Day 85 - The Validity of Mental Implosion
The endless impossibility of life and its uncontrollable nature is, I think, valid source for mental implosion. One thought leads to another and not too many links are required in the chain before it is all too vast to comprehend. It is at this stage where the best thing to do is to focus only on your immediate surroundings, a more realistic area of influence. The alternative is to sit at your desk for a few seconds then proceed to ram your head through it. But that way you might get brain damage, or worse yet, splinters.
It's difficult to remain calm when every solution has a knock-on effect. The holistic and contained nature of the world means whatever conclusion you reach has further ramifications and poses a different question. Plus if it turns out our new answer contradicts what we thought we knew previously, that can completely change our entire world understanding, essentially rendering however many years we have lived worth of knowledge completely pointless.
And who's to say that our most recent conclusion is the the correct one? A common trap people fall into is just because somebody has changed their opinion on something, that isn't the validation that they are now correct which they tend to think it is. "Oh you poor fools who think how I used to think. Yes, I understand, as I was once one of you, but now I know the way and my switching allegiances is cold-hard proof that I have a much more considered and mature approach than you". This is often seen in politics, with say, for example, a former leftist switching allegiances to the right. What's to say they weren't correct in the first place? After all, continuing with the political analogy, there will be also previously right wing people who have switched to the left. If both have changed their minds in opposite directions, this doesn't prove anything and neither should be allowed to be smug.
Unfortunately politics is just an easy example and this eternal unknowability applies to everything. Every conversation. Every scientific test. Every fact. Every bit of bullshit. Cause enough for mental implosion? Probably not worth having to pay for a new desk.
It's difficult to remain calm when every solution has a knock-on effect. The holistic and contained nature of the world means whatever conclusion you reach has further ramifications and poses a different question. Plus if it turns out our new answer contradicts what we thought we knew previously, that can completely change our entire world understanding, essentially rendering however many years we have lived worth of knowledge completely pointless.
And who's to say that our most recent conclusion is the the correct one? A common trap people fall into is just because somebody has changed their opinion on something, that isn't the validation that they are now correct which they tend to think it is. "Oh you poor fools who think how I used to think. Yes, I understand, as I was once one of you, but now I know the way and my switching allegiances is cold-hard proof that I have a much more considered and mature approach than you". This is often seen in politics, with say, for example, a former leftist switching allegiances to the right. What's to say they weren't correct in the first place? After all, continuing with the political analogy, there will be also previously right wing people who have switched to the left. If both have changed their minds in opposite directions, this doesn't prove anything and neither should be allowed to be smug.
Unfortunately politics is just an easy example and this eternal unknowability applies to everything. Every conversation. Every scientific test. Every fact. Every bit of bullshit. Cause enough for mental implosion? Probably not worth having to pay for a new desk.
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