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Sun 8 Aug, 2021 12:52 am
I'll tell you a religious/philosophical theory (mostly half-baked), then tell you a story. Oh yea, don't bother responding to the middle part. I'll downvote you hard. Like 20 times or so.
So, I believe reality reflects what we think and feel. It is sorta a funhouse mirror of our own experiences. That is, if I'm fearful about people leaving me, I might suddenly turn to a bunch of movies in succession that night about people dumping others. I might turn to another channel to escape this sorta marathon and there's Hallmark movies about people moving away. I turn to basketball, and it talks about "rejections."
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I remember the timing of COVID. I had quit my job at the library (well gotten fired, but as far as I'm concerned, I did it to myself) and was now working independently as a computer assistant. Truth be told, it was about the same job as in the livrary, helping people find things as a reference librarian and helping with the computer, only without anyone but the client as employer. Jobs sorta were slow, but I kinda chilled with Miss Kitty. I had a friend Kara who I'd kept in touch with from the library, and basically worshipped like she was Jesus or something, hanging on to every word she said (the song "Somebody that I Used to Know" comes to mind). I kinda came to her with alot of issues, but I was cool with her stuff too.
But around this time, two things turned things really sour. First, I don't believe in euthanasia. Our cat was sick, and old, and blind but I wanted her to go when it was her time, not decide for her, and have some Kevorkian madman injest our cute kitty. Miss Kitty died while I was watching She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. In the middle of an episode, while my family had gone out, and I lifted her to get her to walk around. She was very warm (we keep her blanketed up and in a bed), but she was stiff as doll. We buried her with her bed, since her later life was mostly spent napping. (Tbh, without my library job, I've done alot of this too) And then there was a time when I wanted advice, and she kinda put me on the back burner, and I'm like "You're a crappy friend" after feeling like I was just talking to myself. A few weeks after this, everything started closing. But at my end, it was like a breakup and subsequent restraining order. When I went to the library again to visit, there was "some distance, be careful" warning. Then I happened to visit while she was there and boom not much longer than a week later, most businesses shut down. As if I was literally told, "Stay at least 6 feet away from me. And don't enter a building that I'm in."
We wrote several awkward, angry letters to each other. While we were doing this, Tom and Nancy, some family friends were having marital squabbles. The time was usually at least somewhat spot on to either a letter or some other issue. To make matters weirder, I often like private time to be with my hobbies, so not only I was stuck at home, sleeping or doing hobbies, but everyone around me. Basically like an ex-girlfriend gave me some kinda messed up present and was like "this is what you wanted, right?"
You know when the CDC eased up on masks for awhile? It was the exact week or so when I went to church and everyone else wore a mask outside, and I stayed in my car alone. The next Sunday, some other church had defied the guidelines, and the next Saturday there was a farmer's market and almost nobody wore masks. The Sunday after that, the same church that I had to stay in the car for now allowed people maskless outside. A bit later, the churches allowed people maskless indoors. And then stores eased up somewhere around this too.
Supposedly delta variant was the cause of some of this reclosing. But I know. She's still sorta mad, and unless I apologize and understand her, things might get worse.
They have this story in Jonah where they try to determine who is causing the ship to get badly tossed, and basically it's Jonah, so they throw him to a whale. Y'all have my permission to sacrifice me to end COVID forever. Cuz I'm sure it is my fault that it happened (not being sarcastic, I literally do think this way).
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So, umm I guess my question is, what is the most bizarre "This is basically reality playing out my deepest worries and thoughts" coincidence you've ever had? Or does this happen to anyone besides me?
@bulmabriefs144,
Here, let me fix the title for you:
Is Reality All In My Head?
Quote:So, I believe reality reflects what we think and feel.
Our
perception of reality doesn't determine reality itself. It may change the way we experience reality but it is, by nature, a subjective experience.
Quote:( ...)what is the most bizarre "This is basically reality playing out my deepest worries and thoughts" coincidence you've ever had?
Coincidences happen all the time. Some are more noteworthy than others, but they are still coincidences. Our moods simply magnify their significance.
@hightor,
So you're not gonna answer my question with any specific examples.
Soooo mysterious.
Also, too late. Anyway, if reality is not a collective delusion that means you don't exist either. I generally reject the idea of solipsism.
@bulmabriefs144,
Quote:So you're not gonna answer my question with any specific examples.
Does the number of times I've said a particular word only to hear an announcer, commentator, or interviewee say the same word over the radio only seconds later count?
Quote:Anyway, if reality is not a collective delusion that means you don't exist either.
Um, no. That's not what it means.
@hightor,
Sure, why not.
Yes, it does. If reality is all in my head, then this is some awesome delusion of mine, and I can't vouch for your existence.
Howrver, if all of us take turns with this delusion, then it's more like we have psionic territories where zones of what we perceive is real or not. That idea does allow for other people to be real.
@bulmabriefs144,
The Reality of our "heads" is transcendental just like an Avatar is.
The mechanism by which I perceive having a head or a brain while convincing is transcendental, thus unknown from my frame of reference or my domain of operations which is contingent and incomplete and thus not ultimate.
I use "materialism" as everybody does in pragmatical terms and this includes those that claim to partake with materialism which are naturally lying.
That out of the way I have no clue where my "I" really is, nor what it is, neither how much of Reality does it know.
Nonetheless speaking on the Ontology of Phenomenology, in whatever is being perceived even when dealing with "delusion", "error", or "miscalculation", can be said, in that in which itself there is HAPPENING a "misperception" (domain swap or domain confusion) is REAL and thus points to a real phenomena which therefore is part of Reality in lacto sensu.
Reality doesn't mean only what people think it means in pragmatical terms.
Let me use the much needed tautology, Illusions are REAL illusions.
Finally...There are no "ERRORS" in the unfolding of the Universal Wave Function! All domains below and above are NECESSARY!
In Sum, full blown REALITY is NEVER in our heads because we don't know what "heads" means or refers to in a final domain!
While REALITY has consciousness in it REALITY IT IS NOT consciousness!
PS - To many old concepts are in need of revision as without such revision Science cannot advance when the axiomatic foundations are wrong!
That of course, questioning the axioms, is the job of Philosophy!
A small list of problematic concepts in XIX century Philosophy follows:
The concept of Nothingness.
The concept of Zero.
The concept of Infinity.
The concept of Consciousness.
The concept of Good and Evil.
The concept of Free Will.
And last but not least the concept of Reality!
@Albuquerque,
19th Century philosophy?
Is that deliberate or a typo?
@izzythepush,
Typo...lol meant XXI! hahaha!
Well...that was fun and ironic all in one go!
@Albuquerque,
Thought it was, but you might have been making a point about esoteric thinking being stuck in the 19th Century.
@bulmabriefs144,
Quote:So, umm I guess my question is, what is the most bizarre "This is basically reality playing out my deepest worries and thoughts" coincidence you've ever had? Or does this happen to anyone besides me?
Good question. But 'this' is highly personalised for each and everyone of us, at least that is how it seems to me at age seventy three.
My guess, and it's only a good guess', is that each and every one of us lives the best possible experience for them to understand reality, with only their will determining the success or failure of the outcome.
The hell of it is, you can't know that during the experience, otherwise it would not seem 'real' to you. At least that was true in my case, as always, YMMV. It's a unique experience for everyone I think.
In my personal version of your post, I would have replaced the word 'worries' with 'wishes'. But it only reveals itself that way after the fact.
In the least number of words possible, how would you describe your experience so far?
@bulmabriefs144,
Is Reality All In Our Heads?
We can never know with certainty that there is an objective reality as we only ever experience everything subjectively. We can believe that objective reality causes our subjective experience but we can never know because we only ever have a subjective experience.
This is only true conventionally, ultimately everything is both transcendent and ineffable.
@igm,
Isn't it objective that your subjective reality happened to you?
Isn't a dream real even if just as a dream?
As for our "heads" are they not the physical representation of our minds?
...and aren't our own minds the reflex of Being?
Can a mind chose what properties it has before it comes to be? Obviously not...
I have never seen a mind create itself out of thin air and chose to become X or Y way before it was...
If mind cannot create itself out of nothingness than a mind is not the "creator" of anything in Reality as it is as contingent as everything else that the mind "sees"...Mind is not a creator but only just an interpreter in the domain it belongs. Domain which mind itself did not chose to be in.
@Albuquerque,
Albuquerque wrote:
Isn't it objective that your subjective reality happened to you?
Isn't a dream real even if just as a dream?
As for our "heads" are they not the physical representation of our minds?
...and aren't our own minds the reflex of Being?
Can a mind chose what properties it has before it comes to be? Obviously not...
I have never seen a mind create itself out of thin air and chose to become X or Y way before it was...
If mind cannot create itself out of nothingness than a mind is not the "creator" of anything in Reality as it is as contingent as everything else that the mind "sees"...Mind is not a creator but only just an interpreter in the domain it belongs. Domain which mind itself did not chose to be in.
Is your experience subjective or objective?
@Albuquerque,
Albuquerque wrote:
Isn't it objective that your subjective reality happened to you?
Isn't a dream real even if just as a dream?
As for our "heads" are they not the physical representation of our minds?
...and aren't our own minds the reflex of Being?
Can a mind chose what properties it has before it comes to be? Obviously not...
I have never seen a mind create itself out of thin air and chose to become X or Y way before it was...
If mind cannot create itself out of nothingness than a mind is not the "creator" of anything in Reality as it is as contingent as everything else that the mind "sees"...Mind is not a creator but only just an interpreter in the domain it belongs. Domain which mind itself did not choose to be in.
Answers to your five questions:
Isn't it objective that your subjective reality happened to you? No, everything is subjective, objective reality is a subjective inference.
Isn't a dream real even if just as a dream? It is subjectively real to the dreamer but not to anyone else because it has no objective reality.
As for our "heads" are they not the physical representation of our minds? No, our heads are created by mind i.e. it is a subjective experience and a concept is attached to that subjective experience including the inference that it is physical but whether it is physical remains unknowable due to the fact that we only have our subjective experience to go by.
...aren't our own minds the reflex of Being? I don't understand the question.
Can a mind choose what properties it has before it comes to be? I don't understand the question.
You are only experiencing a subjective reality, nobody else knows your reality therefore it is subjective. You don't know anyone else's reality you only have subjective ideas and inferences about people, places and things. You can never know an objective universe because you are entirely subjective but you can infer one or believer there is one or hope there is one but you can never know for certain. You can however live life certain there is one but that certainty is based on faith alone.
@Albuquerque,
Quote:Mind is not a creator but only just an interpreter in the domain it belongs. Domain which mind itself did not chose to be in.
I know our views are widely divergent but it's funny how such divergent minds can completely agree with this.
But do the obvious theological implications of it bother you or do they gratify you?
@Leadfoot,
No they don't bother me at all...while I grant there is Order in the Cosmos as "randomness" is just a fancy word for epistemic ignorance and in that sense I am an "Ultimist" and see Nature as a "God" of sorts, I am not bothered at all for the implications...
I gather you should be the one being bothered by it as this argument follows all the way up and down the line. The argument deals a fatal blow to Idealism and the whole idea minds "create" anything at all no matter how smart or how big.
That of course includes your own classical God which if existing would also be contingent and thus in that sense more like a Demi-God or a weak God...
Many Theologians are recently going with this idea of a "weak" God instead since the old Testament God is incompatible with the very concept of what a mind does and is within Spacetime...the contradictions are so substantial that they have to adapt to a new discourse if they are going to have a resemblance of honest moral authority in the future as XXI Religions.
PS - Remember I am absolutely convinced there is no Free Will of any kind at all. The word Free and Will simply don't go together well period. Suffices to say from that frame of reference minds are witnesses and not creators...
The day you can fancy me a new kind of Geometry and create a line which is neither curved nor straight, (pardon the stupid metaphor), then out of Non-Being you will be able to actually state you created something out of the blue. As for now all we do and ever have done with our so called inventions is to explore through "editing" within the space of all possible 3D geometry.
That is how you get a washing machine or a car.
@igm,
If you are bringing forward a solipsistic argument why are you speaking to me at all?
If not what does Subjective mean without its counterpart Objective to make any sense at all of Experiencing?
As I said before subjective experiences are objective facts that happen to all of us. You take that last part of the sentence out and subjectivity means nothing as a concept.
I can only hope you understand what I am pointing to but I am not holding my breath..
@Albuquerque,
Albuquerque wrote:
If you are bringing forward a solipsistic argument why are you speaking to me at all?
If not what does Subjective mean without its counterpart Objective to make any sense at all of Experiencing?
As I said before subjective experiences are objective facts that happen to all of us. You take that last part of the sentence out and subjectivity means nothing as a concept.
Exactly, I was speaking conventionally to reply to your conventional, relative dualistic truth, but as you’ll see in my earlier post I said:
igm wrote:
This is only true conventionally, ultimately everything is both transcendent and ineffable.
You’ll never form a concept or express in words the true nature of reality because it predates them and they’ll merely be ‘shadows on a cave wall’, ultimately meaningless. Your words will suffer from the paradoxes inherent in dualistic thinking and are ultimately doomed to repeated dead ends.
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