We aren't real. The world isn't real.

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Yigeren
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02 Apr 2016, 3:02 pm

The only thing that one can be sure of is that one exists. I know that I exist because I think and experience. There is no real way for me to know whether or not anything else actually exists. I could be God, for all I know. I could have created an entire fantasy world for myself without being aware. I could be in a coma or dream. I could be in the Matrix. All of these things are possible.

But it makes a lot more sense to just go with the most likely explanation. Which is that what I observe is there in some form, and that other beings exist as well.

As far as what we perceive, that's all in our minds. The way we see color, hear sounds, smell, taste, and feel is all in our brains. We are receiving signals and interpreting them, not actually experiencing the real thing. Which is why what another animal sees or heard may be entirely different from our own experiences.

It's possible that what I see as green looks like what I see as purple, in another person's mind. We agree to call the color we see "green", but have no way to know if we experience it in the same way. Same with all of our other senses. I think this was the subject of an early sci-fi short story that I read as a teenager. Someone was able to see from another's point of view and was horrified by how strange and different it was to experience things as that person. Like an alien landscape.



Britte
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02 Apr 2016, 4:00 pm

Nine7752 wrote:
Something in me has always nagged on this question. Sometimes it feels like a tenuous revelation that I am a living being in a body, surrounded by other bodies, on a busy planet. Like, am I really here? Is this what it is?

I've usually chalked this sensibility up to disassociation or autism, but who knows, maybe I'm gifted enough to realize I'm flipping back and forth through quantum states.


I've experienced the same, verbatim.



Yigeren
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02 Apr 2016, 4:09 pm

I don't think it's uncommon for people to feel that way from time to time. Feelings of unreality and dissociation are more common in people with anxiety and some other disorders, however.



kaiouti
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02 Apr 2016, 5:55 pm

Ive been through solipsism, I think it is based on a confused philosophy, maybe just unfounded realisation of something they dont know what to call yet. I have experienced depersonalize, and dis-associative things before, but I feel that is more of a letting go into the mechanisms and dream "like" mode of existence. I have struggled with many mixed co-morbid illnesses and one song that stuck with me was the childhood "Row, row row your boat...Life is but a dream" mentality. I think coming to a realization of silopsism is just a big head ego trip, I mean, some other life form came up with the word and philosophy of solipsism right there proving their is other intelligent and "conscious" life forms, not to mention things like books and stuff, maybe to address more on this is what I call automation, where most NT people are more impulsive than I am so they are like dreamers, doing what they want and attacking mindlessly those that mention "the dream" I guess I might think then that they might be more awake, and that they are trying to wake us up to something...another similair mindset I had to solipsism is something I don't know what to call, it is like we are all in ourselfs our own solar system and we are all reloving each other and when we get close that is when our worlds collide in a sense and that is where the reality is. It is in passing, it is in the moment, so when you switch off the megamind thinking you become more Part of the dream, living it.



Raleigh
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02 Apr 2016, 10:46 pm

What if this life is a dream and when you die you wake up?


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naturalplastic
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02 Apr 2016, 10:48 pm

Last night I dreamt I was a butterfly.

But how do I know that I am not a butterfly who is dreaming that I am a man?


----------- Chinese proverb