This is a mini-series of comics about a naive but curious ten-year-old boy who pesters a crude but wise old man while he sits on the steps to their dingy New Jersey apartment building trying to read the newspaper.
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An Old Man From Jersey Explains Life
- How to grow up
- What came first, the chicken or the egg?
- Religions
- Philosophy
- Is man inherently good or evil?
- Does everything happen for a reason?
- Does free will exist?
- The social contract
- Right and wrong
- How to think
The Meaning of Life
- How do you find purpose without knowing the meaning of life?
- My quest to find the meaning of life
- The value of life
- Reality is amazing
- It’s okay to be lost
- The cosmic perspective
- If life is a game, how do you win?
- Why you shouldn’t commit suicide
- The danger in telling people life has no meaning
How to Think Like a Genius
- 8 steps to becoming a genius
- My quest to find enlightenment
- Your ability to think obligates you to
- Enlightenment through logic
- The map of everything
- My approach to thinking/problem solving
- 10 steps to winning an argument
- How to solve a problem with a team
- Creativity is logic, not magic.
- My two rules about rules
- What is wisdom?
- Wisdom I learned working in IT: Nothing is magical
- Wisdom I learned working in IT: Answers come from questions
- The relationship between sanity, reality, truth, religion, and science
- 11 ways mainstream academic philosophy has come to resemble religion
Knowledge and Learning
- The value of knowledge
- Every grain of knowledge is valuable. Every grain of ignorance is destructive.
- Why you should have high intellectual standards
- We’ve never raised an entire generation of adults ever
- They’re giving away free superpowers on the internet
- The Alphabits analogy (Why it’s bad to be stupid)
- It’s not cool to be stupid
- How to become an expert at anything
- How to read for truth
- Recommended intelligent books and videos
- 10 ways people get dumber as they get older
Biker Philosophy
- A biker looks at social conformity
- A biker looks at bad weather
- A biker looks at the road
- A biker explains why we ride
- A biker makes a lot of beginner mistakes
My Tweets About Philosophy
TRANSCRIPT
KID
Hey Mister!
OLD MAN
What do you want, Kid?
KID
Can you explain life to me?
OLD MAN
Where do you want me to start from?
KID
From the beginning.
OLD MAN
Okay, now look. If I offered you 100 billion dollars to do it, and I promised to kill your whole family if you didn’t then would you do it?
KID
Um, yeah.
OLD MAN
That’s right. You wouldn’t even have to think about it or work up the motivation because there would be no choice There’d just be one path in front of you.
KID
The heck does this have to do with life?
OLD MAN
If you don’t understand how important life is or why then you won’t have the appropriate motivation to take life as seriously as you should. Then you won’t put the appropriate amount of effort into living, but if you truly, truly understood the value of life then you wouldn’t have to debate with yourself or work up the strength to sacrifice any of the relative temptations of the world to pursue life’s highest purpose. Your motivation would be so strong there’d only be one choice, one path before you. So the first lesson you need to learn about life is how valuable it is and why.
KID
Cool beans. So how valuable is life?
OLD MAN
How old are you, kid?
KID
I’m ten and a half years old going on eleven.
OLD MAN
No you’re not. You’re closer to 14 billion years old. All the stuff in your body was there at the Big Bang. Galaxies rose and fell around you as you floated to a place where the atoms in your body could finally come together in a way that makes you, you.
KID
So you’re saying I was meant to be here since the beginning of time?
OLD MAN
…that or you’re infinitely lucky to be here.
KID
So I’m either destined or lucky to come all this way just to die!? What’s the point of existing for a second if I’m not going to exist forever? Doesn’t the brevity of life make life pointless?
OLD MAN
The finite amount of time you get to live here is infinitely valuable because of its scarcity alone. You asked me how valuable life is. Well, here’s my answer. It’s infinitely valuable.
KID
Gosh, that’s a burden of responsibility bordering on a guilt trip.
OLD MAN
…ironic that it’s coming from an indifferent universe. Anyway, given that every second of your short, irreplaceable life is infinitely valuable, that makes the following question infinitely important: What’s the most important thing you can do with your life?
KID
I don’t know how to read a clock much less answer that question.
OLD MAN
Then find someone who knows the meaning of life and ask them.
KID
Who knows the meaning of life?
OLD MAN
Nobody.
KID
In all of human history?
OLD MAN
Nobody. Ever. Anywhwere. Did you get an instruction book to life when you were born that explained everything? No, well, nobody else did either. Nobody has any idea what’s going on. There are no experts, no authorities, no grown ups.
KID
My mom knows the answer to any question I ask her. And if she didn’t know what’s right and wrong then how could she spank me for doing wrong?
OLD MAN
We might get taller, and we might memorize a lot of facts, but philosophically we’re al stuck at 5 years old guessing at life and faking our maturity level until we start believing whatever it is we’re doing is what humans are supposed to be doing.
KID
So…you’re saying you’re not the person to ask about the meaning of life?
OLD MAN
Ask as many people as many questions as you can, but never take anything for granted, because you’re fate is your responsibility. It’s up to you to figure out the meaning of life.
KID
But you just said nobody ever figured it out.
OLD MAN
…sucks, don’t it?
KID
So that’s life? You’re born lost. The End. Hope it don’t suck to be you.
OLD MAN
You watch too much anime. So what if we don’t know why we’re here? The point is we’re still here. We still gotta do something. Since we don’t have anything more important to do than figure out what we’re supposed to be doing then we may as well spend our lives figuring that out.
KID
But if we can’t figure out why we’re here then how do we figure out what to do now that we’re here?
OLD MAN
There are things we can know about ourselves and the universe we’ve found ourselves stranded in. The more of those things we know the better we can live. We might not be able to prove we lived ight according to the ultimate maxim, but we can do something good with what we’ve got, and that which a man can do he should do.
KID
Sounds good. So where do I start my education?
OLD MAN
You can’t understand how a car works until you understand the parts that make up a car. Same thing with life. And what’s life then? Life is being a walking, talking, breathing, thinking creature stranded in this great, big, beautiful, lonely, indifferent universe.
KID
So I should become a mechanic? Got it.
OLD MAN
If you want to understand life then you gotta understand the universe that gave birth to you and that you live in. Learn all the science you can, because that’ll teach you the facts that everything else is built on.
KID
So once I become a super scientist then where do I point my telescope to start studying the meaning of life?
OLD MAN
That grass you’re standing on is alive. Why don’t you just ask it?
KID
Hey grass! why are you alive? It didn’t answer.
OLD MAN
Did it do anything?
KID
No. It just sat there and grew.
OLD MAN
Well there you go then.
KID
Are you saying the meaning of life is to just sit here and grow?
OLD MAN
I’m just pointing out what life does.
KID
But our lives would be pointless if all we did was just get big, grow old and die like grass.
OLD MAN
So you’re saying this grass’s life is meaningless?
KID
The life of grass has meaning because it’s a part of the food chain.
OLD MAN
…and whatever life form is at the top of the food chain has the most meaningful life, right?
KID
Exactly, but does that mean if more advanced aliens come along it’ll make my life worthless?
OLD MAN
But does that mean if more advanced aliens come along it’ll make my life worthless?
KID
Okay, I take that back. Life is inherently valuable to each individual life form simply because it’s alive.
OLD MAN
Now that that’s settled the grass is still growing into taller grass. What are you growing into?
KID
A taller human?
OLD MAN
That’s your body. What about your mind? What about your identity?
KID
I am what I am.
OLD MAN
That’s good that you acknowledge you’re a product of your environment. Now you need to acknowledge that you’ve yet to blossom into a significantly independent identity.
KID
Do they teach how to do that in school?
OLD MAN
I’d suggest enrolling in some online psychology classes.
KID
Now are you saying the meaning of life is to be a psychologist?
OLD MAN
The grass is here to be grass, and you’re here to be you. If you have questions about how to be you then I suggest you talk to the people who study “yous.”
KID
That’s painfully logical. So who am I supposed to be trying to become while I’m here?
OLD MAN
I suspect the point is that you get to pick.
KID
There’s no wrong answer?
OLD MAN
Well, you’re the one who is going to have to live with yourself. so You get what you got.
KID
So that’s life then?
OLD MAN
…I didn’t say to take my word for it.
The Wise Sloth 
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