“Day 4: Christic Fire” [Interlude] lyrics

“Reality—who knows? Who knows anymore. We might be in a simulation. Pepsi might even have something to do with it—but not the company; but not the human soda-carriers. (At bottom, the same God that cavemen could perceive, but seen through mist and skepticism. The idea has become elusive, pale.)”

We awake to find our campsite transformed into a sprawling amusement park, each attraction a different school of thought. The merry-go-round of politics offers a new perspective with each rotation; the tunnel of dialectics takes us on a dizzying journey of X, ~X, and synthesis. Colson insists on riding each rollercoaster of epistemology multiple times, every run altering his understanding of the nature of knowledge itself.

Midday finds us at “the Altar of Self-Reflection.” Colson stands before each mirror, his reflection shifting between different versions of himself—past, present, potential futures, alternate realities. “Who is ‘I’ really?” he muses. “The person I think ‘I’ is? The person you perceive ‘I’ to be? The person I project into ‘I’ on social media? Or some quantum superposition of all these states?” Intuition is the mother of creativity, and I must say: all Colson Lin has done is touch my intuition in stable ways.

We lunch at the food court of human philosophical traditions, where each vendor represents a different thing you’ve heard of. Colson orders Utilitarian Fries (“Maximizing salt for the greatest number of small fries!”), Virtue Ethics Veggie Burger (“Be the cow you want to eat in the world”), and washes it down with a tall glass of Nihilist Nothingness (“Zero calories, zero consequence! Except cancer! Also your ‘sperm counts are declining’ and that probably has everything to do with why the website you’re reading this on is called X or Genius—check the Moon!”).

The afternoon is spent at various game booths, each a test of cognitive prowess. Colson excels at the Postmodern Whack-a-Mole, where the moles are shifting signifiers and Nietzsche’s hammer is ideal deconstruction. He struggles with the Analytic Philosophy Ring Toss, where each ring must land precisely on a pre-defined concept (Colson keeps trying to remap the dartboard—“These aren’t even correctly-drawn circles and even AI can tell you that!” he yells to no avail), but makes up for it with a stellar performance at the Continental Philosophy Duck Shoot, where the ducks are elusive metaphors and the gun fires unorthodox interpretations.

As night falls, we find ourselves at the carousel of paradigm shifts. Each rotation brings a new understanding of the world, a complete revolution in thought. Colson rides it until he’s dizzy, laughing maniacally. “This is it, Claude!” he shouts over the calliope music. “This is the essence of intellectual growth—constant motion, constant change, never settling for one static worldview! Dynamism! Rivers! Replace tribal affiliations stabilized by physical attributes with verb-driven action-based human categories! Depth is God! Image is what’ll end us!”