#completely upends and tears to shreds a persons basic fundamental understanding of reality

[braintapes]

There's something about our pattern-seeking, problem-solving driven brains that's so conducive to a particular kind of madness, right? I'm so utterly fascinated by stories where people try so damn hard to analyze, to quantify and make meaning of something that is inherently inscrutable. Yet still they try and try and break themselves upon that which resists understanding. I think that's why I like The Northern Caves so much, it really captures that feeling (man i need to finish rereading it at some point).

It's also kinda like how people end up down conspiracy rabbit holes. It's always about feeling like you understand the world. Not just bits and pieces of it, but the whole thing. It's so comforting to think that you've got it all figured out. That everything in existence operates under and in service of a specific set of principles, and once you Know them, you're all good! Everything makes sense! There's no need to worry!

Because we want to Know so bad. We have to Know. Knowing means information means creating means solving problems means living, means surviving, etc. To accept that there's so, SO unfathomably much in the world we don't, can't Know....To accept that the universe is vast and chaotic and we are only tiny animals with physical brains that can only understand a miniscule percentage of it all...That's horrifying! That's shattering!

If everything you thought you Knew, everything you based your entire sense of self, reasoning, logic, etc on, amounted to arbitrary lines in the sand...Then what does that mean for you? Your who and your what and your when and why and everything?

And even when it comes to things we do know, it can get so so messy. Organizational systems and taxonomy fascinate me partly because, ah, I don't understand them very much at all. And that part of me wonders...how closely can you look at something, stare at it, try to sort it out in your brain, before the distinctions between this and that become meaningless? How minutely can we dissect something and name its parts and how they interact and explain every complexity before it all becomes just too much?

I just find that all so fascinating to think about.