female friend about the lack of females on a philosophy forum. She remarked that it may be because women have other things to do and may not have time to spend on philosophy sites.

As for whether it should matter in philosophy as to what gender one is or one's race is an interesting question because it depends if those factors come into play in philosophical understanding. There is the perspective of feminism which does look at the way ideas are constructed, such as the patriarchal aspects of religion. Also, sociology could be seen as a branch of philosophy looking at the way reflect social structures and inequalities and their impact. The advance of sociology, especially in the 1970s may have given rise to more females, black people and marginalised voices.

It wouldn't affect me in the slightest if I didn't exist; but look at all the pearls of wisdom the forum would be lacking! A tragedy to contemplate and thank providence we have avoided.

Each person can see the tragedy of having not existed. This is contrasted with the way in which each one is participating in mythical quests of a universal nature. What I am saying is that evaluating personal significance can be overvalued or undervalued.

There is the question as to whether each of us matters for oneself or others. There is relative significance of both the private universe and varying contingencies of the interpersonal, or public aspects of 'self'. All of this is important in querying what it means to exist, or the polar opposite of having never existed at all.

I once remarked to a female friend about the lack of females on a philosophy forum. — Jack Cummins

It's because men and women are different beyond simple anatomical differences.

It wouldn't affect me in the slightest if I didn't exist; but look at all the pearls of wisdom the forum would be lacking! A tragedy to contemplate and thank providence we have avoided. — unenlightened

Well, it wouldn't affect you because there'd be no you to affect, so there's that.

While I know you're being sarcastic, I will say that your not being here would profoundly matter.

The question of the difference between the 'minds' of women and men raises important issues of what it means to exist in a male or female body. Of course, there are many threads on the forum about gender, but, here in this thread, what may be important is embodiment as gendered beings. This is where the nature of personal identity comes in.

At the current time, so much is being dismissed about the elements of personal identity and embodied experiences. This is reflected in the backlash against transgender, in which those who oppose transgender authenticity are reducing gender to anatomy and genitalia entirely. The argument that transgender people are not their 'real' gender shows how gender, as an aspect of unique experience, is being reduced to being in the body, with dismissal of differences in 'minds' and mental states of being and becoming. I wonder to what extent the philosophy of Sartre on embodied 'being' comes into the debate.

I am also wondering about how my question ties in with @Badens consideration of ''What Can Go Wrong in the Mirror'. That is because that thread looked at the narcissistic elements of personal identity. My question is a little different because I am looking at existence vs non existence per se. However, as my question can only be looked at by existent beings, it raises the question of being as an aspect of interpersonal dynamics. One's existence is in the eye of the beholder, which in turn is reflected in the interpretation of one's own existent sense of being and becoming.

your not being here would profoundly matter. — Hanover

Well I totally wasn't fishing for compliments, but I expect you are, so - the feeling is entirely mutual. Nothing wrong with our mirrors, eh? Like a little echo chamber of love and admiration, we are.

One's existence is in the eye of the beholder, which in turn is reflected in the interpretation of one's own existent sense of being and becoming. — Jack Cummins

I'm not treating your topic with the respect it and you deserve; my apologies. But there is a sense in which your question is too profound to be approached directly. One retreats into theory, depersonalisation, or humour, because, according to one tradition, it is calling for The Last Judgement. It is said that at death, one's whole life passes before one, and one makes for oneself the judgement of one's worth. At that moment there is nothing to win or lose, and all the bias falls away and one makes the naked judgement from the position of full knowledge and impartiality. I'm afraid the almost universal report card from my school days still applies: "Could do better if he tried."

I am glad that you make a connection with my question and life reviews. That is because I was led to this point while ill in hospital a few months ago. I started to experience near-death imagery while my oxygen levels were extremely low. Since that time, while I am not sure that I actually came close to death, I have been reviewing my life and thinking about the impact my existence has made, for better or worse. I worry that I take more than I give, although that is not my intention.

When I was a teenager I tried to do 'good' but felt that I ended up as a dysfunctional 'do gooder'. I try to find the right balance but it is extremely hard, especially when one is out of work and not really part ot a community. So much of the current culture is of socially isolated 'nobodies' who are just struggling to survive in the world.

Well I totally wasn't fishing for compliments, but I expect you are, so - the feeling is entirely mutual. Nothing wrong with our mirrors, eh? Like a little echo chamber of love and admiration, we are. — unenlightened

No, really I wasn't. I was just maintaining my view of the infinite worth of all people, even those who might deny it. Just because the assessment might be of yourself doesn't mean you can question the inherent value of any human.

God's little children have value even if they think they don't and even if driven to such beliefs by humility.

What's interesting is trying to imagine ourselves out of existence or from the perspective of our non-existence when the concept of our existence is inevitably enfolded in our subjectivity and all that comes from that. We imagine ourselves out of existence and then project that lack into our actual existence to come up with an alternative reality that would fulfill the requirements of that lack.

In a way, we're adding something rather than taking something away---perhaps a narrative that is essentially personal, the closer we come to which, the further we must withdraw. I think un's answer hints at the impossibility of unironically or unselfconsciously disembedding our essential embeddedness and viewing it from a distance, of breaking orbit to authentically ground ourselves in a "realistic" answer that somehow does justice to who we really think we are. This is partly trivially because, by definition, it requires a distance from ourselves to take a perspective, but also because that minimal distance is like a tense spring which if compressed too much is somehow threatening.

But, yes, I think this is a different threat than being caught in a narcissistic mirror where one hysterically disavows through external projection the impossibility of completeness, and more like knowing all too well one must remain incomplete and that one's self-perspective necessarily contains a kind of self-shielding from completeness that maintains the integrity of self.

Here's another way of looking at it: Suppose we subtract ourselves from existence to project back this lack into it and we realize that nothing really substantial happens. Life goes on much as before, just without us in it. It's basically the same movie without the demand for any sequel. So, here, by fully assuming the gap between ourselves and nothing we get a new nothing, but rather than an empty one, a live one at the core of our being that threatens to consume it because its very emptiness consists in the potentialities unfulfilled that form the true substance of the lack behind the lack projected. That is, our authentic grounding is grounding in the searing emptiness of a substance that should have been. Hence, the almost necessary giddiness in approaching the question.

There is an 'almost giddiness in approaching the question' of my thread. I do see it as connected to Sartre's idea of 'nothingness' and his ideas of existence in body and for others.

When I was reading your thread on the mirror and reflection of narcissism, it led me think about my own mirror experience from when I experimented with LSD a long time ago. Whilst under the 'trip' in a warehouse rave I went to a mirror, expecting to see myself in diabolical form. However, when I looked into the mirror what I saw was all surroundings, including a radiator' but I was not present. It felt like the confrontation with loss of my body, or nothingness. It led me to panic that I would be left in a vacuum of nothingness forever. I had a sense of 'self' but felt detached from the physical world. To what extent did I no longer exist, I wondered. It was a relief when I discovered that I could still communicate with other people, as this seemed to validate my own existence in the world.

Of course, non-existence after having once existed is different from complete non-existence of never existing, but probably only from the standpoint of others who still exist.