Nihilism

The older I get, the more I find myself working towards nihilism. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ready to cut off the Dude's johnson quite yet, I still believe in things. But their numbers are dwindling.

"Facts" are too fluid. We recognize them as truths, but they remain subjective. To invalidate any fact, all you have to do is simply not believe in it. It doesn't matter if it's "true" or not. A truth is only as good as it is universally accepted. The world is flat. The world is round. Creationism. Evolution. Etc.

One dissenter and the entire thing falls apart.

Person A (PA) and Person B (PB) are having an argument. It is PA's contention that he cannot die by pointing a loaded gun at his head and pulling the trigger. Despite logic, despite the abundance of evidence and case history to the contrary, this cat's an unbeliever. They decide to conduct an experiment.

PA and PB find themselves a suitable weapon - for the sake of argument, let's say it's a handgun, any caliber - and agree on a time and location for their experiment. They meet and PA takes out the gun and points it to his head. They count down from three together.

Three...two...one...

PA pulls the trigger. At this point any number of outcomes can occur:

1. The gun fires and PA is killed instantly. As many other before him, PA went to the grave believing in what turned out to be a fallacy, and given the instantaneous death, there's no way to convince him of the truth now. More importantly, there's no way to prevent another person from following in his footsteps.
   
2. The gun jams, thereby sparing PA's life and "proving" his theory while disproving accepted fact.
3. The gun fires, the bullet passes cleanly through his skull and hits a passing bystander. PA is left brain-damaged, but alive. The bystander is killed instantly. Again, accepted fact is disproved giving rise to a new theory all together - if one points a loaded gun to their head and pulls the trigger, they will not die...but someone else will.
4. At the exact moment PA pulls the trigger the earth explodes, leading to inconclusive results.

Throw some M Theory into the mix and the possible outcomes are infinite, but only a handful can back up accepted "fact."

Truth?

Fact?

There is only nihilism.

To quote Jello Biafra, "The sky is falling and I want my mommy."

Yours truly,

m/a/z/e the almost nihilist.

Tags: Nihilism

posted by m/a/z/e  [3:06 PM]   0 comments