Existence

Where have I been?
What happened to me?
What am I?
Where am I?
How long will I be here?

In my experience, most people are anxious, primarily, about what will come after this life.
My existential angst concerns my existence, not its loss.

Descartes in the absence of religion?
The evil demon has already presented itself.

Religion and Rationality.

While clearly religion can be shown to oppose rationality, no proof can show a strict adherence to only rational beliefs to be in anyone's best interest. The two greatest logical minds that our civilization ever produced found ways to be miserable and off themselves.

Perhaps any answers to my questions, even if baseless, would be better than none. However, I know not how one might go about fooling oneself.

Excerpted from Newsweek interview of Woody Allen:

So why go on? "I can't really come up with a good argument to choose life over death," he says. "Except that I'm too scared." Making films offers no reward beyond distracting him from his plight. He claims the payoff is in the process—"I need to be focused on something so I don't see the big picture"

Music as distraction:

Is the value of great art simply its ability to lure us away from morbid thoughts? To temporarily put off consideration of the 'meaningless flicker' of life?

I wish that I could conceive of life as a game. At various points I have. Becoming the best musician, earning the most money, these sorts of things offered a metric by which success could be measured. Thus flattened, life was easier to take, comprehensible.

Is honesty to be found only in uncertainty?