Finding philosophical rock-bottom

You know, I'm not threatened by ideas anymore. Not any ideas. They don't hurt me, scare me, scar me, send me plummeting off a cliff, push me into a dark hole, or fill me with angry nausea. They just can't, after hitting philosophical rock-bottom.

It used to be off-limits ideas that scarred me deep. The f-word, my nemesis, was one of these. After all, my thoughts were not just fleeting electrical patterns. My thoughts had meaning. My thoughts partly determined eligibility for salvation; if I couldn't get them in control, whole universes might never be created. An f-word infested mind wouldn't be pure enough to accomplish it. No, I couldn't allow filthiness; my thoughts were important; they had a purpose; they had eternal, universal meaning. I thought my mind was magic, and the magic f-word hurt me, every day.

It used to be the cultural-religious sort of ideas that made my stomach churn. When I believed them. I'd hear a professor question the divinity of the female counterpart to God, and start seeing stars in class as the blood drained from my head, and I truly believed for a moment that I lived in a universe with a God that designed my half of the human species to be second-class, for a righteous purpose. What does it mean about the universe, I would continually ask. What is the significance of this built-in inequality? I always assumed deeper meaning behind the structure set-up of my culture. Eternal, universal meaning. I thought my culture was magic, and my magic culture hurt me, every day.

It used to be the political sort of ideas that made my heart race. I learned about economics and strongly felt that capitalism was the best fiscal system. I became fixated on the idea of freedom and decided that capitalism was not only a functional masterpiece on earth, but that there was some larger purpose for it, some older, philosophical principle embedded into the universe, declaring capitalism as the system the universe intended for us to use. Barrack Obama was running for president at the time. When he spoke of ideas contrary to the free market, he was not a-man-who-is-saying-stuff-I-personally-disagree-with, he was the-end-of-America, he was the-downfall-of-my-civilization, he was anti-matter, he was contrary-to-the-laws-of-the-universe. If he won the election, all of us who understood the meaning and significance of capitalism would need to sequester ourselves in the woods and live the principles we knew to be true. I made capitalism magic, and the threat of black-magic-socialism filled me with fear, everyday.

Those were the ideas that used to bring me turmoil. Back when I threw meaning upon every surface, saw significance where it wasn't deserved. But when I stepped off the edge of faith and fell, and instead began searching for meaning in deeper, darker corners, a new set of ideas caused pain and depression.

It used to be the existential sort of ideas that made me feel like I was falling into an empty, black void. I couldn't help it: ceasing to exist seemed to me the most probable reality after death. I didn't want to believe it. But it was the only option that made enough sense to me, the only one I didn't feel like believing was self-deception. So I believed it. But I wasn't ready for it. For months, I woke up thinking about death and went to bed thinking about death. Two family members died during this time. I was hollow and weak at their funerals. I'm going to die. I'm just going to disappear. There will be nothing. Nothing. Nothing. How can I mean anything if I won't exist soon? What is the purpose? I searched for meaning everyday, and felt betrayed every moment that I discovered none.

I once had a conversation with Brian, Allen, and Caleb, that left me so devastated that I struggled to be a functioning human being afterward. Essentially what we did was follow every known theory of the universe/death to it's logical conclusion, as far as we could possibly take it. And systematically every one turned into some kind of horror. If you go long enough, you see it. Every possibility for the after life would be eventual torture, or the frightening blackness of nothing. It was about 4 in the morning when the conversation ended and I tried to lay down. I couldn't sleep and felt the universe caving in on me. Belief in ANYTHING, I thought, is better than this feeling. Even if they're wrong, those who believe have it better than me. Truth wouldn't make me feel such despair, right? There must be more meaning. There must be something more.

So I searched for meaning and tried to find it in the fact that humans seem to be set apart from the rest of reality. I tried to find it in music, art, love, and free will. Music is inexplicably powerful, beyond reason. Art separates us from the animals. Love transcends all evolutionary purposes. And then education kept robbing me of the magic of even these. Sound waves stimulate our nerves in such a way that our skin reacts and releases endorphins, sometimes elephants paint pictures too, and all forms of love increased the likelihood of survival and reproduction in our ancestors.

But then there was free will. For some reason, we have free will. We have this inexplicable power that sets us above the impartial universe. God or not, afterlife or not, you can't deny that humans have this one special gift that gives us purpose while we're here.

Except for that you can. I was online one day and skimmed over a Sam Harris article about how free will was an illusion. I quickly left the page. That was an idea that would once again tear apart my structure of meaning, I wouldn't be able to handle that again. I won't read it. Except for the thought still entered my mind. Could free will really not exist either? So, human actions are completely due to inevitable chemical reactions? Unfortunately, after time spent letting this one stew in my mind, it began to seem logical. More probable than the alternative. Once again, my meaning had been stripped from me. New ideas just seemed to keep coming and raping my sense of significance. The universe is not magic, and I am not either. Where is the meaning now? Where else could it lie, if not in me and no where in the universe? Free will was the last magic. The last magic left in the entire universe.

It was once all the magic was gone that I stopped falling. There was no height left for me to descend from. I stopped searching for something or someone to give me what I wanted. There was no where else to look.

Here was rock bottom:
Meaning: there is none. Purpose: I have none. Reason: No one ever gave one. Plan: No one had one in mind. Magic: It does not exist. Ever. Anywhere. Every single thing in existence can potentially be analyzed and explained. Everything has an explanation.

I'm not sure how many months I stayed here, sitting on rock bottom, but I couldn't do it forever. Nihilism. That's what this was. How could anyone stay here for long? If there wasn't already a ladder out of here, I'd just have to build one.

But first I'd have to let go of my resentment and fear of the world being understandable. What's so great about being un-explainable? Whoever said that magic was the same as significance? Why does our sense of meaning come from being confused, from NOT understanding, from unpredictable events, and gaps in information? When did naivete become a requirement for feeling special?

Understanding things started to become beautiful to me. How heartrendingly adorable it is that people hug because they are having a simultaneous release of oxytocin, a chemical which makes muscles want to contract, and so they get close together and contract on each other. How gorgeous it is that humans are literally related to all life on earth, and we are not special as a species. How wondrous that it doesn't really matter how we feel, and yet being human feels... so... incredible. It's amazing that listening to a jumble of meaningless sound waves can do something so spectacular to my mind, can completely overtake my emotions.

I made meaning again. And I began to feel like there was actually much, much more of it now. The universe was so poetic, the story of these small creatures who came from muck, building a purpose for themselves piece upon piece upon piece. I was overwhelmed by the poetry of it. Forcing there to be purpose out of a naturally purposeless world was so much more meaningful to me than if someone else had designed it and handed it down to us.

But I'll always remember rock-bottom. And so frightening ideas that bring me close to there again, are not frightening at all. Because I know now where it is, and I know how to climb out. Bring it on.