The Existential Debate Club

Assuming for a moment that you in fact exist, I’d like to welcome you the Existential Debate Club. This is, simply put, a place for people to come together and ponder the questions of existence the answers for which we take for granted most of the time as we live out this peculiar experience called life. Somehow or another, we find ourselves going about our daily business on this planet, floating through the vastness of the universe with not much thought as to why it should be this way to begin with. I, for one, find this all a bit strange and wonder, “What’s this all about?”

Although I’ve naturally evolved a system of thought to make sense of the world - we all do - I am by no means convinced that this is in fact how things really are. Quite to the contrary: I am convinced something is terribly wrong with our collective understanding of life; perhaps a better way to phrase it would be to say something is lacking. I’m just not quite sure what it is.

Arguably, engaging in debates with regards to existence is an exercise in futility. If we look at the preceding paragraph carefully, we can find that it is loaded with assumptions; that, for example, not only I, but you, the reader, exist (though I did caveat that assumption), and that we are in fact on this planet floating through the universe; that there is such a thing as collective understanding; etc. etc. Arriving at some fundamental truth that is not an assumption of one sort or another is perhaps (nay, probably) impossible. Nonetheless I believe that there is value to having these kinds of discussions, as, again, I believe we all answer basic questions of life implicitly, answers which then guide us and unfortunately cause conflict, often violently so.

So, what are some of these questions? That in itself is a good question. I’d like to pose some here, and invite you to join me and everyone else here in trying to find out the answers, although ultimately there may be none.

• Does God exist, and if so, what is God?
• How do you know you exist?
• How do you know anything outside of your mind exists?
• What is language, and how is meaning associated with sounds and words?
• Do you have choice / free will?
• Does morality exist? Is there right and wrong, and if so, what determines it?
• What is love?
• What is justice?
• Is there life / existence after death?
• Is there a meaning to life, and if so, what is it?
• Pragmatically speaking, how should we live with one another?
• Should we have government, and if so, what should it look like?
• Do religions have any value?
• Why is there so much violence in the world?
• What is the role of science vs. spirituality?
• What is spirituality?
• Does and should rationality and logic reign supreme?

As you can see, there’s a lot to chew on. Good thing for us is that humans have asked these and similar questions for thousands of years, and their answers may be instructive and guide our discussion. I hope you find these puzzles as fascinating as I do, and if nothing else, “Happy Trails!”

Colophon

As is customary with websites, a quick note on some of the fonts and such used here. The font in the logo is “Utopia” (which I thought rather befitting), while the tagline is set in “Bickham.”

For some number of years now my brother and I have had this idea of creating a website to foster international dialogue of some sort, communicating diverse ideas - a “global mindflow.” In that vein, my brother set up globalmindflow.net sometime after mindflow.de, a German drum’n'bass party crew in Darmstadt (near Frankfurt), which is still in effect (my brother being aka phizikl). Unfortunately not much as happened as life got in the way, so globalmindflow.net has thus far served more as a server sandbox to experiment around in. And so now here’s edc.globalmindflow.net, very much in line with the original spirit and intent of fostering an exchange of ideas.

Site Maintenance Updates

For those interested in these kind of details, I intend to keep a log here of updates I’ve made to the site. This is very much a work in progress, and for me it’s as much about sharpening my web design skills as it is following a life-long interest of mine. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at clemmerl@gmail.com.

August 26th, 2007

Finally wrote the “About” page. Set the tagline in playful (and vintage?) “Bickham” font using flash font replacement (courtesy of the sIFR folks). Added some code so that the “Login” link at the top right changes to “Dashboard” once you actually log in, something that had been annoying me for some time.