Problem statement: We need to, every once in a while, maybe while sipping our coffee in solitude, ask what do we actually know when we claim to know something. These epistemological conundrums give rise to that Nietzschean abyss which stares right back at us. These questions can spiral down indefinitely – creating a feeling akin to an endless fall in a pitch black, silent void. This is the curse we humans have to live with. We have been damned like Sisyphus to a perpetual state of inequilibrium – the limbo between knowing and not knowing. It is the state between absolute ignorance and absolute knowledge. We are capable of asking some very profound questions but not capable enough to find convincing answers. At least, not yet.

Nevertheless, we have mastered ways of dodging these existential bullets pretty well. We play an ostrich. We avoid the abyss. Train hard how not to catch its glimpse. We make our failed attempts to emulate those gravity defying cartoon characters who do not fall off the cliff until they look down. They simply continue to walk on nothingness.

Contrary to empirical evidence, one would believe that it should be easy for people to relate to Descartes and his Hyperbolic Doubt – questioning the validity and meaning of everything. EVERYTHING. In the process, breaking the charade of meaning and purpose that our daily routine offers. “If there is too much incontestable meaning in the world man would succumb under its weight.” And the same can be said about the absence of meaning – meaninglessness. Nietzsche finally snapped under the weight of some crushing questions, taking the finer details of his morbid pessimism to his grave.

The axioms: Although meaning needs to be sought and discovered, it has always remained elusive. On the other hand, one can argue, purpose can be just invented. One way of defining life is that it is the totality of all the sensory circus that we get exposed to and our ruminations about that circus. We just accept this deluge of perception and thought as an incontestable paradigm. The oddity of this whole ‘thing’ is lost on us. Anyways. If we are willing to accept this circus as a given axiomatic truth, there is hope that we can come up with a semblance of purpose. The mathematics of human intuition will lead us to some inevitable theorems – some of them hinting at a purpose.

The theorems: For starters, life is too short to hoard things. It is just futile to do so. That kindness, in the deepest sense of the term, trumps all forms of spiritual awakenings. That the world, from a certain frame of reference, seems full of contradictions. It is an amalgamation of beauty and ugly – a mess made out of some profound bliss and profound melancholy. Where the opposites are inseparably intertwined. Another theorem would be that, given this contradictory state of affairs, no human deserves to be smugly happy until all humanity is happy. Because if happiness is not ubiquitous it should feel incomplete everywhere. The emphasis is on “smugness” and not on our attempt to stay happy. The difference is subtle but very important. That we cannot isolate our pursuit of happiness from others’ pursuit. That human history is an undeniable precedent to the fact that the abyss will swallow anyone and everyone who has ever lived for self-aggrandizing petty goals. These statements are disjoint and maybe even incoherent. Their imperfection and enigma will serve as a metaphor for life.
Also, they don’t take away much from the mystery and absurdity of existence but maybe they will make it worth its while.