One's Own Existence

One's own existence is ever before each experience, waking and dreaming, whether it involves the senses or introspection.  There is no such thing as a thought, emotion, belief, perception, or preference that is not contained within a consciousness, or a mind.  Mental states are omnipresent in experiences.  In light of this logical fact, it is somewhat bizarre that so many people fail to reflect on something as philosophically foundational and basic as their own mind's epistemological self-evidence, metaphysical nature, and relationship to the external world.  Some people even say that this kind of abstract knowledge is already possessed by everyone by default, as if every person truly happens to "just" understand the absolute certainty of mental experiences and the different metaphysical natures of parts of consciousness.

Anyone who has not reflected on the logical impossibility of their own mind not existing as long as they perceive anything at all has not truly reflected on the epistemological infallibility of knowing their own existence through rationalistic introspection.  Someone who goes through their life driven by emotionalism, mere pragmatism, or social conditioning has not truly grasped the epistemological and metaphysical ramifications of their own existence.  As such, they do not possess even the baseline knowledge of self-verifying truths that the newest rationalist can know how to understand after minutes or even moments.  To deny this is to deny that there is a difference between someone who intentionally makes no assumptions and analyzes the foundations of reality and the common kind of person who gets seemingly confused the moment serious rationalism, metaphysical consciousness, and absolute certainty are mentioned.

Going through life without having any explicitly philosophical sense of self-awareness and intentional rationality means one forfeits any claim to having truly "known" basic facts about consciousness all along instead of either just assuming them to be true or never bothering to directly contemplate them.  If these were the same things, no one would ever be able to distinguish between rationalistic awareness of consciousness (or reason) and the philosophically dull, aimless wandering through daily experiences that so many seem to constantly let themselves face.  It is impossible to distinguish between a thing and itself!  Only a fool would even pretend otherwise.  It is possible to distinguish between aspects of something or different epistemological stances on it, however.

Realizing this is not the same as being needlessly harsh with the typical person for their apathy and laziness.  It is the only way to be honest about this issue as it relates to the daily life of the masses.  For someone to go their entire lifetime without even dwelling on the self-evidence of their own mind's existence, much less on the even more foundational self-verifying nature of logic, they must not even try to think about the nature of reality, in which case they must live for arbitrary delusions or petty assumptions that simply happen to be true instead.  Of course, most people only selectively tolerate something like this.  Almost no one wants others to live like this when it is inconvenient for their own individual benefit.  Few are intelligent and sincere enough to be consistent in what they demand of others or themselves.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.