992 The Center Of The Universe

<p align="left">Being the center of the universe is the subjective self-delusion that your goals & desires matter, but it's also true: you are The Center Of The Universe. There's nothing more important in the universe than you because if you're gone then what difference does it make? You're not the first one to think that way, everyone does; in fact, there's a whole philosophy, Solipsism, that postulates everyone but you is a figment of your imagination. The modern manifestation of this idea is that we all live in our own computer simulation; the theory being you control the simulation, you just don't know it, but if you think on something hard enough, it will happen; it's simply the idea of faith transmuted to the silicon age. A presocratic sophist would recite the assertion: nothing exists, and even if it did, nothing can be known about it, and even if it could, knowledge about it cannot be communicated to others. This eventually evolved into the famous truism of “I think, therefore I am,” which obviously defines you as The Center Of The Universe.</p> <p align="left"><span lang="en-US">Being The Center Of The Universe, everything is about you: what you feel, what you want, what you think. This has the decidedly negative ramification that no one else's opinion is valid; it doesn’t matter how educated or successful an expert is, people always go with their own </span><span lang="en-US">gut</span><span lang="en-US">. They somehow convince themselves that the expert isn't privy to the information that they have, or simply ha</span><span lang="en-US">ve</span><span lang="en-US">n't considered the issue properly yet. Even trying to communicate this concept is a mishmash or first and third person pronouns because language also reflects your universe-centricity: </span><span lang="en-US">I, I, I, me, me, me, mine</span><span lang="en-US">. Even i</span><span lang="en-US">f we could all read each other's minds in one giant psychic neural network, such that you wouldn't be you anymore, the hivemind entity would then be The Center Of The Universe.</span></p>