Perspective

Watching Neil DeGrasse Tyson give his lecture on human intelligence and the mere 1%-2% human-chimpanzee genetic disparity, I had a bit of an epiphany. The objective meaninglessness of life, at least right now, for some reason, bothers me no more. I have reälized that there is nothing wrong with our illogical urges with regards to existence in general, which is, in a nutshell, my own weird way of paraphrasing and accepting existentialism. The meaning of life is not necessarily nothing, but rather what we make of it. I nominally intellectually understood this before, but the reälization reälly hits me fully now. Similarly to how there is, despite what sociëty says, nothing wrong with e.g. homosexuality or sex in general or other taboo subjects, there is likewise legitimately nothing wrong with enjoying existence, or wanting to survive or be fruitful and multiply or do whatever it is that humans and all other animals do that has gotten us to where we are, despite the inherent illogicality of such compulsions and behaviors.

Often do I sit here, bathed in depressive angst and armchair righteousness, bothered, agitated to explicit, outward, fiery, uncontrollable rage by this perceived great illogicality of the world around me. I become frustrated and confused by some of the very dumb shit that appears to go on for very stupid reasons in our world, on all levels, from corrupt cops and governments and moronic drug wars and gay marriage bans to the fact that it’s way too fucking fun to the point of beïng a necessity to have sex or masturbate or do various illicit drugs or do anything else I am compelled to do, or which I feel compelled to do. But right now, thoroughly chillaxed, 7:00 AM rapidly approaching, I simply cannot not look about myself, crack a little smile, and simply... enjoy existence. Wow, what a radical concept! And yet, I still feel a little agitation, as I think this through—after all, what the hell is that? I “enjoy existence”? What the fuck does that even reälly mean? This right here is what I conceptually refer to as “human bullshit.” People often take issue with the harshness of such terminology, but it’s simply because I’m a harsh, bitter man. Allow me to explain fully.

Emotion, the sensation of pleasure, happiness, despair, sadness, anger, love, ambition and all the rest, exists solely as a chemical reäction in the brain, a physical phenomenon developed and descended directly from and through the meiosis of archæons which lived and died æons upon æons, billions of years, ago, which has been evolutionarily attuned over that same timespan to compel me and everyone else to do the things which are, at least in theory, most likely to ultimately cause us to successfully reproduce before eventually dying. Nothing more, nothing less. Thus, for me, any feeling of satiation, of satisfaction, of happiness, seems somewhat akin to a robot beïng preprogrammed to print the word “GOOD” on a screen over and over again when you press its good vibes key (something every keyboard should have, by the way); likewise, feelings of pain and suffering, when they come, are, to me, like a robot returning “BAD” because somebody was mean and hit the bad vibes key (often labeled Esc). My point is that, ultimately, it’s merely an arbitrary queue meant solely to give the brain various and sundry information about the African desert wilderness we are evolved to live in. Somehow, this has reälly managed to absolutely ruïn it for me, at least thus far. I almost feel guilty partaking in life because of how stupidly, akingly hollow it all seems when you just sit back at a distance and stare a hole through it as I always have.

Yet, I am capable of reasoning my way out of it, too, at least when I feel like it. I note that getting caught up in the fact that everything is “human bullshit,” as it were, i.e. obsessing over the technical meaninglessness or arbitrariness of human life and emotion, is in and of itself equally as much the same type of “human bullshit” as I so valiantly claim to decry, and this honestly reälly burns me. Still I find myself running in mental circles over this same vague, half-baked notion of the meaning of life, driving myself to distraction and distress in all quarters of my life, and it feels like such a fucking waste. Waste of time, waste of energy, waste of fucking thoughts. And, although I don’t know how much longer I would otherwise be able to go on living like that, right now, it’s all gone away. Even if for just a little while. Additionally, I kind of appreciate that I managed to not bring it back upon myself by writing about it. I feel proud; perhaps I can show this to somebody at a later time as a concise summary of my feelings about life in general and why I often act as miserly as I do.

What I’ve got to remember, aside from the fact that getting caught up in bullshit to the point of feeling absolutely miserable is itself utter bullshit, is simply that just because we have no reason, reälly, to exist, does not imply we shouldn’t carpe diem and live life to the fullest anyway solely by virtue of the fact that it fails to imply that we should. This is a faulty reverse extrapolation I reälized I was making on some level, and ironically is a very common logical fallacy and characteristic human flaw in reasoning. It is all up to us ourselves and our own drives/ambitions/compulsions/urges to justify ourselves. Life is “nothing more” that that, sure, but it’s also nothing less than that as well, and for once that means something to me. In other words, meaninglessness is not (necessarily) bad. The whole reason we evolved to dislike meaninglessness was and is because meanings justified and continue to justify expenditure of our energy on whatever endeavors we opt into; it is a measure against wasting (too much of) our time on stupid shit that would make us die before reproducing. I was utilizing it non-constructively when it is entirely possible to turn the tables around on it. Knowledge is power, and knowledge of human psychology can in fact do more than foster the type of slavish submission to one’s own contemptibly weak human psyche as I had begun to espouse. Indeed, it can foster the ability to, in a word, psych yourself out about things and trick yourself, or at least the unconscious parts of yourself, into doïng what your conscious self wills to achieve.

If there were a God who was just doïng this all for shits and giggles, which is what most people of course just have to believe, my frustrations may have been more justified—why not simply have made the world a better place, after all, among other relatively simple questions? Why make anything exist at all to begin with if given the option? Why not make the purpose behind it a bit more self-evident? But there is no reason. None. But again, “why” is a question that only exists, on a fundamental level, so we can keep track of our energy and time expenditure. I’m not an automaton designed lovingly or with special care and attention to detail by some force of grand intelligence, and ultimately that’s actually what separates me from the aforementioned robot with “GOOD” or “BAD” all over its screen. Unlike it, I’m a fully organic hodge-podge that crawled out from the oozy depths all by itself, goïng on instinct alone, automatically, step by step and by leaps and bounds. I am both the creätion of everyone who’s ever touched me as well as, in a broader sense, creäted by nothing and no one at all, other than the sheer will to live. I’m part of a long line of hominids that managed to become so sophisticated, they now manage to lead by far the funnest (for some, anyway), among the longest (again, for some), and definitely the most meaningful lives on the planet, and, AFAIK, the universe (although, yet again, only for some, and only in comparison to all other organisms except maybe dolphins and certain close ape relatives; all them other lifeforms can’t even bullshit up any reasons at all for their existence!).

And, well, holy shit, this “bullshit” li’l humanist perspective on things, perhaps because of my thick, glorious all-nighter haze (which is one of those many hilarious, as most everything truly, truly is once you know the history behind it, little things about life that reälly make it all worthwhile), just might be managing to cheer me up and make me feel fucking good about life for a little bit. Hell, it might be even be worth espousing, which might just be why I do so. And dammit, mania is so much better than depression any day in my book.