Here's why we (don't) exist

Alright, so I'm starting this blog post off with a rather imposing question...what is it that makes us exist? A few blog posts ago, I dropped a line that said "technology, like anything in life, exists in relation to its functionality." What I meant by that is that if we really didn't use technology at all, then it doesn't really have a purpose. Are we any different as humans? There are some 1.3 billion people in China, and that's just a statistic for me - I don't know any of those 1.3 billion people, what they're doing, who they are, or anything about them. Go ahead and tell me they exist, but prove it by doing anything short of flying them to Massachusetts or getting them on Skype.

This is true closer to home, as well. I can all but assume that the people in the house next to ours are alive, possibly sleeping, and will wake up tomorrow morning. But I'm not there, I'm not them, so I really have no idea of knowing. Do they exist? You're likely going to assume yes and furthermore that I'm out of my mind, but even as you read this, I may not even have a mind to be in or out of!

So, if all that we can't experience doesn't exist, then it would logically follow that if we experience something, then it exists. I'm typing away on my laptop with a lamp on and a fan running, so those all exist. I'm laying on a bed and have a pillow under my arms, so they exist too. Everything exists in relation to its functionality.

Which seems to be the great paradox of life. If we're experiencing it, then we exist and all of this matters. Once we're not experiencing it, then we don't exist, and none of it matters because we're not even around to acknowledge that we don't exist. Which is the scariest part about death for me, that we may not even be able to know whether or not there's anything after. If there's nothing, then there's nothing, but if there's nothing, we won't know. 'Dead' isn't a term, 'afterlife' isn't a possibility, there's just nothing, but even then, 'nothing' isn't even a thing either. Crazy, huh?