I for one have heard dozens of people say, usually in frustration, that nothing is real. They exclaim that nothing matters and that everything is bullshit and fake. With my post today, I hope to explain this idea and show how fake or not, everything may matter after all.
After careful reverse engineering, I believe the statement, “nothing is real”, is better said as “nothing is natural”. I feel obligated to fix the statement because obviously… something must be “real”. We could go the skeptic route and question our very existence and senses, but without going too deep we can safely assume that we exist somewhere at some time in someplace. So, it is not that we are not real, but instead that everything is artificial.
An example of how everything is artificial is to point out that the only reason we find life worth living is because we have evolved to think in that way. Our brains, through years of natural selection and survival, learned that when we value life at a high standard we typically extend it. Alternatively, the brains of our species that did not value life so highly died off. Not suddenly, but instead very gradually. The people with ideas that life was nothing too valuable did not fear death as much, which led to shorter lives. With this shortened lifespan, came less time to reproduce and influence others with their views.
** That’s assuming that this was even something learned through nurture. I would make the gamble that life is just inherently brought about with the built neuro-networking that values life. I mean, it’s not like people just popped out of nowhere, they evolved from something else, and I’m sure that something else had learned to value life long before. **
The primal instinct within us to survive is within us all. But to show my point, just because something is within us now, doesn’t mean it has any more right as an alternative mindset. If we had evolved and developed differently than what we value as good and bad may very well be flipped. Yet regardless, even if they flipped we would feel just as emotionally attached to them.
To make this idea more concrete, I will create a hypothetical. Imagine a society like ours, that found suffering to be good (I personally define suffering as pain, mental or physical, that has no purpose or meaning behind it). As these members of society were brutally tortured on their days off from work, much like a spa day for us, their dopamine levels would skyrocket. As their nails were peeled from their fingertips, and their limbs were slowly pulled apart, these people would laugh or just feel relaxed.
This hypothetical seems a bit unrealistic, for we are a bit biased, but if we begin to see past our assumptions it may not seem so far-fetched. Referring to my hypothetical, what if that society felt joy from suffering because their atmosphere dissolves human tissue that isn’t actively working to repair a broken body part. As this society developed, it learned what it had to do in order to survive very quickly. Therefore, the people who discovered the way to live did what they had to do, and the ones who did not, died. As this process of natural selection continued, eventually the society was just left with people who felt safe and secure when their bodies were suffering.
Now earlier I defined suffering as pain with no greater purpose. Survival is in many ways a greater purpose, so let me finish my hypothetical. After twenty thousand years of this poisonous atmosphere, it eventually stabilizes, and people are no longer required to endure pain to survive. Yet, even with this shift, they continued to suffer optionally. Not because they must, but because they want to. They do this because that is what they have defined as good and happiness. This society would label an act that we call bad as good, and neither of which are any more true than the other.
A question you may be asking is how I can be so sure that this society would continue to suffer. How can I be certain that this society would choose to endure pain when they did not have to? My reasoning is because you can see a similar process going on in our society today.
Human beings enjoy sugar, not because it is just good, but instead because our bodies have learned that it is a high source of calories. And when we were scrapping for anything we could get our hands on; high-calorie meals were just about the only thing humanity needed. It was not until very recently that we developed the reverse issue of overeating in certain parts of the world. Hence why we see such high rates of obesity throughout the United States. We crave these foods even though we do not need them, and many people are unable to resist the temptation.
In numerous parts of our lives, we can point at the things we think and realize that they are completely constructed. Have you ever noticed that even before the “scary” music (what really makes music scary?) starts playing in a superhero movie you already know who the villain is? With seemingly every super villain’s costume, it appears to be pointy with dark colors. Have you ever wondered why that is? There is nothing truly scary about these shapes and colors, yet we seem to fear them. It seems even as a twenty-year-old I walk a little faster after I turn the lights off in my basement.
These things are simply what we have learned to stay away from. Pointy things can typically break through our outer layer, which we call skin, and cause our blood to leave our body in a non-ideal way. The dark is something that our subconscious tries to avoid because when things are dark we have trouble seeing them, which allows us to be vulnerable to a possible threat.
Nothing is natural. Our very definition of what is right and wrong is simply an artificial construct that has developed through natural selection and evolution.
Now, this idea may sound sad at first. It may be a little disappointing to believe that nothing is absolute and pure. But there is a silver lining to this mindset, and it’s an important one. Whether we understand pain is simply neurons firing off signals to inform our brain to avoid continued damage to the body or not, we still feel it. No matter how conscious you are of our artificial world, we still feel and experience these things as if they are natural and absolute.
At the end of the day, I really don’t want to be punched in the face. I would also prefer to not have my fingernails forcefully removed, even if that is my personal bias talking. Everything is artificial, but that does not mean it is not real. What I feel is a very real part of me. Whether it is physical or emotion, it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day my emotions are present, and I would prefer to please them. I want to please them because when they are happy, I feel happy.
I believe that we should attempt to understand our artificial world, but to also not feel bad because of it. By knowing that nothing is natural we can then begin to try to change the seemingly unavoidable issues in society. We can begin to look past our biological desires and attempt to find what those desires are truly looking for. And we can do all of this with our heads held high. Whether my happiness is a construct or not, I feel it. And to me, it feels very real. I believe that realness is worth fighting for.