During one of my recent contemporary art history courses I have come to the realization that people think too much and dumb themselves as a result. Damn 1960s and their damn minimalists and land artists- worst of all, conceptualists (which I all love with my whole heart, full disclosure). There is no way that the question ''what is art?'' puts you in a difficult position. The answer is so simple that it's stupid. Find that out yourself, by the way. I'll tell you if you find my email and contact me privately, because you'd deserve it for the effort.
So, I decided to task myself with the hardest of missions: I'm going to answer these questions for the rest of humanity. You may address to me as your God after this one, and I shall be glad to take onto such humble role. Albeit hesitant at first, I'll make sure to be wise and righteous.
As for the source, I googled "top questions about existence" and the engine fed me these.
''From sources across the web'', it says. I don't trust you, little crawler, I never did, but I like the bare minimum transparency you're displaying here, regarding your questionableness.
P.s. For the purpose of this article, I removed all singular pronouns such as ''your'' or ''my'', because they created confusion, in my opinion. I cannot answer the question that reads ''Who am I?'', because who the hell is asking that? Me? You? I replaced them with our/us/ours. Of course, those merely refer to you, as a human collective. I am not part of this ''us'', as I already said, I might as well be God.
P.p.s. You should forget all you know about philosohpy, everything you studied until now. If you're a philosophy-centered major, I am deeply sorry. I'm saying this merely because I am as aware of the history of philosophers and their words as a fruit fly would be. Alas, the fruit fly is allowed to ponder. I may reference disproven theories (how can they be disproven? You have no proof), I may reference overly-discussed ones. Again, I am blissfully unaware. Such is the all-knowing God.
I have found this picture of Kanye West posing with Murakami Takashi.
Kanye looks like he isn't real, right? I can't be the only one seeing that. He looks like a modded The Sims 3 character, he's badly rendered. He has different lighting than the rest of the picture- the rest of reality, for that matter. What's up with him looking like wax? He has generic features. Is he real in that? Why is Murakami looking normal? Maybe I'm commenting on a genuine wax figure.
That is one question I cannot answer, be aware.
Now, let's proceed.
1) Does our life have a meaning?
We start off a bit strong with this one. I would've saved this for last, personally, but I'm also glad we can set the tone right away.
Meaning exists because our stupid little brains decided to give meaning to things. All the Representations' fault- blame it on art, shapes, and secondly, blame it on words, speech.
This old fucker from Indonesia right here on the left is abslutely overflowing with meaning. This precedes art-as-representation as we know it now of course, since prehistoric humans could not care less about creating the illusion of their own reality, mirrored on a cave wall. Still, pig existed in real life, someone saw it, and decided to represent its essentials- didn't have to look like it, it had to Be it in all its elements (take it from those cubists guys, they digested the concept for all westerners). This pig had a meaning and a function, because someone created it, and someone gave it a meaning.
Then came words, I guess. The pig had to be a pig. What's the meaning of the word pig? [Picture it as OLD words. I don't speak old]. What's the meaning of the word life? When people came up with a couple of sounds to describe being Here and Not Dead, shit got insane. Those poor things came up with a sound for something they couldn't put their finger on. Why does it matter? Should've shut up in the first place.
The meaning of life is that there's no meaning, and there's no life. If you were able to make up the concept of life, might as well make up a meaning, too; without that ability or decision, there is no meaning. In the end, I strictly believe that's the answer: there is no meaning because no artist created us like that Indonesian pig was created. But if you hate yourself to an extent, you can come up with anything, and pretend to be the artist that created yourself. Sometimes, that might even be the case.
Another thing I'd like to mention: I'm gonna drop the whole "we just made that shit up"-centered argument afer this one. Because it could be applied to perhaps most of questions. If you liked it, go ahead and apply it to them. I grew bored of it.
2) Is there a God?
Were you expecting me to declare myself as such? I still have to answer all the other questions, and I find it a tad too early. Perhaps later.
Conceptions of God in the majority of religions include a powerful, supernatural being, or the deification of an entity/category; the "Ultimate" and similar, like The Being or something; an Absolute Spirit in terms of being its Own, Complete, Perfect absolute.
I think the only knowledge that comes close to that definition is the Universe- at the same time, a human being made up those categories. We could say the Universe made them up. Not only we are part of the Universe, but we are made of the same thing. I think the Universe manifested itself in its self consciousness by creating consciousnesses, but that is for later.
The Universe has no borders and is all borders, it IS and HAS everyhing that exists at the same time, and is also made up of void, (which exists anyways, nothing doesn't exist). It created itself, it makes things die because it also holds and keeps up the concept of time in its movements. If that isn't God, I don't know what is.
A counterargument that came to mind would be that what isn't the Universe might be God. I say this, because we don't what the hell it is, because it isn't in the first place, and that sounds like perfection layering upon itself. Or, maybe it's both the Universe and what lies Beyond it, and I should give it a name or something. I would like to keep my mind open on this one, and I shall update this page if an ephiphany presents itself at some point.
P.s. if the magnifying glass inside the picture isn't working, try refreshing. That javascript beat me to death, I am powerless before such technology.
3) Consciousness
That is not even a question. What am I supposed to say?
I know it should mean "what is consciousness?" or something along those lines, but out of principle, I will pretend not to know. You were supposed to be more clear, and I hate it when people task me with the hard work of guessing.
I will simply say something about consciousness.
As I stated in my previous point I believe that the Universe decided, at some point, to manifest its self awareness by creating conscious beings, therefore becoming conscious itself. Of course, I say that it "decided", but it couldn't have done that, being consciousless.
I suppose, much like its creation and the transformations inside of it, it just happened because it's ruled by chaos, and when it comes to chaos, anything is bound to happen (or not) at some point.
This logic implies that the Universe IS conscious in its entireness, both in name and in adjective. Humans are conscious because the Universe is, and becuase humans are the Universe. (That, or- since the Universe is All and Nothing, one could argue it was both conscious and unconscius before being self aware of said consciusness).
I believe we could possibly connect our consciousnesses, since both our physical and energy-based forms (and everything in between and beyond, such as thoughts and desires) are inside, and therefore made of the Universe. It's not necessarily a good thing, if you think of the Reddit hivemind.
Except you'd have no way of having a personal opinion on it, you would not feel it, you would Be the hivemind.
That, to me, sounds incredibly peaceful.
4) What is death?
-Death is when people are killed S. Emiya
Mind you, this doesn't ask what lies beyond death. So, I shall keep it simpler than I hoped for.
Death is the end of life. What do you want me to say?
When a living being is born, it's like it's being launched at full speed into the Universe, and that energy from the initial push has to slow down, and eventually come to an halt.
Although the concept of someone being alive is still being debated by scientists, we can saw that - more or less- living beings have their own genome ( this doesn't make them alive, bear with me); or according to NASA, are a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution. To define what is alive currently, there's the good old list of life: it needs to move, respond to external stimuli, excrete and feed, reproduce and grow, respire. This is just a list of potentials that the being might achieve, or lose doting its time on Earth, or during the course of generations.
Whatever.
When All of those functions cease, the thing is dead.
As for death with living beings with a functioning brain+neurons package, once that big lump of consciusness ceases to create energy, death has arrived. Which isn't in any way different from the death of other organisms, but definitely more concrete and visible.
I admit, I have feared - and still do, at times- that once I am declared dead by specialized humans, I might still be conscious. My conscius is energy, and nothing can be destroyed in this Universe, so it has to go somewhere, I suppose. Alas, that is for another time.
No one else is existing you other than you. Other existences are not yours to exist, and so is the other way around. You being the sole owner and participant of Your existence automatically makes it so you are in complete control of its purpose.
You want to give it a purpose? Go ahead, pick one, or make your purpose the search for one. You can decide whether to ask yourself that question in the first place or not, eradicating the whole search for a purpose.
This entire supposition assumes that there is no purpose in the first place, of course. Had there been A Purpose I would've known, and there would only be one, pre-decided. But, there isn't anything of the sort: someone would have to set that. What is a purpose, if not the skeleton of a task? None tasked us to exist, not even the Universe (which would mean, not even ourselves). Which is why I believe we are free to pick a purpose, if we so desire, and such purpose shall be linked to our own current living experience, rather than existence (which I believes implies the constant and unkillable energy present in our Universe that moves from life to life as the first one dies).
If you're kinda hardcore, you can even make someone else pick a purpose for you, and dedicate your life to it (two purposes with one stone). Such is post-capitalism.
6) What makes human life more valuable?
A few days has passed since my last wisdom, and I am feeling particularly hyped.
I hate this question so much. Who thought of this one? You did? I think I can forgive you, but it will take a while for me to actually like you.
Human life is NOT more valuable- I'm assuming, compared to other lives. If you, reader, are a human being and believe that your life has more value than an animal one (we will get to other lives in a second), you haven't lived long enough to understand the basics of your self worth.
Of course you're valuable, you're special and important to yourself and those who love you (at least, you should be, and perhaps deserve it) and all that. You're not valuable because you're human, that's just what you and your loved ones think. Life doesn't have a value to it, you can't own it, you can't sell it.
I'm not going to play dumb. I know humanism and other views and religions regarding anthropocentrism are safely backed up by humans' belief that self-awareness and the ability to create with both mind and hands is the pinnacle of worth. I know that most religions especially put a wide gap between humans and non-humans. Again, I'm not here to criticize or talk about existing religions or philosophies, I am merely taking that into account, and letting you know I am aware where this question stems from, and that I disagree with it.
I believe the only real gap is between animals and plants, at most, given one's (NOT self-)awareness and natural ability to move. I wish it wasn't, but there we are. I am an animal above plants, as much as I'd like to lower my status for the sake of equilibrium.
Humans are an animal species, so if you're an omnivore or a carnivore, stay respectful while you respect your body's needs.
7) Is there something more to life?
Ok no, I get it. This one goes hard, we're finally onto something. To some, this can be confusing at first: let it be clear, we're not jumping into the topic of the afterlife. Not from my understanding, at least. This "something more" should be read, in my opinion, like the "something more" that there's to the universe- something beyond our senses, something we don't know we don't know.
This question is more of a matter of belief rather than knowledge, and I apologize for that. The image I offered explains it plainly: I reside in the life box, much like everything and everyone that is able to communicate inside of it. Communication is in fact our key word: life can communicate, the more-to-life cannot. I'm not only talking about whether it's whithin themselves (life can communicate with life, more-to-life cannot communicate with more-to-life), but also among each other (life cannot communicate with more-to-life and vice versa); hence why I'm by definition unable to know about this more-to-life. Even if it existed, it won't talk to me.
I believe that the more-to-life is real (or rather real and unreal, or non-living within itself, not doing something and doing something), because it's simply implied by the existence of life. Of course life isn't the only thing to exist, of course there's more to life. Our knowledge on it is just limited, and will forever be, for we aren't allowed to think of it, to picture it: this would bring it to life. I urge you to leave it alone, for your own sake.
P.s. You might notice my notion of "life" can be easily replaced with "reality" in this context. I believe that whatever communicates with life in any way, whether it's directly or not, is life itself, an experience of it, which includes every surrounding, every reality. Life (rather my definition of it) is reality.
8) What is our identity?
Don't tell the higher ups. I was supposed to know everything -Prismo at some point, probably.
I have a personality disorder, do your own homework. See the next point, I guess it's a decent substitute. Don't tell the higher ups. I was supposed to know everything.
9) Who are we?
I hate this question, it's so vague. We are not a single thing, besides being human (whenever this applies). If you need an answer so bad and are a slave to labels, then use your own name. That tends to sum up a person without saying anything about them, like a book title, which is the best match to the question. Otherwise you don't need to know something that senseless and practically non existent.
Not to get all Steven Universe-y here, but if I really, reeeally had to talk about this in more depth, I'd say we are what we experience. We are mind sponges, sometimes body sponges, a combination of mind and body that serve as a base for our aesthetic experiences built upon it.
This question is not even real.
10) Why are we here?
There is no reason, why do you need a reason? You started asking these questions about the whys and the hows around the age of 6, and I hope that by now you've realized that they stemmed from mere curiosity and nothing else. Is your curiosity sated?
Go back?
This old fucker from Indonesia right here on the left is abslutely overflowing with meaning. This precedes art-as-representation as we know it now of course, since prehistoric humans could not care less about creating the illusion of their own reality, mirrored on a cave wall. Still, pig existed in real life, someone saw it, and decided to represent its essentials- didn't have to look like it, it had to Be it in all its elements (take it from those cubists guys, they digested the concept for all westerners). This pig had a meaning and a function, because someone created it, and someone gave it a meaning.
