who what why where when and how

“When a man arrives at a fundamental conviction that he requires to be commanded, he becomes “a believer.” Reversely, one could imagine a delight and a power of self-determining, and a freedom of will, whereby a spirit could bid farewell to every belief, to every wish for certainty, accustomed as it would be to support itself on slender cords and possibilities, and to dance even on the verge of abysses.” (Nietzsche 287)

Where do I begin? In today’s day and age it seems impossible to escape the grips of belief. Human society and culture dominant the plane of earth in such submission that to fantasize about such pure freedom is completely delusional. Let us consider for a second the obliteration of society and culture and that there is but one person left. Is he free from belief? The reality of the matter is that he is not. He is still constrained by the will to feed, breathe, hydrate, sleep, and so on. He would still operate under a fundamental aspect of being in his drive to survive regardless of preexisting beliefs.
This makes me wonder about the nature of reason in a whole different light. It seems that reason takes something as simple as living and makes it much more tedious. In retrospect, the essential unquestionable ways to maintain life do not need to be dignified or questioned. They are built into us so that we don’t have to question them. Hunger and thirst are physically painful. So is excessive heat and cold. Breathing is also in on this. The problems and paradoxes created by reason which do not create physical anguish seem to be irrational at their core in the sense that words cannot suffice as evidence that such matters are of actual importance. However, maybe the existence of problems created by reason is of actual importance. Although these rationalized problems may not create detectable physical harm, they can create mental anguish. And since mind is part of the body, who is to say that mental anguish is not physical anguish? In proving that there is no difference between these two aspects of being, I prove that we should not be deterred by the complexity of our beliefs in pursuit of metaphysical certainty.