YOUR Universe by Bo Quintana

Hey guys, Bo here.

OR AM I?

Yeah, that’s a bad start. Anywho, I’ve been doing some thinky-thinky on some pretty deep philosophical stuff. I, and probably other people at some point in time, have felt completely and utterly alone in the universe. Which doesn’t seem plausible, due to the fact that I am very content with my level of self-esteem, have a good amount of friends, and generally enjoy life.

It’s not that I’m alone in the universe on a very poetic and meta level, it’s just that I might be the only one here who actually exists.

I mean, think about it. We as humans are completely incapable of adapting the thoughts and conscious actions of other humans. They can tell us what they’re thinking about or why they’re thinking about it, but we cannot know if that is the truth or if they’re even real.

The theory is called the Egocentric Predicament. It basically says that we only know ourselves. Everything that isn’t us isn’t.

It states that we are the universe that we have come to grow and love, but only by ourselves. You can’t be the universe as well.

It states that we have created everything that we believe exists with the power of awesomeness. Which to me shows something sublime and impossibly evil about ourselves; we created cool stuff like penguins and the internet. But then we also created cancer and malaria.

However, there’s a bit of a paradox that comes with it. We can only know us, right? Someone else probably thinks the same thing. But if you’re the only one that exists, and I can think and I can understand, than you’re not the one, but I am. Meaning that in your point of view, you’re the only thing in the universe, but I am, meaning that you can’t be what you think you are, and vice versa.

And that explanation is pretty much why that theory is often shunned.

Other, less-firing-a-cannon-at-your-entire-worldview theories go as follow:

I can see this color and I have been taught that it is called red. But the color that I have identified as red might be the one that you would call green, be you in my perspective.  But since you can’t do that, we’ll never know whether you see humans differently than I see humans. My humans look xyz, but your humans might look like yzx4rtq81mkulop. However, since I cannot see through your eyes, and we’ve both been taught that what we think humans look like is truth, we’ll never be able to experience each other’s perspective.

Okay, maybe that cannoned your brain too. Nonetheless, these hypotheticals are quite intriguing. They kinda show individuality by not showing individuality. They show that we can invent the universe but not know some of the most simple stuff that we created.

If we flunked junior high math, then we must be bad at universing.

So what do we do to become better at universing? Easy. Don’t flunk junior high math. Or if it’s too late for that, then learn how to do the things that you were bad at. Better yet, create a time machine and go back to junior high and study like your counselor told you to.

My point is that if you, or I, or Donald Trump, or Barney Fife, might be the human personification of infinity, and you, or I, or Donald Trump, or Barney Fife got some work to do.

So let’s get universing, Milton.

With love and headcannons,

Bo

(special thanks to VSAUCE’s video “Is anything real?” for general awesomeness and for providing knowledge to me on the Egocentric Predicament.)