Drunk Conversations at 4am

What do you do when you come home from the bar at 3:30 in the morning and sleep still does not want to come?  When your brain is on fire and there's not so much as a drop of decent conversation during the entire night, and you still feel unsatisfied.   What to do, what to do...

The people at the bar weren't much into talking about anything really.  That might have been due to the fact that most of them were singing along to the god awful country music.  It wasn't a country bar, but the night's act just seemed to be a guy who only liked playing Garth Brooks, George Straight and...other country bands I can't really name.

I went back home completely sober, but I didn't want to go to sleep just yet.  I rolled a joint and I went outside, looking for someone to share it with.  That's when I hear some laughter coming from upstairs.  I headed up there out of curiosity; maybe they'll be cool and want to bullshit.  As I got to the top of the steps, I meet a group of five nerdly individuals getting their drink on.  When you live in an apartment complex full of college kids, there's bound to be some nerds somewhere.  They seemed like cool kids and I hung out a for bit with them.

In traditional philosophical fashion, I'm gonna use the dialogue method with the character of Drunky, who is an amalgam of all the nerds as I talked to that night, about things both strange and hilarious were discussed. It's a lot easier to write out and more efficient (lazy).  I'm all about that.  

Drunky:  "So, you want Bacardi 151 or Captain Jack?"

Me:  Bacardi.  You know you can light that shit on fire?  This girl I once dated put down a line of the stuff on her counter and then lit it.  I thought she was into chemistry, turns out she was just a little nuts.  Mind if I light up?"

Drunky:  Yeah, but let me open the window.  Hey, check this out on Netflix.  They have a log fire channel.  We've been watching it for 10 minutes.  They also have a fish tank channel.  See, look at this cool aquarium...haha

Me:  It's like a screen saver for high people...

Drunky:  We do the voices of Finding Nemo as they swim around, but we make it funnier

Me:  Guilty.  Done that before.  Have you seen Mystery Science Theatre 3000?   Old show, but they did a lot of that.

Drunky:  Oh yeah, I saw that show on re-runs.  Yeah, kinda like that.  So what do you do at the college?

Me:  I work in the IT department.   I fix broken shit.  That's my unofficial job title.

Drunky:  Oh yeah?  I'm a communications and philosophy major.

Me:  No shit?  That's pretty cool, but I hate to say that with that degree, you're going to find getting a job a bit hard.

Drunky:  I'm gonna write a book on philosophy.  I'm writing my thesis on the nature of truth.  See, my truth isn't your truth.  My experiences are totally independent of everyone elses and I really can't know anybody or anything objectively...really

Me:  Okay, I've got some time to kill!  Let's poke at your thesis a bit.  Is it true that you exist?

Drunky:  Not necessarily.  In fact, I would say there's no way to know.  The only thing we know for sure is that I'm having some kind of experience now

Me:    Ah, the old chestnut of solipsism.  It's so alluring, isn't it?

Drunky:  What do you mean?

Me:   Solipsism seems pretty sexy, right?  You can do and think pretty much what you want because the truth is something you construct and it leaves you with few obligations to tie you to some kind of objective reality.  A little solipsism is probably a good thing, but the professional solipsists are annoying as fuck.  Get ready to slog through page after page of meaningless word games if you want write a thesis under those types of rules.  Things would be more clear if you granted that there was an external reality and some type of objective truth. Otherwise, it tends to become a chaotic pile of belief spaghetti someone just threw up on a page.

Drunky:  That would mean I'm imposing my reality upon other people, but that can't be true. Their reality doesn't affect mine, and vice versa.  These are all just my experiences and they're not the same as yours.  

 Me:  Well, either you're a very good troll or a true believer, but let me take you seriously for a moment and ask you a few things to see where you stand on the idea of your actual existence.

Drunky:  Okay, shoot.

Me:  Don't you think the ability to ask questions regarding the nature of existence requires some type of existence to do so?

Drunky:  No, that's a tautology you've constructed. It's only true because you you've made "the ability to ask questions" as inherent in the definition of existence itself.

Me:  You're 100% right.  My question to you is, what's the honest alternative?  You've got presuppositions in your belief system too.

Drunky:  No way!  I don't even admit existence itself is objectively true, how can that be?

Me:  Doubt carries its own burden of proof on the extreme ends.  And I get solipsism is sexy and cool.  I'm all about fuck the system and break the rules to see what happens, or at the very least to make a better rule to replace the one you broke.  But you're playing in a framework that allows contradiction before you even begin...good luck my friend.  I mean, it's up to you if you want to allow contradiction into your ontological framework at the ground level, but it's been my experience that the people who actually believe that are quite a bit more insane than you appear to be.

Drunky:  What do you mean?

Me:  Well, if you wanted to truly act as your beliefs imply when you're so supposedly unsure of the state of your existence...,why go to college?  Why do you want a well paying job as an academic?  Why do anything that appears to have a connection with an external reality with whom other people share, and presume it's all just a dream?  Isn't it a larger assumption to think that our entire experience isn't predicated on an experience that the vast majority seems to share?

Drunky:  Ah, for the vast majority.  But not for everybody.

Me:   I never said 100% accuracy is possible when making truth statements.  But I think it's naive to believe that you can't make any with any confidence, especially when you act in ways as if you actually care for other things that seem to exist independent of you.  Like other people.

Drunky:  I can never know another person.  Not truly.

Me:  You can trust them.

Drunky:  I can't trust them because I'll never really know them.

Me:  To what degree?  To any degree?  I think it's possible to know someone with a high level of confidence.  I, and I bet you, act in ways as if you do.  You don't go up to the same person and introduce yourself for the tenth time.  You assume some level of familiarity, and trust them to some degree with every interaction.  

Drunky:  But that's not objectively true!  That's just your interpretation of my behavior.

Me:  Is it objectively true that's not objectively true?

Drunky:  ....

Me:  Exactly.

We parted on good terms as I finished my drink, shook his hand and left to go find my bed.