Rabbit Hole Intellect

We’re in a rabbit hole, man. I’m not sure if it leads anywhere.

This is an unsettling thought for any human being, yet most of us have had this notion cross our minds at some point. It usually follows personal inquiries regarding life’s “meaning,” whether there is “life after death,” or the question as to whether there is something more to life than we now presently perceive. The title of this post is an excellent verbalization of what someone once called, “the existential creepies”—the idea that one hasn’t the slightest clue as to what his life means, if anything at all.

Regardless of what we think about life and its significance or lack thereof, we are all in this rabbit hole. It is a seemingly endless network of tunnels leading everywhere but nowhere. We are frustrated by the sheer infinite number of routes and their lengths and implications because the more we investigate, the bigger our universe becomes, and the smaller we get. Smaller and smaller and smaller, until we are nothing but amoeba dust in an inexpressibly gigantic cosmic Petri dish.

Such a realization would be traumatizing to a goodly number of people, which is why they turn to divinities to help not only explain why they exist, but where they are going after they cease to be as organisms. Notice the need by many an assurance of immortality, of an afterlife. They are not content with their time on Earth. Indeed, life can be addicting; it is the most powerful narcotic ever known. Rare is the person willing to give up his life without the most vigorous and valiant of fights, yet he has no idea just what it is he is fighting for.


Wolfgang and I (Max) do not turn to divinities and grand narratives for insight into this matter. We believe that there is no insight to be had in this regard. It would seem that most individuals blindly accept the beliefs and dogmas handed to them by their parents, who accepted the exact same beliefs and dogmas handed to them by their parents, and so on. As people are gradually inculcated with doctrines, it is only natural for them to accept these as the best explanation for the way things are, since they really know no other approach—at least not to the degree that they are acquainted with the belief system insisted on them from childhood.

In a way, we are paying a price for rejecting the traditional and prevalent beliefs of our society. We are in the minority when it comes to the God question. The best we can do is say that we humans are the result of a countless series of events which came after the Big Bang, a theory which we feel is plausible but not for certain. Of course, we have no explanation for what came before that, and so we are not going to pretend to have one.

No one can really know how the universe came about for sure. Many claim to know for certain that it was God, or Allah, or Brahman, or whatever, that created the universe, but none of this can be demonstrated scientifically, since these explanations cannot even be tested. If God in fact created everything, where did God come from? Who created God? He had to be created somehow. Our Sunday school teachers never seemed to be able to answer this question to our satisfaction. They’d say, “God was always there.” But this will not do. God had to have some kind of beginning. Yet no argument is given for this “fact,” which is very easy to accept when one does not think for oneself, and when one lives in a society where over ninety percent of the population holds this basic belief. Of course, there are variations on the theme, but none of the theistic faiths offer sufficient logical explanation which demonstrates even the remote possibility that God exists. There are some, such as Aquinas and Anselm in the Catholic faith, who have advanced theories attempting to prove the existence of God. Aquinas drew on Aristotle’s notion of the “first mover,” which he understood to be God, but for some reason he was not compelled to theorize about whom moved the first mover, in which case, it wouldn’t be the first mover.

It is not our intention to give an exposé on the philosophical questions surrounding metaphysics, but rather to show some of our basic concerns about something which a substantial number of people believe that we do not. We are skeptics, but are certainly willing to at least entertain certain ideas which may be improvable and even disreputable. In fact, we often go to great lengths to investigate extremely implausible ideas, but do so mainly for the sake of the experience itself. We feel that our perspectives of the world are broadened by exposing ourselves to phenomena outside our conceptions of reality ‘as if’ they were true. This method of investigation not only enriches the quality of experience, but also helps maintain intellectual honesty. Thus, at the end of the day, we still admit that we truly know very little, if anything at all.

~Max and Wolf