I very nearly sat down to answer a question from one of my philosophy magazines which I subscribe to but don’t quite read as much as I once did. It happens like that sometimes but I still enjoy subscribing because they’re not expensive, there are still decent articles I do read and it’s an area of ‘entertainment‘ that is severely under supported. It’s strange calling philosophy entertainment, even though it can be used to improve entertainment as the television series The Good Place demonstrated and I don’t doubt there are countless plays using philosophical ideas as their basis. Is that philosophy as entertainment though, well not purely but then has it ever been since the days of Socrates arguing with people in market places. There is a good chance he must have put on quite the show if he was getting the crowds. Seeing as he was accused of corrupting the youth and forced to die by suicide he must have been doing something right; getting their attention, entertaining them and forcing them to think. However it still appears the philosophy itself, the philosophical words spoken were not entertainment but merely used as the wood for the fire. You can tell I’m trying to talk philosophy because all I’m doing is going in circles. It’s such a wonderful art form when done badly.
The question then I was going to attempt to answer was “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and I guess this could just define my attempt at talking philosophy in general. It wouldn’t be philosophical if you were to provide nothing for an answer, even if it were a ramble reminiscent of a Boris Johnson speech on the ethics of clarity, it would still be something. Saying that it is also impossible for nothing not to be an answer to something, even in the most irritating of way, someone will manage to find a way of using that as an answer. At which case nothing becomes something and we realise we’ve managed to both prove and disprove ourself in the space of two sentences. This is why I enjoy philosophy, you can really get away with anything if you want. Is there nothing you can’t say? Says the man who just used a double negative which is something you shouldn’t ever do but then I just did which means that doesn’t count either. You see this is why I had no intention of answering the question because I knew I would just get myself confused and ramble in circles. Again that does seem to be a popular approach at the moment so perhaps it’s the done thing. “Just don’t do something, unless you can’t do nothing. But be careful of doing nothing incase it somehow becomes something. Although that won’t happen because it is nothing and nothing is not something, until it is, and then it is something, but still nothing”. Stay safe people.
Observations and Misunderstandings 