Existentialists Make Lousy Board Games

 "All great truths are conceived by walking." 
-Friedrich Nitzsche

"The future is vast and inscrutable. What we do has little affect on anything that happens in the future. The chaos theory is the biggest falsehood ever picked up by conspiracists. A butterfly flapping its wings is just a butterfly flapping its wings." 

"Exe, your grasp of the world continues to amaze me, but what amazes me more is how you can believe those things and not put at least a little stock in what I have to say. Our philosophies are not so different in higher principle."

People always stared when they had these conversations in public. Deep conversations, questioning common knowledge, quoting from the greatest minds on the greatest subject. People imagined they most go home in the afternoon and just study until dawn so that the next morning they could go for their daily walk through New York again and iron out the mysteries of the universe in public where everyone heard them, almost like they were projecting their conversation. For months it was just the two of them, Exe and Nihl, walking, talking, arguing, but for the last two months they were joined by another man, slightly younger than the two . They walked shoulder to shoulder, in a straight line, Exe and Nihl on either end did most of the talking while the new guy, Roger, stood relatively quiet in the middle, almost like he was their intellectual groupie, soaking up everything they had to say. On that day the sun was just the right amount of covered by the clouds, Nihl's duster was just the right amount of fluttery, as was Exe's hair, and everything was right in the world that was so wrong.

"You're too close minded as always, Nihl, I can accept other people's idea unlike you. I don't conflict with anyone."

Roger managed out, "Are we going to the same coffee shop as always? Because I think I found a short cut." 

"You're so close to the real truth about the world but you blind yourself to it because it's too dark for you. We are alone. Desperately and completely alone, spinning on a rock through space, struggling in a life where there is no fulfillment and no satisfaction but that that exists in your mind for brief moments. Our lives are nothing but miniscule points of light in the middle of two endless stretches of darkness."

"They are pointless, but in the way that a board game is pointless. There is a goal, an idea, it my even produce emotions, but in the long run it means nothing. Ironically Life is not the best game to represent life. Monopoly is. You all start out as a random collection of items and you start going around the board. Along the way you have to make decisions about what you want to buy and what you want to stay away from, what is your strategy and what are you going to do moving forward. You have your own individual plan on how to achieve the goal of success. And yet the whole time you are working on your plan you are moving around on a square board, so no matter what you do you are always going to end up right back at the beginning."

"We need to turn down this alley." 

"Exe, metaphors have no effect on me because metaphors imply a logical connection between two things, which simply does not exist and cannot exist. There is no logic in connections, only people grasping at something far thinner that straws, people grasping at gossamer stands of silk. "

"There is a connection and it is the most basic connection of all. The connection between our mind and its perceptions and reality. You have admit that even if these things around you, everything in the world, are pointless that do exist, no matter to what end. What is to say that they do not exist on your mind, that your perception of them is not what creates them. Because without being perceived do they really exist?"

"Did either of you see that little girl playing with that cat back there? Wasn't that just the cutest thing?" 

"Do you remember last week when you conceded to me that I had won one of our little engagements of wits, and that you would reconsider you views on the effects of perception? What happened to that, did you look into your 'soul' *scoff* and re-affirm yourself."

"You shouldn't be so quick to jump on me just because my ideas do not conflict with religions and we are tolerant, and that won argument meant nothing. 'All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.'" 

"Hold up for a second guys I'm going to go give that guy a few dollars, he looked even weaker than yesterday."

"Did you really just quote Nietzche at me? He was one of our men."

"Your men? He was clearly one of ours. 'All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses'"

"Those guys sure are way up there on that scaffolding, I hope they don't get hurt, don't you guys?"

"Really? 'After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.' How does that work in your non-confrontation?"

"One day someone is going to find some of his lost papers and it will show whatever his true beliefs were. Until then I think that we can both agree that he was a genius who opined on both of our subjects at least to some extent."

"We just have to turn down State Street and then we're there guys."

"No matter what he may or may not have said this unalienable truth is this: It is useless. Everything that has occurred on this planet and that will ever occur on any planet is completely useless. Eventually that planet will die either from its own factors or from something in space and all evolution and all progress made by those creatures that have evolved will have been for nothing."

Roger agreed.

"Even if that is the case, and I'm not sure that it is, that should not be the main idea. The main idea is to self-determine your own environment to complete your goals and to fulfill human needs and desires, that is the only meaning of existence despite the fact that it has little to no impact on the grand scheme of our collective lives."

Again, Roger agreed.

"Well, here we are."

"This isn't the coffee shop."

"No. Where did you take us Roger? We're not even on pavement anymore."

"To central park."

"Why? Central park is where people sit to enjoy their sweet nothings."

"Yes. Let's turn around."

"No. Not today. Today is going to be different, it's not just going to be you two walking around talking about your little philosophies. Today I'm going to do something fun, not intellectually stimulating. Fun."

"But Roger I thought that you agreed that we're alone in the Universe."

"I do."

"I thought you knew that nothing that we do yields a different outcome and that to seek enjoyment and fulfillment all we need is to use out perceptions to determine ourselves to do it."

"I do. And I can compromise those. I believe one-hundred percent that this life has no greater purpose and that our actions are useless. But it doesn't matter that I believe that. It doesn't matter what anyone believes because they all, and you two especially seem to subscribe to Kant's Critical Philosophy of Angst. You say that we have no purpose and then you sit down and wait for the nothing that you laud and embrace to happen. I want to say that and see that that means we have total control of the time that we have, and that the future is an adventure to be had because of it. I've stared into the abyss long enough, it started to stare back, and now I'm going to go look at something else for a while. You two are so fond of quoting Nietzsche, well here's one for you, 'We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.' You said he was a genius, now learn from him. Now if you'll excuse me I've walked by that tree three times this week and I suddenly want desperately to climb it."