Are We Really Having This Conversation Or Is This...What? What Is This?

    Ever enter into conversation with a person who considers everything from a metaphysical angle? I have, and let me tell you, it can be exhausting.

   For starters, this metaphysician (metaphysicist?) I have had conversations with spends an inordinate amount of time elaborating on how we as humans construct our own realities so as to bring order (as we as individuals understand or interpret order) to our lives and are therefore guilty of subjugating the real reality for our own nefarious ends. 

   Which always leads to me asking him questions (somewhat facetiously I will admit) about how am I supposed to believe we are actually sitting in the same room sitting across from each other at the same table speaking a common language if it's possible that one or the other of us may not be as invested in experiencing this particular reality to make the experience beneficial.

   Which in turn always leads to him asking me if I think it's possible that the only reason I'm asking such a question is because he instigated sufficient doubt in me (causality) about whether or not my perception of reality is correct to cause me to get defensive (reaction) and manifest that defensiveness in a manner that would seem innocuous and possibly even cooperatively inquisitorial.

   Then it's off to the races - the possibility that everything is predetermined, or if not predetermined then possibly influenced by seemingly harmless actions that, falling like dominos, result in what may or may not have been predetermined to occur, occurring anyway, regardless of conscious efforts to dodge or defeat the end result of a course of action.

   That one paragraph right there could trigger a conversational exchange/debate that could last for hours, and that's just on the topic of predetermination.

   The philosophy of the metaphysical types encompasses everything from universal commonalities to seemingly random coincidences that lead via totally divergent paths to the same conclusions (or at least the same possible conclusions). Nature, reality, time, space (and spaces), changes and constants...it goes on and on.

   Which is why I find it so exhausting. There literally is no end to the dissection of everything (real and conceptual) that we as humans have come to believe is real, and thus part of a mutually shared reality.

   Exhausting? Maybe mind-numbing would be a more accurate term.

   Anywhatzit, my point here is, if you have a choice between engaging in a conversation with a metaphysical philosophy enthusiast, and say, watching an Adam Sandler career retrospective that included a critical analysis of the underlying moral epistemology of the film Pixels, chose the Adam Sandler retrospective.