I was talking with a friend recently about "big questions."
Those are the ones that you're not supposed to think about on a daily basis — ones such as: "What's the point of life?" or "Is there really an absolute morality?" Maybe even, "What will happen to the universe?" and "What is truth, anyway?"
Most of you, I guess, are too caught up in day-to-day activities to think about this sort of thing outside of an existential crisis (and I suspect some of you move from existential crisis to existential crisis as a sort of day-to-day activity), but I happen to be the sort of person who likes to think about these things. It's a fault; sometimes I have day-to-day activities that don't get done because I think about these things. ("Sorry about that homework assignment, professor! I was contemplating an infinite regression reductio ad absurdum of absolute morality.)
Anyway, my friend and I were talking about the meaning of "truth." She told me that whenever she thought about this sort of thing, she'd end up going in circles — What's truth? How do I know it's truth? Is is reality really real? And so on. The same thing happens to me, and I've found that the best retort to myself is, "Shut up! Of course there's an objective reality." And once you acknowledge that, there really does look like there's something outside yourself, you can start to try to describe it.
(Don't worry – just smile and nod and the topic will be relevant in a minute.)
In a way, the ability to abstractly contemplate reality as an illusion is the solipsistic curse of adulthood. As babies, every single one of us learned, quite intently and earnestly, about the world around us. We would spend every waking moment moving around, touching things, tasting things, shaking and dropping and rolling and hitting and mouthing and listening and smelling things just to try to figure out how they worked. (By the way, if you ever get the chance, sit down for a half hour with a baby and just show them things — it never gets old. Just the other night, my daughter figured out how to take the lid off an oatmeal cylinder.)
Babies are, after all, the original scientists. They have a very tenuous model in their heads of how the world around them works, and they are trying to make it better by testing it and pushing its limits. There's a moral there for us. We can figure out the world by recognizing that our beliefs about it, just like a baby's, are a model. Eventually, we figure out enough to get by and focus our attentions elsewhere, so it's easy to forget how much we know and how little we know.
When you've outgrown learning, it's easy to forget that you never know anything exactly. When you take a step, you know you won't fall down because you've done it, literally, millions of times. Babies have no such empirical confidence: The first steps are always tentative and uncertain. Every step afterward increases certainty — yes, this is how my body works — but bear in mind that no finite amount of evidence can ever push confidence to 100 percent.
You know the external world only to the extent that the model in your head works to predict it — and you can't ever be really certain that your model works. Everyday stuff, sure: the sun will rise tomorrow, when you take a step you won't fall down, your car will start when you turn the ignition, the shuttle will be five minutes early or late but never on time, and so forth. But venture just a little bit from the day-to-day, and you'll find that perhaps confidence is unwarranted.
See, your knowledge of the truth is never black-and-white. When you limit yourself to everyday experience it sure seems close to it, but when you move away from the comfortable you have to cultivate an entirely different mindset. Your mindset, ironically enough, has to become like a 1 year old's: learn, learn, learn, test, test, test. How does it work? Am I really confident that it does? Is this really the way things are? How well do I really know this?
This honest skepticism is healthy, and it will serve you well — if you take the time to learn and adopt it. For us grown-ups, it's hard to move out of our set ways and think like babies again, but if you can do it, you'll definitely be better off than you were before.
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