Philosophy

The more I try to write lately, the more problems I have. Usually when I'm writing a design blog post I'm trying to sort of fast forward to a point, or make a particular statement. Unfortunately, or fortunately, that isn't really how my mind works. My mind constantly absorbs and filters information, checking new information against old information, comparing the authority of sources and modifying my understanding of that information to match. All of this is then brought together on a somewhat intuitive level and "hyperlinked" together in my mind where one thought leads to another in a never ending chain of arguments, evidences, and references.

Needless to say, making that all fit within a particular structure, and come out with proper support, especially when it's more the intuitive feel that I have a data connection there rather than a set of professional journals, can kind of suck. Then some connection drags me kicking and screaming away from my subject matter and off into a dizzying ether of thoughts and ideas that I often didn't even know I had. After spending a while lost exploring my own mind, I wind up looking up, realizing that nothing is coming to mind to add to the article and hit submit.

On the other hand, it leads to pretty cool revelations in fields like philosophy. For instance, I don't really like being identified as a nihilist, despite the fact that I don't believe in any purpose in the universe. Yeah, I honestly don't believe that there is any particular cosmic reason for our existence. Of course I also don't like it when people say we are just one big cosmic accident either... I prefer the thought of a cosmic inevitability. Either way though, I don't see any particular purpose assigned to our existence.

This is where I could segue into God, and the various rational fallacies there of. Mostly though, I tend to come to the final conclusion that by most standards I am not allowed to be "better" than god, however by the measure of many religions, I am simply and efficiently a better and smarter person than god. Yes, I just used my own narcissism to disprove god's existence. But after all, if I can love better than a loving god, they are not god, so god hating... anybody, disproves god. If god is angry and temperamental but fundamentally just while creating a world of injustice and providing no recourse for true justice, then god is not god. And if god is angry and fundamentally unjust, then there is no point in worshiping such a god anyways, but at least it's logically consistent enough to merit the tiniest percentage of a chance of being true. Oh and if god is perfectly loving... then we're back at not having a point, only now we're pointlessly existing for a god that loves us.

This could be a very depressing concept, a reasonless existence. I don't find it to be so, because when there is no divine purpose for our existence, our own reasons are all that much more valid. If you find reason in life by making zounds of people happy, more power to you, you aren't wrong and we all like to be around you. If you think your reason in life is to blow up the world, well you aren't wrong, but the rest of the world does strongly protest. Or how about you feel your purpose in life is to invent new life, either through genetics or virtual simulation, then hey, more power to you mate.

It's apparently pointless, but beautiful, on the personal and systemic level. That beauty, though, is a point unto itself. Even the struggle of the creation of those systems and our battles against them and growing pains within them are all part of the inherent beauty of life. And that is why I find MMOs fascinating. Brief windows into the processes and crude frameworks representative of that beauty. Of course, we may move on to representing something else, or choose not to represent anything at all, and that too will be pretty cool, though I personally will probably always have a preference for the crude cave drawings of our own existence.