So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?
To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.
But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors—but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal.
-- Hunter S. Thompson
To say that this book is an autobiography or memoir would be misleading. These are largely retellings of a linear unfolding of events. This is not my intention here. Rather, the focus of this book is the construction of a worldview from "first principles" that is both consistent and critical. In this sense, it is more akin to Kant's Prolegomena than a biographical sketch.
However, while Kant attempted to deduce first principles from deduction in an objective way (the importance of the synthetic a priori), I will use the metaphor of constructing a mythology, how such mythologies are constructed (using examples of process and observation from my own mythology, why we all necessarily do it, and where the boundaries between mythology and truth lie. (Kant also didn't have neuroscience and psychology and couldn't have possibly fathomed the extent to which the mind and brain could be studied objectively.) And I will begin from a highly subjective experience: the memoryless construction (i.e. one that was only implied to me through subjective deduction) that is my subjective ecstatic experiences. Thomas Nagel argued that there can be no "view from nowhere". However, there can be memoryless foundations that is constructed in a non-linear manner via a cerebral non-linear manner (a "Eureka" moment) that can be traced back to inputted content but not inputted process. Consider the fact that "random number generation" is technically not random as the output must result from any given input based on a deterministic algorithm even if we don't understand the algorithm, but it is sufficiently random for our human purposes. Moreover, the input tends to be randomized further using, for example, grabs of various digits of decimal expansions of the time on an internal clock, for example. If the clock can output a fine enough measurement of time that it is beyond the reaction time of a human being, then there is conceivably no way to bias the output.
Thus, this book essentially tells a story about the boundaries of a subjectively constructed mythology, how that translates to objective reality, and why everyone does this. And within that mythology will also be a mythology about how that mythology seems to be constructed based on deduction from the metaphysical mind trapped inside its physical brain. For the neuroscientists, psychologists, and any other mind-brain enthusiasts who find this topic interesting.
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