Gateway 2021

Think About It for a Moment “Think about it for a moment,” said the man with the white hair.

“About what?” asked the other, hair black.

“Think about anything.”

“Okay.”

White hair continued. “What comprises a thought?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Yet it is real, or at the very least it feels very real. Is this an accurate assumption?”

“Yes.” Black hair could agree with a simple thing like that.

“Then we must imagine that a thing may exist, which cannot be explained well, or at least not with human language.”

“Truly.”

“And we must also believe that you exist, for you think and thus are—” “Therefore I am—” “Indeed.” White hair was impressed with the listener. “Especially if you are a solipsist, which is always an interesting rabbit hole to explore, but let us assume for a moment that you are not.”

“What is a solipsist?”

“Very good.”

“Pardon?”

“It is a person who believes that the only possibly verifiable thing is the self, yet you responded to me without hesitation or absurdity.”

“My self isn’t smart enough to generate all of this,” black hair said.

“Okay, so let us return to my presumption that more than the self exists, as we wind around solipsism, so it must be that more than the individual thought exists. Is this logic sound?”

“I believe so.”

“Good. Where am I? Oh, yes. It must be then that there is a thing, outside of individual thought, which cannot be articulated by human speech, that can still be understood; perhaps not in full, but well enough to get across.”

Black hair looked at him strangely. “And what is this thing? The thing that meets this obscure definition, that is.”

“Why, I thought it was all but obvious! This strange specimen is space-time, of course, and we may just be in it!”

“Aha,” he said. “I had hardly even thought about it.”

“And yet here you are, no wiser, it seems, than before; and your comprehension is adequate—but could you ever try to explain all this to, well, to anyone else? Take a fish, perhaps.”

The man with black hair picked up a fish. From where had that come?

“No, not literally.”

“Oh,” he said, a bit regretfully. He put the fish down, and it disappeared.

“Imagine that you must explain space-time to a fish. What would you say?”

“Well, I suppose I’d first ask him if he were a solipsist.”

“Why in the world would you do that?” the man with white hair asked in a huff.

“Why would I bother trying to explain space-time to him if he couldn’t first accept my existence? That would be an outlandish waste of time.”

White hair stared. “But a fish would never understand solipsism, you fool!”

“Yet he would be perfectly fine in taking a gander at the incomprehensible? You never cease to amaze! Perhaps I will speak with a fish, just to listen to a greater mind than yours!”

White hair stomped away, but black hair stayed. He was a man of action, and it seemed prudent now to find a wiser conversationalist.

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