Humans are silly. We do a lot of really silly things. We look at squiggles on a piece of paper to learn. We bop our heads to random assembleges of acoustic waves. We go to office buildings and trade our time for pieces of paper with fancy images on them. The list goes on and on. We’ve all heard that nagging voice from a parent or friend: “why are you wasting your time?” Maybe we were playing video games, chatting with our friends, or doodling on a piece of paper. After all, they’re “useless activities.” But, if we extrapolate out any human activity, we can make it sound ridiculous, even though we do them on a daily basis.
Imagine you’re a investor. You buy pieces of a company at some random evaluation based on public perception. Those pieces may suddenly become much more valubale, whether it be from an Elon Musk tweet or actual progress. You don’t care. You buy low, sell high, and call it a day. You consider yourself a risk taker, when all you’re doing is playing around with invisible IOU cards with variable worth. And somehow, what you’re doing is highly respected. Imagine you’re a fiction author. You’re just a grown-up child that writes down your ridiculous fantasies on paper. You make children “waste” time daydreaming about unrealistic figures of your imagination. But somehow, you might be one of the most famous people alive.
We are biologically driven to survive and reproduce. In a purely biological sense, anything we do that doesn’t contribute to those purposes is silly. But, we do it anyway. We seek companionship, wealth, fun, happiness, and adventure. We choose to do more than just survive. It drives us. It makes us happy. We have created systems of thought to understand why we do these things. And, we accept it. It makes sense. We do things all the time without knowing why we want to, and we’re also tasked with understanding why we do those things. It’s an infinite cycle of action and comprehension. We can ask why until infinity.
Why are you a lawyer? I want to make money. Why do you want to make money? I want to buy things. Why do you want to buy things? The things make me happy. Why do the things make you happy? They bring me joy. Why do they bring you joy? They make me think deeply. Why does thinking deeply bring you joy? At some point, you won’t have a good answer anymore. We are highly complex creatures. But, why is this the reality? God only knows.