A friend posted these questions on her blog without expecting any answers, and I liked them so much I couldn’t help but to answer them. It felt really good to use my brain for a bit. Please ask me questions too!

Q: How do you know where to draw the line between your garden variety existentialist crisis and nihilism?

A: You transcend the need to do so. In some senses, the human condition is much akin to being shot. You do not need to know who shot you before you begin to attempt to salve the wound. Too many obsess about the former without ever doing anything about the latter, and metaphorically bleed to death. After you have well and truly recovered from your injuries in every sense, you find that knowing who shot you is ultimately inconsequential and irrelevant.

Q: Where do animals go when they die?

A: Nowhere. They cease to exist, just like us. The transience and fleetingness of life only adds to its profundity and value.

Q: Should there be a point to everything?

A: Only if you want it to be as such. The desire for a narrative is perhaps the strongest human need. So perhaps there will always be a point to everything- from our perspective, that is, because we deem it to be that way.

Q: If special relativity is true – that the law of physics is invariable – and earth receives 4.5 pounds of sunlight per second, would I weigh less at night?

A: What does it matter? We cannot be certain that the laws of physics are absolutely invariable, and it shouldn’t matter whether you weigh more or less during a given period- most if not all measurements are man’s feeble attempts to impose order on chaos, and should be considered provisional rather than certain.

Q: By pleading insanity, would a person still be acquitted of a crime of passion? Why or why not?

A: As always, it should really depend on the circumstances. If you’re well and truly insane, I personally think the outcome shouldn’t really bother you all that much.

Q: Would you kill a loved one to save a thousand innocent lives?

A: It would have to depend on the circumstance, and on what the outcomes would be for the individual, the loved one, and those thousand people. How did the situation come about? Why and how are the people in danger? What is the circumstance in which the loved one is killed- is it by the action of the individual, or inaction? Are the thousand people aware that they are in danger, and what needs to be done for them to be saved? I would make different decisions in different circumstances.

Q: How does one exorcise a pervading ambivalence from one’s general disposition?

A: This is a grueling and lengthy process and varies greatly with the individual. Salvation will cost you a Venti Java Chip Frappucino from Starbucks.

Q: Is female subtext genuinely impossible to understand, or is there a universal agreement amongst men to be deliberately and painfully oblivious?

A: It is impossible to generalize for everybody. People- men and women both- are often oblivious and ignorant of themselves, and of others- without necessarily making a conscious decision to be so.

That said- the main problem with women as I perceive it in the colloquial sense is that they are far too inconsistent, and believe whole-heartedly that they are completely justified in being that way. Women themselves would actually be altogether happier if they were more aware of their own inconsistencies, and made a conscious effort to diminish them. The female subtext is impossible to understand the same way the weather is impossible to predict- it’s not because of the individual elements that make it, but because of the exponential rate of change between states.

There is no universal agreement amongst men about ANYTHING. Men who are oblivious are perhaps that way because ignorance is bliss, and awareness is hard work.

Q: How am I still able to live with myself after all I’ve done?

A: The mechanism for self-justification is one of the crowning glories of the human brain. It allows us to go through daily life with stupendous hypocrisy. There are men who have directly caused the deaths of millions of people who slept very soundly at night because they sincerely believed that they were doing the right thing.

Q: And more importantly – where would I be without the ones who help me pick up the metaphoric pieces of the metaphoric things I’ve metaphorically broken?

A: There is no way of knowing for sure. See Tim Minchin’s “If I Didn’t Have You, Someone Else Would Do.” There will almost always be others to help you, if you are a person who they deem worthy or in need of help. Unless you’re talking about living in total solitude- a circumstance which I am not qualified to talk much about.

Q: Why am I so lucky?

A: I would doubt it is luck. Luck is fair in the long run, and goes both good and bad. If you get to where you are because of luck, then you will just as easily be wrecked by it. You know intuitively that this would not be the case. Perhaps there is something about you and the choices you make that influence these people to stay on in your lives, independent of random variables. People might find you inspiring, endearing, troubling, or all of the above. You might perhaps inspire some to be protective of you, others to strive to keep up with you…

At the bare basics of all, you are “so lucky” because you must have something to offer to people, something that you might not be aware of.

Ask me your own questions at Formspring.me!