The fundamental experience of being human (alive?) is this: All of our decisions and all of our behaviors – our whole damn mess of a life – is the product of measuring personal emotional responses to imagined alternatives as though consulting a hidden oracle. Remarkably, this is true even for economists and philosophers.
Where to live, what to do, whom to marry; whether to release a fart under the covers, how to delicately reveal to a potential spouse that you enjoy certain music by Neil Diamond. These are just a few of the questions that plague humanity. No matter the scale of the question, we answer it in pretty much the same way, because we know only one way to make decisions. And it ain’t reason.
It seems that the fundamental question of humanity (life?), then, is something like this: What exactly is this hidden oracle we are consulting? How does it work? How well does it work? Why does it do what it does? WHAT THE EFF DOES IT WANT FROM ME?
There are a number of possible answers. Here are the likeliest to be correct:
1. The hidden oracle was carefully lodged into place by a divine creature. She/He/It has given me this little spark of wisdom to consult whenever I’m in a philosophical bind because She/He/It loves me and wants the best for me.
2. The hidden oracle, like the rest of the body, is a device for survival and reproduction that was built and refined through genetic chance and environmental necessity. The “oracle,” then, is just an emotional calculator that hints at what behaviors helped my hairy or scaley ancestors to survive or land vagina.
I’ll leave it to your hidden oracle to decide which seems more plausible (or comfortable).
The thing is, though, it really doesn’t matter which view you subscribe to because it is not going to change the origin, content, or consequences of your decisions.
Therefore, I have found nihilism.
The culture that is Washington, D.C.
5 hours ago
