Musing 1, or, I philosophize in a condescending manner.

Why am I doing this? Why should I sit here and write my random thoughts on life, the universe, and everything down in a blog, available for every wannabe critic on the Interwebz to read, digest and ultimately tear apart? In fact, why the fuck should I do anything? I sure as hell don’t know. I suppose it’s for a feeling of pleasure or happiness, a feeling of something positive. But what about on a different level? Recently, thanks to the magick of Philosophy, I don’t know anything. I expect things. I believe things. But I don’t know anything. I expect that when I hit a key on my computer, it will produce a letter on the screen. And it, from all I can gather, does. If I drink a bottle of wine, I expect to feel some sort of intoxication. And I certainly seem to. But I don’t know.

Actually, y’know what, I do know one thing. I know I exist, I think therefor I am. Cogito ergo sum. Descartes knew his shit when he said that. Assuming he did say that. Because I can’t know that he did. But I do know that I exist. So why can’t I know anything else? Why can’t you know anything else (supposing that you, reader, do in fact exist, because I don’t know if you do)? Because where the fuck is the proof? How do you know that it’s not all in your head? Seriously, how do you know? Think about that for a moment, fucktwat. And don’t give me some stupid answer like “I’ve empirically concluded without any reasonable doubt that I know [whatever the fuck you idiotically think you know].” You don’t know shit, because anything you think you know could just be a construct of your mind. Or a construct of some evil scientist projecting things into your mind. The Matrix is also a possibility, one among many.

Your senses are unreliable. Don’t think so? Well, once again, you’re a dumbass waste of human life. Get drunk. Fuck, everything is blurry! Drop some acid. Oh shit, the patterns on the wall are moving! Eat some ecstacy. Oh my God, everything feels so soft and wonderful! Smoke some salvia. Holy fucking shit, for the love of all that is holy, what the fuck is going on?! There’s that bitch Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, and she is feeling rather murderous. RUN! For fucks sake, go to sleep and dream. Oh shit! Suddenly everything has changed!

Get it now? Your perceptions aren’t reliable. They can be fucked with, your mind can trick you, something can seem obvious and not be the case at all. I even got an example that doesn’t involve drugs OR sleeping OR anything of that nature: schizophrenia. According to that ever awesome beacon of light and truth, Wikipedia, schizophrenia is “is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by abnormalities in the perception or expression of reality.” That means that schizophrenia causes people to perceive reality as different than how others perceive it. This doesn’t mean that non-schizophrenics perceive reality correctly; we (assuming, as I do, that I am not a schizophrenic) might, but we just as well might not.

So what does this mean? Fuck if I know. There are some options though. Perhaps we live on earth, perhaps I’m sitting here, perhaps what I perceive of the world with my five senses is accurate to the actual physicality of the world. But that can never be proved to me. Perhaps I’m unique. Perhaps I’m the only creature, the only mind, that exists. Perhaps everything around me, everything I see and do, everything that I perceive, is just shit my mind has projected upon itself. But I can’t prove that, either, and neither can anyone else. Perhaps my brain sits in a vat, my body and the world I perceive simply programmed into my mind by an external force (like the aformentioned evil scientist). This certainly seems like it could be true. But I just don’t know.

Get it now? I certainly hope so, because I think I’ve made it pretty fucking easy to understand. You know nothing. I know nothing. Everyone knows nothing, except that they (and only they) exist. It’s a cool world, isn’t it?

More to come soon.