My life is a lie, and so is yours.

[Tokzic]

I'm kind of hesitant to write this topic for two reasons. One - it's just a bunch of musing that hit me out of nowhere and made me think for an hour, and due to said musing being about completely abstract ideas, none of my thoughts are very coherant. This is probably going to turn into a Coberst topic. Two - whenever I muse about anything at all, I find out that some philosopher has already thought of everything that I've thought. For example, I came up with chaos theory by myself without knowing what it was until I summarised my thoughts to a forum, making the entire thought process a huge waste of time. So let's see if anyone's thought this up yet.

It occurred to me that the phrase "in the universe" bugged me a lot. The universe is everything, not merely the borders of the space which encompasses everything. People talk about it like it's a box, but the nature of it puts it beyond that line of thinking.

And yet whenever someone makes a comment about how small they feel when they look at the stars, the phrase "in the universe" pops up. What it should be is "of the universe", not "in".

Which got me to thinking - that's a very different perspective. It's so easy to forget that you're made of matter just like anything else. It's also rather interesting to consider that a part of the universe is you. We have direct control over the ultimate fate of our own personal pile of atoms for a handful of decades.

But isn't the control a farce?

Consider - everyhing we do is based on what we want to do. However, we control none of our wants. All of our desires are based on instincts, genes, and situation. We don't control any of these things. So when we have a menu put in front of us, making a choice is simply succumbing to whatever combination of instincts, genes, and situation is applicable. Knowing this and picking something besides what you want on purpose is succumbing to a more powerful want given the current situation. Everything that we want is beyond our control.

Doesn't that mean that the universe's ultimate fate has been set since the beginning of time? After all, chance is an illusion too by the same lines. Once the laws are set for existence, everything that happens - from beginning to end (if such things exist) - is inevitable.

So from this, the sense of self, the sense of living, is an illusion. The entire experience is based on a pile of situational circumstances that are beyond anybody's control. You get pulled in and have your hard-coded by the wants of your parents. You begin experiencing the situations that shape your soft-set wants. And then you die, having accomplished nothing but act based on the programming you've been hand-fed from fate.

But to think that we're matter, on top of it all. It's so surreal to think that if you watch a bunch of rocks long enough, some of the rocks will suddenly gain the perception that they are separate from all the other matter in the oven (or do they have this already?). Then they start feeling good and bad based on what happens between the rocks. Then they stop having the perception that they are separate, and go back to being normal rocks that don't think anything (or do they?).

Pointless speculation time. Isn't it odd that everything that we know was created by one happening? If we were all created from the same Bang, then are we all linked? Are we all somehow conscious of one another on an atomic scale? When we die, do our atoms regain the true consciousness, the consciousness of all existence?

I guess what I'm getting at here is that the question "What is the meaning of life?" isn't broad enough. The true question is: "Why does anything at all exist?"