The draw of philosophy

This is the third and final (probably) instalment of my series of posts exploring why I enjoy different fields. Except this one is different and perhaps misnamed as I don't enjoy philosophy. In fact, I'd be much happier if I never thought about it.
The problem isn't so much that philosophy confuses me, though it occasionally does, it's more that I've come to the realisation that the universe, existence, consciousness etc. doesn't actually make sense. The more I think about it the less reason I have to believe that the universe exists. The thing is, this actually affects me, it's not just a passing thought. I now spend probably about an hour a day considering philosophy and formulating ideas. One such idea that I'm currently working on is the theory of infinite abstract consciousness (catchy name huh?) which basically states that as human consciousness arises from certain processes then perhaps consciousness can arise in an abstract way in any process, no matter how bizarre or seemingly inanimate. An important thing to bare in mind is that the term consciousness used here does not indicate any emotions or thoughts exist in these arbitrary processes, rather that they are individual from other processes, in the same way your thoughts are separate from everyone else's and you exist in a first person type of way. Of course for more arbitrary processes, such as the tides or tying a shoelace, the individual experience they have is much more abstract. But the important thing is that they might experience the universe in some way. About an hour and a half ago I was thinking about this theory when I realised that this would indicate that there are as many different consciousnesses in the brain as there are processes. To illustrate how many that is, there are more neural pathways in the brain than atoms in the universe. Any combination of these pathways can be considered it's own process. Basically, that's a lot of consciousness. Most of these consciousnesses wouldn't have any senses or memory, so would be abstract and exist in a limited sense. However, a few of these processes would be capable of having meaningful consciousness. This would indicate that in each brain, including mine and yours, there are multiple conscious entities, not just one. So as you read this, other versions of you might also be reading it. It might not be that simple, but it's an interesting way of looking at it. It might be that different conscious entities control different parts of your character. All of these consciousnesses together form another process, which could be considered the more traditional consciousness. This theory is in its infancy, probably has already been thought of by others and almost certainly has massive holes in its logic.

So yeah, I hope that's cleared up why I dislike philosophy, seeing as it makes me think about these kinds of things all the time, as well as question my own existence. To be honest I just read through it and if it made anything clearer to you, well done. I barely understood what I was getting at.
But anyway, I'll see you next week. Not really, the internet doesn't work like that, but apparently I'm supposed to make you feel like this is more personalised and real, despite the fact we both know it isn't.

Existence

This post might get a tad deep, I'm not sure yet. So to balance it out, watch this at the same time: 
Now you should be ok whatever happens. (Except I've find this song twice and twice it has been removed for copyright claims and the original here doesn't allow embedding. But at least it shows that the copyright bots read my blog. But if you don't listen to the village people at the same time as reading this you could have a crisis)
Anyway, for the last few weeks I've been having an existential crisis. I questioned reality, the universe and what thought itself is. This was ok for a couple of weeks and the crisis was more a benign niggling at the back of my mind, until suddenly it hit me on Thursday. We are completely insignificant beings in a massive universe, unable to have a relevant impact on anything. Even if we had access to the entire universe, managed to rule it, then would we have accomplished anything relevant? What is it relevant in an existence that might include other universes, or infinite nothingness? If a person had an infinite amount of time and space and simulated every atom, or sub-atomic particle, in the universe with stones, perhaps taking a trillion years to simulate a millionth of a second, but doing it anyway, how would that simulation differ from the universe we live in? How do we know we don't exist in a simulation? If a simulated world is experienced in the same way as a true one, what is experience? If we experience the universe merely by processing information chemically, then why do we feel real? What is self? If a computer processes data, does it experience the universe? If you are questioning the universe, how many rhetorical questions can you get away with writing? These questions, except the last one, are genuinely things that plague my mind. These thoughts rendered me quite unresponsive for about 2 hours (though I did manage to do an English lesson at the same time. And they say guys can't multi-task). During the journey home things got a bit weird. I decided that my thoughts were too abstract to express to myself in words, so I started thinking in music to express the flow of emotion and ideas. For some reason this put me into a semi-conscious state where I drifted in and out and occasionally started having light hallucinations. It was all a bit bizarre. Anyway, by the time I got home and listened to the end of the longest tennis match in history, I had gotten over the worst of the crisis, but it still niggles in my mind. The only way I've got to avoid falling into total shutdown is by remembering that if everything is irrelevant then the fact that everything is irrelevant is itself irrelevant.
Anyway, if that has caused any of you to have a crisis, watch this video: 
Also I'm writing this before the football, actually at 3 in the morning, so I hope this hasn't further depressed you if we didn't win, or drop the mood if we did. But either way, more village people can't hurt.
Oh dear hell I'm prescribing village people music to fight depression. Someone please make me a manly spotify playlist to balance it out, I think I have issues.