1. grow up in a christian education environment, assuming everyone else thinks the same way.
2. get exposed to atheism, inherent unprovability of religion. become agnostic.
3. thoughts about agnosticism and atheism give way to semi-disillusionment with the meaning of life, unsure about what it's all supposed to mean. decide there are more important things to worry about, like career, money, girls.
4. begin to explore contemporary research on happiness, elevation, and positive psychology. renewed interest in science, particularly the nature of consciousness, quantum physics and cosmology.
5a. begin to see the illusion of consciousness (emergence from loopy neurons), time and space (relativity, quantum weirdness), reality itself (schrodinger's cat, heisenberg uncertainty principle). not sure what it exactly means, but enough to see that these extremely difficult subjects are unresolved by the brightest minds on the planet.
5b. meet two very wise people who have thought lots about these matters, and begin to examine the philosophies that describe the illusory nature of reality and the ego.
6. begin to investigate the nature and benefits of compassion, selflessness, and desireless action.
so, where to go from here?
will i suddenly return to the passive kind of nihilism, where effort is simply too difficult?
will i decide that all this contemplation is nice but impractical?
how does possible understanding of such matters affect the reality i inhabit? will i really be able to move along this ladder, and how do i know if it's the right way to go? i can't know for sure of course, but doesn't understanding these matters imply i actually know that this is the way, regardless of how it turns out?
