Miscellaneous Prompts

Conundrums

For context, I don't think I was in the best mood when writing this now that I'm looking back on it. These are some confusing and depressing thoughts, and I still wrangle with these every night. If you are not in the right state of mind at this time, do not read this prompt.

Blank walls surround you, completely devoid of life or personality. There is no ceiling. The walls just stretch higher and higher, never ending.

There are no windows. No decorations. No hope.

Just a room with nothing.

You lay spread out on the cold, hard ground, alone with your thoughts. You start thinking about topics you've never thought about before, unsure of what to do in this empty, unforgiving purgatory.

Can nothing be considered something?

I mean, if there's enough of it, then can that make it something? If the definition of nothing is to not have anything, and the definition of something is an unknown thing, then can't nothing be something if there's an unknown amount of it? None is an amount, after all.

If nothing can't be described as anything, then doesn't that make it an unknown thing? Even though nothing is, well, nothing, since humans have been able to figure out how to refer to nothing with a single word, doesn't that mean that we're aware of nothing, even though it isn't a thing?

How did humans begin understanding all the things that we understand perfectly now anyway? Like, how did the first humans discover cooking and farming? And how did that eventually lead up to the technology that we have now, like refrigerators and planes and virtual reality, within a few thousand years? Probably a lot of trial and error, but that must have cost thousands of lifetimes to achieve.

Society's complex too. How did we figure out how that was going to work? How many forms of government did humans have to go through to develop our mostly functioning societies? Were there civilizations in the past that had everything completely figured out- money, public happiness, civilians, war- but were decimated in an instant by a natural disaster that also destroyed all documentation of their society?

If those people died instantly from said natural disaster, what could they have been thinking about or doing right before? Did they know that they were going to die? Or were they oblivious to the looming threat and were just living their lives when they were killed?

Did anything exist for them after they died, or did they just... disappear? Are they somewhere right now? Can they see humans in the present like ghosts? Are they still mourning for their lost lives, or have they moved on? Or is there nothing but nothingness, with no feeling, seeing, smelling, tasting, or touching?

Is that what nothing is? Just the absence of everything? Or would that still make it something?

Your brain hurts from thinking about these topics, and your eyes are misty from thinking about what might be after death. There's nothing for you to do other than think at the moment, so you decide to do the one thing other than think.

Which is sleep.