On Existence

Why isn’t reality ‘nothing’?

The fundamental starting point for all of our thinking is the observation that something exists.

As obvious as it may seem, it’s a clue so large as to be nearly invisible. It could be the case that nothing existed; yet we don’t have nothingness. We have something. Why?

Maybe it’s random, but why should even “randomness” exist? That in itself would be ‘something’.

True nothingness is impossible to imagine. True nothingness isn’t black, empty space. That would still be ‘something’. True nothingness would somehow be just… nothing. It’s inconceivable to us.

Yet we have something and its existence is inexplicable by either religion or science.

If the universe is here because God created it, why does God exist?

If the universe is here because laws of Nature created it, why do those laws exist?

Why not truly nothing? No big bang, no laws of nature, no mathematics, no fact of 2 plus 2 equalling 4. No empty space, no blackness, just…nothing.

Yet not only does something exist… emotion exists. Emotion is the most important fact about existence. Without emotion, we wouldn’t have the feeling of existing. And without that feeling, would anything truly exist?

So in order for anything to exist in any meaningful way, emotion must exist. Something must know that it exists.

And of course that is exactly what we find.

Existence is a brute fact. There is no explaining it. It must simply be accepted. Once we accept it, we can make progress.

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