Thinking Oneself to Death

I have been trying to transcend perspective, to question myself to such an extent that nothing I think goes unthought-about. Always checking what I assume, always questioning myself. But it is exhausting. You can’t keep questioning your own perception. You have to accept that you merely perceive and build that up over time- experience, simple experience. It wastes ever so much time to worry about ‘why you thought that’ and whether it came up because of some previous bias (in the hopes that in the future you can never be accused of 'bias').

Everything probably does arise due to ‘bias’, but all bias is, when it really comes down to it, is that we are not God, not able to see everything happening everywhere, and therefore don’t know what we’re really looking at. If one insists on being aware of the bias, one can only settle back and be patient to wait till new information comes in to illuminate previous information and give it its context.

But it is all a waste of one’s mind to worry about it at all. And the person who worries about it is in danger of being cocky that he knows better than everyone else because he at least is willing to question himself (even to the point of questioning his own existence!). I have just the exact same kind of hubris that many recent philosophers may have had (here I question my assumption that they had it).

I have been exhausting myself. When I read a book, I don’t merely listen to it from my perspective; I think about what others would think of what I am thinking of it, and I think about where the author came from in saying what he’s saying, and think about what people who disagree with him might say to him and I get mentally to the exhausting point of thinking, what’s the point of thinking at all if all thinking is the result of … previous thinking? Oh dear. Oh dear, dear, dear.

Everything we think is contingent. I’m having to argue with myself that that is fine. But I should stop arguing with myself and be a simple peasant instead; back off out of this silly elitist tomfoolery of thinking I could possibly ever be truly objective. Who can? Nobody. No amount of self-questioning will work. And if you ever dare try to know all the knowledge in the world, your brain might just explode as in the Indiana Jones movie, The Crystal Skull, or you will at least go mildly insane (like I have) and wish you were dead.

I must meditate on what it would be to be a simple peasant. I have to stop this intellectualist nonsense. It is far better to go outside and wonder silly things about why that thing is there; did a squirrel pop by? Then move on to ‘I feel like a cup of tea!’ and ‘I feel like reading that essay by Lewis again where he talks about questioning ourselves to death…’ (Lewis probably wrote many such essays. Other people likely have, too. We’re all stuck inside a dystopian nightmare of self-important thinking!)