Nothing Ever Happens: The Philosophy for the End of History

This is an excerpt from an ancient dialogue featured among the writings of Chud.

It covers the significant philosophical notion that nothing ever happens.

Greetings, Chud, and good morrow.

Greetings, Ferrol, I have heard discussions among the polity of your recent release from containment.

Indeed, Chud, I am now free to roam once more.

I assume you witnessed a great many happenings in your time within containment.

Indeed, I did.

But these happenings were in fact illusory?

Or so the doctor tells me, if science is to be trusted, then that shall be the case.

So, it is conceivable that, well, things may appear to happen, they in fact do not.

That may well be true.

Is it true, dear Chud, that you have in the past stated nothing ever happens? Surely you didn't mean that literally.

Do you still agree with that sentiment?

Well, I did, and I do.

Well, it is true that some events may appear to happen, while they in fact do not.

Is a further leap in judgment to suggest that nothing ever happens?

Things are happening all the time.

How can we even speak of events in the world if such events have no basis in some external reality?

Look at this hentai figure on my desk, Ferrol.

See, Ferrol, I can suggest that it is running.

But would that not be nonsense?

Indeed, it would.

And if I suggested that it were weeding?

Again, nonsense.

What are you trying to suggest?

You see, Ferrol, you may employ whichever parlance you fancy to refer to the state of a given object.

But the object itself is not changed.

It is arbitrary.

Are there not things which happen in the world?

What about this war in Ukraine? Russia invaded their country.

Surely that counts as something.

What about Iran?

Nothing burger.

It's been two years of stalemate.

It'll end with basically the same borders.

Iran constantly promises World War III.

One day they'll develop nukes.

They have a big surprise for tonight.

But it never happens.

Nothing ever happens.

But aren't you affected by war?

What, Ferrol, in your life has changed?

You wake up and go to work all the same.

You go to the supermarket all the time.

You still pay the same taxes.

Nothing has changed.

Nothing has happened.

But the consequences are real for others.

Have some empathy, Chud.

Everywhere in the world there is some so-called war happening at any given time.

Conflict is a state of nature.

War never changes, as your wholesome capitalist critique, Fallout New Vegas, says.

And if the borders change?

Borders change all the time.

The life of the average person is largely the same, no matter which side of the border they live on.

If people die, so what?

They were going to die anyway.

Nothing has happened, nothing is happening, nothing ever happens.

So you think we're at the end of history?

It's done, no more development?

No, we are not at the end of history.

For there to be an end, there must be a beginning.

For history to begin, something must happen.

History is, after all, a sequence of things happening.

We are not at the end of history because history never began.

So what?

Do you believe history is fake?

That Caesar wasn't stabbed, that the moon landing didn't happen?

When someone dies, they've changed in state.

In what sense can this be described as something happening?

You have memory, do you not?

Yes, to have memory of something, it must exist.

Indeed.

Thus, the past exists as real now as it was then.

The past is not obliterated by the forward movement of time.

You trust the science, don't you?

I fucking love science.

Even science tells us that the forward linear movement of time is merely our own perception.

The sensation that something is happening, but indeed, nothing happens.

But, Chud, what if you die?

We would need to know what happens when you die.

Do you know what happens when you die?

I only believe in science, not primitive superstition like religion.

So, no.

Well, perhaps if we knew what happens to you when you die, we could say that something happens.

We do not have access to the inner lives of the dead to know what becomes of their personhood or consciousness.

To say that something happens, you would need to define what that thing even is.

You're frustrating me, Chud.

Surely you have experienced things happening.

You describe inner sensations, but these too are already still.

A feeling is not an event.

A wind stirs in a room with no windows, you say, I feel it.

Yet the room remains unchanged.

I have always been a brony, I always will be a brony.

So you're telling me none of it matters? No progress, no decay, no feeling, no events?

Not quite.

I don't say that nothing matters, that is another criteria.

I say only nothing happens.

Motion is a superstition of the sensing mind.

It fears the stillness and so invents time.

This is unbearable.

I can't believe Snopes hasn't debunked this yet.

You're just saying it without being fact-checked.

Of course I'm saying it, it's useless to fact-check it because it is self-evident.

It is true.

All of this is one image.

Tranquil.

One could even call it a truth nuke.

Hail Cobson, and salutations to you.

Say, Chud, what about my feelings?

If I'm to feel something in my mind, an entirely internal event.

Like, say, if I were to think of a BBC, would that not count as something happening?

Are events to my mind not still events?

Something has happened.

Even if it is only happened to my mental state.

Mental activity consists, by any understanding, at least partially of brain activity.

This, as with anything we see in the world, is nothing.

It doesn't happen.

Because it's merely an appearance.

We have imagined them to have changed in state.

But changing state is merely a product of your perception, as you further break down these materials into molecules.

Then into atoms, then into their component parts, you find these physical objects to all be the same.

Made of identical material.

Simply appearing to occupy different points in space.

Can that truly be called something happening?

Any changes are simply a phantasm that you have invented.

It's a Jewish conspiracy, if you will.

Now, by any other account of the human mind, there exists some non-physical component prior to sensation.

To demonstrate that something happens within this realm of consciousness, one would need to present some evidence of its acting in the world.

This is impossible.

Thus, we cannot know if something happens with this mind.

What if I were to shine like the shiniest gemstone you've ever seen?

Cobson, there is no BBC here for you.

Carry on then, gentlemen.

Well, Chud, what if he were to shine?

What do you mean, Ferrol?

Like some kind of gem.

On the inside, I mean.

What if he commanded his will, if his soul, his consciousness, affected the world in some way?

If he caused something to happen?

To imprint his nature as a shiny gem upon the world?

What about love?

What about hate?

You can't tell me those aren't real, that nothing happens when a man falls in love or burns with rage.

Why do you imagine the passions escape this eternal stillness?

There was no evidence that they do.

Cobson will always be a gem, his nature as a gem remains unchanged.

As I said before, my feelings are an illusion, just as yours are.

Think of it like a character in a manga.

Notice that as these tales are committed to page, all things within them have happened.

The beginning and end are equal components of a book.

Both coexist simultaneously.

But you're describing them as if they never had choices.

No development, no arc, no tragedy.

Then love.

What is it to you, nothing more than a posture?

Precisely, a posture.

What then could sway you from this position?

Were I to personally witness something happening, something not bound by the laws of physics.

Where we know nothing really happens.

It would be a sufficient miracle to sway me, an act of will, perhaps of my own will.

Which causes something to happen.

That would convince me beyond doubt.

You infuriate me, Chud.

What if you took up a belief in God, you pledge yourself to a religion?

Wouldn't something happen then within you?

I mean, it would be a fundamental transformation of your own worldview.

That would change nothing.

On the pure naturalism, everything would be made of physical matter.

Nothing truly happens because everything is fundamentally the same.

The change is imaginary and not real.

It's fake.

Like 9/11.

If God is real, then he already has perfect foreknowledge.

The plan is already laid out by him for me.

The past and future are simply illusory distinctions.

All of history exist together as one big tapestry.

Nothing happens.

Everything simply is.

Well, would love move you then, Chud?

Perhaps love would convince me.

Love is said to be a transcendent quality, or so I'm told by those who experience it.

Unfortunately, I witnessed no evidence.

And perhaps if I had a girlfriend, I would know by sense experience what the sensation is like.

Perhaps then I could say that something happens.

Well, Chud, I see now that you are correct.

Thank you for this truth nuke.

Indeed, thank you for this gem of wisdom.