The problem of human existence...

... is quite very simply put that while standards are always abstract, whatever they're applied to is always concrete.

That's it and that's all, there's no "sentimental" gargleⁱ involved or any of that. Yes the other is "unknowable" etcetera, but all that's merely a symptom. The actual problem of human existence is that while the standards are abstract, the reality they're to apply to is concrete.

There are no solutions, good or otherwise. Some are richer and therefore can afford more infrastructure, some are poorer and therefore can afford less. Bees leave the hive every spring in the (unwarranted, and logically indefensible) hope that the world hasn't turned bee-hostile in the meanwhile. If they manage to find the exact thing they expect within as long as their wings will carry them, they live. If not -- they die. A bird may be ten times or ten thousand times the mass of a bee ; its life is exactly the same : either it runs into what it needs before it runs out or else it runs out before it found what it needed. The psychopath and you, my dear reader, and I, my dear writer, are very much the same in this : richer or poorer, we get what we pay for, and we pay for what we can afford to pay for. It's what it is.

The bird could, of course, attempt to live a bee's life. Conceivably out of the multi-ounce bird a multi-grain bee could indeed be carved. I don't envy anyone his self-mutilation ; but the inescapable problem is that the bee so produced will... nevertheles... still be just a bee. It'll not be any greater a bee for having once been a bird but rather likely less ; or, if you prefer the immortal words of every "transsesexual" ever -- I miss my penis.

The problem of human existence admits precisely one solution (in the limited sense that it'll make it not be a problem anymore) ; yet despite its overwhelmingly immense popularity to date it... well, it still seems quite... undesirable, shall we say. Don't you find ?

Human existence is the meeting of a clearly understood problem with a strictly unavailable solution over a finite span of time. Tick tock...

1. Striving to understand less of how you understand things isn't going to do anything. Obviously it could trick you into being satisfied, in a very specific sense already described. There's nothing wrong with relying on whatever trick works for you ; but the problem with tricks is that they have this ungodly tendency to randomly, and irreparably, stop working. So... don't get too invested, I guess ? Or do, if that's how the magic works. Either way... [↩]