This post is intended to be a part of the series.

I just got back from the Tempe Library. It's my first time there, and I picked up Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Meditations on First Philosophy and by Descartes. He's my favorite philosopher, but to be honest, my knowledge of his work is really shallow. I only know the basics of what he thought, so it's admittedly shortsighted of me to say that he's my favorite. Anyway, I'm gonna pick through it this week, and then again two weeks from now. Next week I'm in Florida, and I can only check books out for 7 days, so I have to return it on Thurs or Fri.

I haven't started reading it yet. I'm hesitant because I kindof want to finish developing my philosophy first, so that I can compare our processes, and not just compare my speculation with his conclusions. Then again, every time I receive new input, my worldview is being developed subconsciously, so avoiding a biasing influence is a futile endeavor. Also, I can always read it and then compare as I go with my own ideas.

Anyway, the last blog was sortof intended to bring you to where I was when I was at a loss. If you keep questioning enough it seems that things come to nothing. That process was extremely valuable, I think, to laying the groundwork for a new and more realistic set of values. However, there's one sort of flaw in the logic I was using.

(Just for the record, when I say "high-level" and "low-level", I'm talking about levels of abstractness. I'm a Computer Engineer, so for me Binary is considered "low-level" because it's closer to the hardware, but "high-level" is all the more complex things built on the binary, which in some ways are more difficult to understand. When I say "high level thinking" I mean the kind of thinking you do normally, and when I say "low level thinking" I mean the kind of thinking I'm trying to do in this blog.)

Alright, now that I've got that out of the way. Come back to high-level thinking with me for a moment. Lets consider 1+1=2. This particular equation is very low level. It's not abstract. It's foundational to everything else. If I ask "Why does 1+1=2?", then the answer is probably something like "Well, if you take one thing, and then you take another of the same thing and put them together, you get two things.", which is basically, "Well, 1+1=2 because if you add 1 and 1, then you get 2.", or "Well, 1+1=2 because 1+1=2". And it would seem that this answer is adequate. (Now I know there's some "big kids" out there saying, "1+1 is not always 2!". Well, if you have 1 beer and you grab another beer before drinking the first one, then you have 2 beers. "Well, a cup of baking soda and a cup of vinnegar makes more than 2 cups of foam". Good job, but you're dodging the point.)

All that to say, eventually you do reach the bottom. There is something that we can be sure exists: that is ourselves. This concept is tiresome because "Myself" is an English word with poorly allocated meaning. (Am I my body? Am I my right arm? Am I my mind? Am I my spirit? Am I your perception of me?). In order for the statement "I can be sure that I exist" to be true, we MUST separate ourselves from our bodies (not literally, but in concept. I'll explain.).

We cannot be sure that our body exists. We cannot be sure that our senses are detecting outside phenomena, or that they are even senses as we consider them to be senses. This information which we suppose comes from our eyes could mean and be and come from and support literally anything if we're misinterpreting it.

We can't be sure that the past exists or that time exists or that the future exists. What if you have been suddenly spawned here with all your immediate, past, and distant memories preconceived and no concept of what just happened? In that case, your past is just something you imagine. What if all your memories and plans exist only in this instant, and in the next perfectly ideally small instant they will disappear? In that case, there is no future. What if both are true? You really have no way of knowing. But what you can know is that for this brief nothingness of an instant you do exist.

Think of yourself not as a thing attached to a body, but just as a collection of impulses happening in the immediate, and assume your body and your perceived environment have no impact or meaningful bearing on you suddenly spawning and having this beautiful cacophony of emotions and then despawning without even necessarily being noticed by the universe. If you can isolate just your awareness (but not even your awareness of external things), and if you can separate the existence of that "self" impulse with it's vague attachments from all of the notions of meaning that you perceive for them, then you're really close to what I am aiming for.

So if you're still tracking with me, the next step is to notice change. Not that you're really noticing anything if you're really only here in the instant, but don't you think that your instant is much more beautiful if you don't know that it's only an instant? In the decision to agree with that statement, we make the leap from atheism to agnosticism. I'll follow up on this later. It's time to wrap up this post.

Just so you guys aren't confused: I'm not going to spend the rest of the series "pursuing beauty" or "justifying my existence by my perceptions on what is most beautiful and not". That leap was necessary to bridge the gap between "1+1=???" and "1+1=2 because 1+1=2". I'm not going to make a habit out of this kind of reasoning (if I can help it).

"Peace in sort of a 'shut up and be still' sort of way..."