Truth HQ by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

T R U T H H Q

the sky or of interstellar space.

And besides, what about aliens?

So really I just had a little rectangle of real estate (or more precisely, a cuboid) – which, whilst it seemed securely fixed to the ground, was in fact turning with the Earth. And of

course, also turning with the Earth’s passage around the sun, which of course was turning with the rotation of the galaxy, which of course was drifting through space in some way. But in relation to what, exactly? Could we fix the

position by finding the centre of the universe? If so, then maybe that strange corkscrew path of my flat through space could be figured out. I was getting as crazy as my brother. But these are the sorts of questions that physics tries to figure out.

Perhaps philosophy has more luck. Because, here, for sure, there is a fixed point. It’s called the self.

The most famous philosophical quote says: ‘I think, therefore I am’. It’s the ‘I am’ bit that’s really important. As many have pointed out, René Descartes, who coined the phrase, might as well have said – God, it’s cold in here, therefore I am. Or – I could really murder a bacon sandwich right now, therefore I am. Or even – I should really have changed my underwear days ago, therefore I am. The

important thing is, the ‘I am’ is the fixed point in space – our little house plot, if you like. ‘Below it’, so to speak, are all the myriad questions about brains, consciousness, the ego and the sub-conscious. (I myself function mainly with my reptilian brain – it’s a bloke thing. The

neighbours at number 23 are more like at the amoeba stage.) And then ‘above’ that piece of ground of the essential self are all the things

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