The Human Condition

All the world's a stage; And all the men and women merely players

-William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Many talk about their passions. I find most passions a bit silly in the grand scheme of things. There were those who were passionate about map making, ancient Aztec football, Roman chariot racing, and languages that are long forgotten. Pretty much all specific passions will be forgotten in the future. On a large enough time scale, most passions will become unrelatable. I abstract my passions. 

The human condition fascinates me. Why do people do what they do? Why do I do what I do? To have a semblance of understanding the human condition, one has to study economics, psychology, philosophy, physics, biology, sociology, geography, theology, art, storytelling, and history. It’s a catch all passion that involves all humanity. It involves everything we do. The human condition is the gift that keeps on giving.

The human condition is amazing and terrifying.

The visible spectrum is the minuscule spectrum of light that we can see. The visibility is relative to us. The visible spectrum is visible… for humans. Other species may not see the visible spectrum. They may see other spectrums like infrared or ultraviolet. Other species could see with other senses like sonar. 

Even what we view as fundamental rules in our world aren’t as they seem.

Matter isn’t solid. Matter is made up of atoms. Atoms have protons, neutrons, and an electron cloud. It’s 99.9999% empty. There’s nothing there. Our perspective is a lie.

Even what we see could be different between humans. The concept of qualia says that what I view as the color red could be what you view as the color orange. We both call it red, but we each see different things. There’s no way for us to know whether we are actually seeing the same thing. Even though we’re both human, what I think is green could be what you think is red. Similarly, what a plum tastes like to you could be the taste of a peach to me. There’s currently no way to know.

Our reality is how we perceive it. It’s purely internal.

Our emotions are internal as well. The outside world is a stimulus. How we react to the outside world is a choice. One can be happy regardless of their situation. This doesn’t mean one shouldn’t chase meaning. We should align our happiness and meaning to external triggers we consciously choose. Choose them wisely.

When we alter our brain chemistry with substances, who’s to say that isn’t a purer state? One can argue it’s a broken state as we’re just messing with our CPU. But is that altered state closer to what is real? Who’s to say what is real? This is where things get weird. When we start to question the nature of our reality.

We live in a simulation, but it’s not the popular simulation argument that says we’re in a computer program. How our brain perceives the world creates our own custom simulations. Our senses are arbitrary. We live in a simulation of our own making.

What’s nice is that there are clear patterns humanity follows on micro and macro scales. My passion is studying those patterns. It’s when we zoom in or zoom out that things get weird. It’s ok to get weird sometimes.