Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Uncertainty

When I was younger I knew it all. I am 54 years old now and now I can see that I didn’t know what I was talking about when I was younger.

Today I'm not sure about anything. I really don’t understand what is going on. I don’t know what will happen to me when I die. I don’t know if I will end up in heaven or hell, if I will reincarnate or if I will simply disappear for ever. I don’t know if this universe is the only universe, if it has been created or if it has always existed. Life is a complete mystery to me. What is real and what is illusion? What would the reality be like if no one was here to observe it? Would it be just an endless emptiness with a few electric quarks or strings floating around here and there? Is there a reality out there or is the reality a creation in our heads? How shall we live? What is right and what is wrong? When I was younger I was completely clear about all these things.

And dreams, aren't dreams strange? When did the universe begin to dream and why? When did the universe begin to think? When did the universe begin to sing silly little songs to itself?

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know which political party to vote for. I have a haircut every once in a while, I work and try to make both ends meet. I can enjoy conversations and small talk with workmates and friends, however, I don't want to give the impression that I'm completely lost.

Everything is a mystery to me. In that sense I feel like a mystic. It is not many people I can tell how I actually look at things. They find my uncertainty wierd. How can you live like that, they say, without anything to hold on to?
 
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Knowledge?

It is meaningless to discuss life and death with a Jehovah’s Witness, an evangelical right winger, a Catholic or a devout Muslim. They’re already clear about everything. They know, deep in their hearts, that they have found the truth.

It is also pretty meaningless to have a discussion with a devout economic liberal about the environmental problems or the horrors in Asian sweatshops, which are the results of a free and unregulated market.

It is, in fact, almost always meaningless to discuss almost anything, with anybody, because we all know it all, already. We are all completely clear about everything. Isn’t this amazing? How often do you meet someone who says that he has no fuckin idea about anything anymore? From where do we get all this knowledge? How is it possible that so many people know what will happen to us when we die, what dreams consist of or where consciousness is located? How can so many people be so deeply convinced and arrive at so many different conclusions?