One of the thing that bothers me the most about the way internet function is the disconnect between how popular something is and how much intrinsic value it has.
For instance on Quora, I’d like to believe I wrote thoughtful responses to meaningful questions, such as “What is the meaning of life””. Yet, it’s my answer to what makes french people french that gets the most attention, by far. That still puzzles me.
I don’t think what gets the most attention is the most valuable personally. But that’s a difficult one to assess. Sometimes valuable piece of work are written by unknown, sometimes shit comes out of more well known writers.
Could there be a way to measure the value that isn’t dependent on the many biases that we have? Value is in the eye of the beholder as we say. But what if beholders are shallow creatures?
I remember a dinner discussion with my brother who put forward: “What is the meaning of life? Why do I live? What’s even the point of asking those questions. ” For him, it seemed like the most evident thing in the world.
This is where I realised that even though we might have come from the same belly, me and my brothers are from different planets. To me, those are the most important questions in existence. And yet, there will never be a clear answer. Only perspectives. And I was able to refine mine through years of internal debate and inference based on the patterns of my story. Only to re-question it again and again.
There’s no end to the torment of a hyper-skeptic.
So I wondered if he was right all along, a kind of hidden wisdom. That we should live our lives not worrying about why any of it matters at all.
Things that matter in theory don’t really matter in practice.
Nothing matters.
Everything matters.
Nothing matters but what matters to you.
It’s a spectrum really.
I don’t think I’ll be able to answer the interrogation I’m posing. The end.
