There are as many ways to live in this world as there are people in this world, and each one deserves a closer look.

this is something i've been thinking about for a while--is there just one question? i mean, whenever i get into debates with my friends, we eventually spin so far out of where we have the capacity to argue that we have to stop. usually, the questions we come to are those cliched questions like, "what is life?" "what is the responsibility of human beings?" "how did life come about?" "how should morality balance with practical needs?". what i think is that maybe these are all the same question. all of art, literature, and science is trying to answer the same question. and i know that you are probably sitting on the edge of your sea waiting for me to answer the question, but i'm afraid i can't express it in our language any more than i can answer it. the question is somewhat like those listed above, but those are only a sampling. the trouble it that we (humans) are the first race on our planet to have gotten past the survive-in-nature phase. there is no template for what we are supposed to do. that's why future races in science fiction books are so disgusted with us--we are the test run. we are trying to work out what it is we should be doing with ourselves, but it's not in our nature to answer the question. perhaps that's because it is an unanswerable question. well, not unanswerable. it's like the equation x=y. there are an infinite number of solutions, and therefore it is unsolvable. you can't even simplify or reduce it in any way. you just have to plug in some numbers and see if it works.




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