Nothing is true, and everything is permitted.

Nothing is true and everything is permitted. A meaningless video game quote right? Well actually it’s attributed to a 12^th century muslim missionary. But beyond  that  it’s been used in many places. But lets look at the statement itself. Seven short words, and yet through the magic of linguistics, they convey so much wisdom. To explore, we’re going to have to break this down a little bit.

               First we’ll start with the first part, nothing true. Well this can’t possibly be true can it? I mean Hitler was evil, It’s 4:42PM EST here in ohio, and this chair is blue. I know these things to be true, and likely you know a similar set of things, though the details may vary.  But lets look at them individually. Was Hitler evil? I think pretty much everyone reading this save for the random neo nazi (hi bob), can agree with that. Well, what is evil? Something that is immoral…. What’s that mean? Well Miriam webster defines it as:

“Violating Moral Principles; Not conforming to the patterns of conduct usually accepted or established as consistent with principles of personal and social ethics”

               Hmm… That’s a lot of vauge conditionals. Personal ethics? Those are different for each person, and not everyone has every situation clearly and neatly defined ethics. What does it even mean to conform? To do what everyone or the majority is doing? Well no two other people are ever doing EXACTLY the same thing. In hitlers case he lived in a society that elected him…. Not by a majority of the people, but a plurality. So he was conforming to the largest group…. How is he then evil? Are we holding him to western American standards? Modern standards? The answer is we’re holding him to OUR standards. Well that hardly seems rational when he was a world away. What even gives us any authority to do that? Force? That just means we can kick more ass. No we decided to judge him based on our own standards of our own volition and decided what was right. Nothing ever actually made it so. There exists no mechanism by which nature determines who is right in an ideological debate.

               Still the vagueness of what is evil and not is just one example. Surely It’s still 4:42. NOPE, as of the time I’m writing this it’s 5:09… but it was 4:42 when I was writing it above right? Well more like 4:42 and some number of seconds. But we could measure that right? Well the smaller and smaller time frames you get you start needing more advanced clocks… to a point that you can’t be exactly sure. But it was still between 4:42 and 4:43 right? According to my clock yes. Is my clock accurate? Maybe. And that’s if I remember correctly, if it didn’t change between the time I looked at the writing and the clock. But assuming we had an ultra advanced perfect clock, instantaneous ability to measure we could be right about the time right? If time doesn’t follow the laws of quantum mechanics, maybe.

               Okay the chair has to be blue, you know what color you’re looking at right? What is color, is the chair really there?  Color is a construct interpreted by your brain. Are you sure the blue you see is the same blue everyone else sees? Are you sure the chair is there? Well no no it isn’t.  at least not exactly where you perceive it to be. According to the quantum nature of matter, actually pinning down where something is, isn’t as dry cut as you might believe. Things don’t really …. Exist in any one place, they can be measured to be in a place but they’re more waves than things. You don’t measure a wave as being the crest do you? No it has a size as immeasurable as that might be but it’s bigger than just the tip. Matters the same way, where you perceive something to be is likely the crest. The statistical average of where that something is located.

               Nothing is true is true though making nothing is true false right? (kudos if you followed that sentence). Correct. 1+1=2 ….kind of. See even a concept as simple as the number 1 has an elaborate logical underpinning. 1+1=2 is true because we DEFINE it to be true.

               Still, I think hitler was evil, because I believe it to be so. 4:42 was a good enough estimate when I wrote it (now 5:22), and there was never any chair. The chair was a thought experiment. Approximations, guesstimates, that’s all we have to work with, and sometimes they help. But nothing is EVER completely 100% undeniably true. The universe simply does NOT work on such a pedantic binary system. Perceptions, self definitions, these things matter. The great wisdom of the phrase tells us to not accept things at face value, to look deeper and in the end, determine what is true for ourselves. But only after internal reflection upon listening to the evidence. Sure Hitler was an evil guy, I believe this, because he was not working for the greater good of all.  That is my own definition of what is right and wrong. Yours can be different, hell MINE is vague and open to interpretation from day to day about what constitutes greater good. Hell the definition itself is self referencing.

               So what about the other half, everything is permitted. I can’t go and rob a convenience store can i? that’s not permitted? Have you tried? I guarantee you if you tried you could have some chance of actually doing it. Nothing is true, remember. That applies to the almighty power of laws. They are simply words on paper. They mean nothing unless we make them mean something.

               Say there’s a law: you can’t sell ice cream on Saturday. Absurd but no cop is going to enforce it. Is it illegal to do so? The law says it is but people keep doing it. Well the law has no power, does that make it cease to exist? It’s still on the books. What if I shoplift some small bauble from a store? And no one finds out? It’s certainly normally enforced, but I get  away with it. Is it illegal then? If so why am I getting away? Even if I don’t the act still happened.

               Sad fact is that laws have no power. The laws of the universe, may be unbreakable but the laws of man are transmutable, fleeting, changing and weak. They exist no where but in our minds, and to each of us they have a different interpretation.

               So in conclusion, what the phrase simply teaches us, is to open our minds, and be not bound to anything. We are free, but that freedom comes at the cost of responsibility and consequences. So go live your life, live free but understand that you simultaneously know nothing and everything. That you have to make decisions based on incomplete information, and that’s okay because you will never have all the answers, and because of that, you should listen even to your worst enemy, because everyone else may have some knowledge you do not, as no one is omniscient , but you can decide only for yourself.