Center of the universe
All right. Just a thought I thought of. Bear with me here.
So everyone is themselves. I’m me. You’re you. Everyone has a mind of their own and everyone can do things that they do.
But, as far as I know, I’ve never been you and you’ve never been me. Do you even exist?
Certainly, I cannot prove that you exist (and I cannot prove that I exist, but I am assuming that I do). Could it be that I am actually the center of the universe?
Perhaps everything is created just for me. This computer monitor, this carpet, this house, this street, this country, etc. Perhaps history was written for my amusement, words invented for me to think out loud, and calculus to kill me. Perhaps everything I have ever encountered was all a scam created by some greater power just for a laugh.
And really this philosophy cannot be wrong because whoever disagrees is technically a figment of the center-of-the-universe’s imagination.
Confusing? Maybe it was made that way just for you.
— Alan Liang
Comments
hahahaha. this is great.
Posted by: Lauren | May 13, 2007 10:50 PM
This is known as solipsism. There are many critiques of it, but this is definitely the best comic ever that is vaguely related to it.
Posted by: Ben Hyman | May 13, 2007 11:00 PM
If Pascal is right, each of us is indeed the center of the universe — or at least we each occupy the center:
“The whole visible world is only an imperceptible atom in the ample bosom of nature. No idea approaches it. We may enlarge our conceptions beyond all imaginable space; we only produce atoms in comparison with the reality of things. It is an infinite sphere, the centre of which is everywhere, the circumference nowhere.”
“Pensées,” II, 72
Posted by: dporreca | May 13, 2007 11:02 PM
Ha. I really didn’t need to start thinking about this before trying to go to sleep.
(Blast, Hyman, you beat me to it again.)
Posted by: Andrew | May 13, 2007 11:31 PM