“Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.” – Krishnamurti
I stumbled across this quote and it inspired me to write this column/philosophical rant.
Life is merely a series of lessons. The series is not primordial nor is it a straight path. Think of the yellow brick road but if only the entire ground contains yellow bricks. The series is created by everyone. Everyone creates it in themselves.
Some may see this as worthless. If the path is everywhere, then there is no path. What good are the answers to the lessons if everyone is creating their own? What are the right answers? What are the right questions?
My answer is, I don’t know. Nobody knows. If someone claims to know all the answers then they are either trying to sell you something or they want you to join their group of like minds. I am trying to preach uncertainty.
I don’t know if my ideas are right or not, but I am willing to admit that they could be just as wrong as any other. Even the lesson which began this rant-“life is a series of lessons”- is not universally true. I created the answer to satisfy myself, but anyone can come up with their own completely different answer.
Everyone must create their own answers to every question, and that’s okay.
Somehow humans have come together to create a sense of universal answers to some questions, but I feel that there is no universal answer to anything.
Even if every human agreed on a single issue, that still does not mean it is true.
Yes, I realize the paradox of claiming that nothing is provable or true is in itself claiming some sense of truth to life, but I don’t care. I feel better thinking this way. Maybe that’s what it comes down to, feelings. Nothing is for certain but we can have feelings of certainty, as long as we make those assumptions with humility.
Ren Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am”. The only way I know I exist is because I think. If thought is the only proof of existence, and thought is relative to the thinker, reality is relative. So truth isn’t real and nothing is provable. Then life is just a chaotic accident of feelings? Are we really just a biological accident in terms of the universe?
Science tells us that the earth has existed much longer without us than it has with us. Life is a glitch in the timeline of the earth.
This all sounds so depressing-
Yes, but wait. At first glance, this may seem to be a very gloomy way of viewing the world, but actually it is not depressing at all.
Life is the uniqueness. We create our own truth and morals and that’s great. Just because we created them doesn’t mean we should value them any less. I mean, if we didn’t create reality, who would?
So in the end we are back where we started. To review, humankind is a hiccup in the probability of the universe. Truth and reality are human fabrications but that doesn’t mean they are worthless.
The important thing is that we realize that we should still value our sense of reality because it’s the only one we’ve all been able to agree on so far.
We can still learn lessons and believe whatever we want. I only suggest that we do it with a bit more humility and less aggression. You don’t have to agree with all of these ideas to support the idea of humility.
To think, some people have killed over something as silly as an idea.
Oh, the pretentiousness of this column is astounding. My publishing of this column is in itself a contradiction of my suggestion of humility. A column is, by definition, a pursuit of ones own ego. I feel that since the Internet allows for others to communicate back with me, the arrogance of this article is cushioned as I eagerly wait for others to respond to the ideas in this article.
I’m sure there are some philosophical flaws in this piece. None of this is meant to be a sign of moral or intellectual posturing on my part, but I convey this as humbly as I can.
I wrote this because I have a feeling that I find this interesting and maybe others do too. The majority of these thoughts have been conceived and conveyed before by other people much smarter than myself (Existentialism, Sartre).
I only wished to convey my interpretation of those ideas for entertainment’s and debate’s sake. Talk about egoism. Da dum chink!