Awareism’
Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
On first blush, it’s an age-old but meaningless question. But give it due consideration…and it’s still a meaningless question
The U.S. Navy takes great pride in its schools. In every class I attended during my stint, the first thing the instructor taught was, ‘there is no such thing as a stupid question.’
Every class, every instructor, from boot camp on — ‘there is no such thing as a stupid question’ — they drilled it into us.
For years I agreed with them; honestly asked questions are never stupid. And then I heard this one…
Why is there something rather than nothing?
It gave me pause. Could the U.S. Navy be wrong?
Scholars bill it as one of those great philosophical questions, a question of the ages, the heart of what philosophy is all about. But all I could think was, really?
That was years ago. At the time, I put it aside in favor of dealing with the never-ending not-nothings of life. But I heard it again recently, seriously asked by a serious person, so I had to wonder what I was seeing — or not seeing — that I thought it was a stupid question.
My first thought was to turn the question around and ask who or what exists in ‘nothing world’ that could ask, ‘why isn’t there something rather than nothing?’ To put that in another (snarky) way, if a stupid question must be asked, mustn’t there be someone around to ask it?
But putting it that way may make it seem like I’m arguing that ‘something’ must exist, but my objection to the question goes a lot deeper than that.
Boxing Nothing
Remember Existos (I bet you don’t), those creamy, low-calorie, mildly-hallucinogenic cookies that don’t exist and never did?
Asking ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ is like asking why are there Oreos in the cookie jar rather than Existos. It’s a meaningless question.
The only way to grant meaning to the question is to assume that Existos have an existence and so can exist in a cookie jar — even if only in imagination (thoughts exist). And the same for the ‘nothing’ question; we have to assume that ‘nothing’ can be experienced — even if only in imagination — or the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ is meaningless.
It seems safe to assume that we can experience nothing. Many people even seek it out — in sensory deprivation tanks, via meditation, by ingesting various substances, and so on. But are they experiencing ‘nothing’? If you’re conscious during the experience then — lungs breathing, heart pumping, thoughts flickering — isn’t the experience one of a relative lack of ‘something’?
It’s a little like heat. If you’re cold, even bitterly cold, it’s not that you’re experiencing no heat; it’s just that there’s not as much heat as you’d like. But a simple lack of heat can be a far cry from no heat at all. No heat, dead. Lack of heat, maybe not dead.
But what about actual unconsciousness? It might seem upon waking from being unconscious that we experienced ‘nothing’ while we were ‘out,’ but, importantly, we must be awake before we can say that we experienced (past tense) ‘nothing.’ And that’s like the experience of an empty box.
If you open a box and it’s empty, you might ask, ‘where’s my stuff?’ If you wake up after being passed out and can’t remember anything, you might ask (if oddly), ‘where’s my experience?’
Both of these ‘boxes’ — one enclosing space containing none of your stuff and another enclosing time containing none of your experience — exist in the ‘something’ world. And be it empty of stuff or experience, the point in both cases is that your experience is of a box.
There can be no experience of ‘nothing.’ It’s like no apples. If you have no apples in your hand, you have no experience of apples in your hand. If you have no experience of anything, you have no experience. Period.
That which we cannot experience does not for us exist. That statement might seem crazy at first blush, but if you cannot experience the sight of your own shoes right now — maybe it’s dark, maybe your shoes are in the other room — whatever the reason if you cannot experience that sight then that sight, that experience, does not for you exist. Period.
And the same for imagining ‘nothing.’ The imagination exists; it is real; it is a something, and if you are imagining ‘nothing,’ then the nothing you are imagining exists entirely as your imagination. You are experiencing your imagination.
Nothing doesn’t ‘exist,’ so asking why it doesn’t exist, like asking why there aren’t Existos in the cookie jar, is a meaningless question.
For some further thoughts on the nature of existence you might look at Blazing a Trail to Reality.
