…unbeknownst to anybody in real life (because the last thing my folks or myself need right now is another drama-storm), I’ve been going through a quarter-life crisis (yes, this is an actual thing; I didn’t believe it at first either).
…aaaaand I think it just got worse…
…as if my insecurities/shame with regard to fulfilling my adult responsibilities, my own competence AND my seemingly hopeless future, I’m now also grappling with pretty much ALL the implications of subjectivity; if I can’t find a way to reconcile the objective, deductive skepticism that best defends man against manipulation with the absolutist faith I’ve been raised to embrace, that would mean I have to take it at face value. To do so would be to say that the Founding Fathers, the champions of the very freedom that let’s me sort stuff like this out to begin with, are wrong; but according to the faith, if I stray away, I’ll go to hell.
…somehow I never realized how big a problem this really is; since both our senses AND minds are limited and flawed, we literally can’t trust ANYTHING 100%, which means there’s even the ever so slight possibility that something as extreme as solipsism is true. Sure, there’s stuff like math and the scientific method that are at least “sound,” but much of what is often treated as fact isn’t technically quite so factual.
For example, is History subjective? And if History is subjective, then does that mean that a book that’s gone through multiple translations AND took hundreds of years to put together really is as unreliable as the naysayers say? Not to mention I haven’t won any arguments against moral relativity, which actually calls the aforementioned freedom into question. (No, seriously, is there any real reason others should leave me be?)
…and even if I didn’t go to hell, the alternatives can be scary too. I mean, how am I supposed to be okay with non-existence, especially if not only will my memory and my mark on the world inevitably become distorted, but the whole frickin’ universe will all just revert back to potential energy? (In fact, for what it’s worth, how did all that energy get released anyway? Wouldn’t it need a trigger from OUTSIDE of the closed system?) And then what about solipsism? Isn’t that pretty much “immortality blues” cranked to 11? Futhermore, if some other religiion WERE in fact the “one true religion,” how am I even supposed to find it before it’s too late?
…seriously, how am I supposed to resolve all this shit?