Advice for a Young Human

 Hi! Welcome to reality.

You are a human being, a mammal with a rather large brain. You are on Earth, a planet in the Milky Way galaxy. You’re probably going to stay on Earth your whole life despite all the other planets and stars up there, so get used to it here and keep it nice.

You probably have a lot more questions, which is normal. Unfortunately we haven’t figured everything out yet, but we’re working on it. You can even become one of those people if you’re interested. If you want to see what we’ve figured out so far, most of that information is going to be in books or online on Wikipedia. If you apply yourself, you can grasp any ideas that we have come up with so far, I promise. Speaking of online, use that thing sparingly, there’s a lot of people trying to trap you there.

Here are some of the things you might want to know that we haven’t figured out yet: 

• Why does reality exist, since it seems like not existing is much more probable?

• We’ve found that just about everything can be explained in terms of its physical makeup. Is my “self”, that being I feel myself to be, my conscious experience, physical?

• What happens to my "self" when I die?

• Is there anything that exists besides reality?

• What is the best way to run a society?

• What am I supposed to do with my life?

Many of these questions are resolved if you decide to fully commit to a preexisting religion or ideology. However, this decision requires you to stop asking questions at some point, despite any lingering doubts you may have. A Swede Dane named Kierkegaard wrote a lot about this 200 years ago.

Since you’re new here, most people are going to be really nice to you for a while. That will let up after you’ve gotten your bearings, so DON’T get used to that. While you’re young though, make use of it. For the time being, if someone is taking the time out of their day to talk to you, that is almost always because they care about you and want you to do well.

Once people stop being nice to you, you’ll realize it’s actually pretty hard here for the most part. That’s why people stop being nice, since they need to look out for themselves first. The way we have it set up now, you need money to buy all the things you need to live. Most people get money by working, which is what we call doing a task you don’t want to do for money. Some people say they like working, but that’s a minority. Since everyone is spending most of their days working, it puts them in a pretty bad mood, especially if they feel like they aren’t getting paid enough. You can become one of the people trying to change this situation, but I’ll tell you right now that’s about the hardest job you can sign up for. If you want to know more about that, a German named Marx wrote a lot about it 200 years ago.

When someone tells you something, make sure to take the time to consider who is telling it to you and why. They may be trying to get something out of you taking them at their word.

One more thing. You're going to be in essentially the same body your whole life, with some gradual changes over time. If you don't take proper care of it, it's not going to work the way you want it to in the long run. Some important practices to keep up are bathing, brushing your teeth, and exercising.

That’s about all I can do to get you started, though of course you have a lot to learn still. I’ve found it helpful to keep asking questions, I do it every day.