Unless
you’re a card-carrying nihilist, chances are you’d rather not see the
apocalypse bearing down on humanity any time soon. Most of us have a nice
enough life going on and would prefer that our enjoyment of Two and a Half Men on Sunday nights
wasn’t interrupted by the world exploding, imploding or whatever it is the
world does when it comes to an end. But perhaps we’re looking at the problem
the wrong way: how can we be sure that this comfortable existence that we’re so
keen to preserve is even real in the first place?
We’ve
all seen The Matrix. (Seriously, if
you haven’t seen The Matrix, then
what the hell? I’m not talking about the second two, they were kind of lame,
but the first one, man… that was some sweet shit. You know that bit where time
stops and you can see the bullets in mid-air and then Neo stops the bullets
with his mind? That was awesome.)
Perhaps everything we are now experiencing is just some sort of constructed
universe, designed to keep humanity ignorant of a reality that is far worse –
to shield us, say, from some horrible world in which every song on the radio is
delivered in a strange, robotic howl and an unhinged Alaskan woman has a chance
of becoming the most powerful person in the world. Oh, wait… The point is, if
everything we see around us is just an illusion, then we could all ‘wake up’ at
any moment, thus effectively ending our current existence.
Alternatively,
what if the world around us is real but has still been artificially constructed
in some way? It’s not entirely implausible that our planet is some kind of
bizarre galactic experiment, one which will terminate whenever its creators
have gathered the information they need. Far be it from me to speculate on the
purpose of such an experiment, but based on the fact that Dane Rumble exists
I’m pretty sure that we’ve failed somehow. Surely it’s only a matter of time
before they pull the plug on the whole thing and start again, hopefully having
learned a thing or two about the essence of humanity in the process – as well
as how to stop auto-tune from being invented the second time around.
Of
course, it’s hard to know if any of these theories are true or not. In the
meantime, I would advise that you continue on with life as usual until we can
be totally sure that this is all some kind of meaningless illusion, at which
point you are more than welcome to start binging on crack and hookers. It does
raise some interesting questions though, doesn’t it? Questions about the
relativistic notions of ‘truth’, the extent to which we all ‘construct’ our own
realities, and the… hey wait, come back! I’ll talk about The Matrix some more, I promise. Remember that time Neo fought that
other dude wearing the glasses? Oh man, that was sweet.
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