My Conundrum

     It's hard to feel silent when something's bothering you, but it's hard to admit what your issues are when you aren't even sure they're real. I've heard a lot of people speculating that we live in a simulation, but for me it goes much deeper, as I've explained already. I just don't think that reality as we imagine it exists, and over and over again we keep seeing instances of a world we thought was real and unchangeable just being another collection of things moving against each other in such a way that, from afar, it looks to be whole. 

     I keep worrying in the back of my mind that one day I'll discover this is all a lie. What if science someday shows conclusively that the external, objective reality that I don't believe in anymore exists? What I find scares me more, and I keep thinking about it as more and more things break, is that one day science could prove that I'm right. As I was writing this out, it occurred to me that plenty of book characters know that they're book characters, and plenty of theater people have made careers out of writing plays mocking theater conventions. One could argue that if we lived in a simulation, we'd know that we were being simulated, so we'd know about the reality that's simulating us. That we don't know about such a reality, with our telescopes and philosophy, suggests that either we're a real place, or that reality doesn't exist at all.