I've often wondered how other people deal with the questions of existence. What is real, after all? The only thing I feel certain of is that I exist in some form. "I think, therefore I am." I have no absolute certainty of anything else beyond that; I have to accept everything else with varying degrees of faith.
I came to understand that years ago. It was agonizing at first, but I've come to terms with it. I learned that if I align myself with things that are probably true, I can be happy. Certainty is simply not required anymore.
It seems to me that people who don't understand this principle (that almost nothing is certain) would be more prone to dissociative effects. As for myself, I find it hard to imagine VR would have any effect on my state of mind since I'm not convinced reality isn't VR anyway. :-)
Most people trap themselves in the certainty of belief.
Some move beyond the certainty of belief and get trapped in nihilism.
Those that move through nihilism gain a perspective on meaning itself, realizing that meaning is relative and can be objectified. All of meaning and reality become a playful flux of creation. Buddhists are the most studied in this regard.
A quick and easy read on different levels of human development can be found here:
This was fun, so kudos, but deeply flawed I feel. It's basically Tim Leary/Robert Anton Wilson's model dressed in psychobabble. I'd give her more credit if she at least credited/referenced them and let's also not forget that psychology is not really a science [1].
For something with far more substance, I suggest metaprogramming by John Lilly [2]. At least he had the conviction to spend more than half of his life experimenting (radically) on himself.
>"It's basically Tim Leary/Robert Anton Wilson's model dressed in psychobabble. I'd give her more credit if she at least credited/referenced them"
Are you suggesting the two individuals you mentioned are the originators of that line of thought? Why is it important to you that these two individuals are name dropped?
Plagiarism is not something I find easy to accept thus I do my best to counter it whenever I encounter it.
Besides, mentioning the originators of certain ideas and models and guiding people to their work is surely adding a lot of substance to the discussion.
This is funny/meta because the idea of ownership (almost in a way reminiscent of weak vs. strong pointers haha), I feel, originates from some semblance of ego and associated 'territorialism' which RAW touches on in eg. Prometheus Rising.
Only if they were the sources of inspiration. What I'm trying to suggest to you is that similar ideas to those put forward by Leary and Wilson existed before either of those two individuals were born. With that in mind, why are you convinced these two individuals are being plagarised? Can you point to any passages that reminded you of their works?
While there's overlap with some of the work you mentioned, I would think it most congruent with said work to be appreciative of yet another inroad to the same conclusion (as opposed to unappreciative based on cosmetic difference).
Not defending the text you're talking about, but if you feel like it's "deeply flawed" could you please point out some concrete examples?
Thank you very much for posting this. While I haven't made it very far in the linked text, it led me to the following two pages that gave me something that people in this thread might be looking for:
Robert Anton Wilson, channelling James Joyce, claimed "no man is a solipsist when he is scraping dog shit from his shoe."
It sounds trite, but forcing yourself into situations where you absolutely must deal with the immediacy of "now" is a good solution to existential angst.
A philosophical mantra repeated many times throughout history in varying amounts of eloquence and simplicity - Stoics, Buddhists, X Anonymous type groups, Jews, and even freaking Mother Goose!
Reminds me of a Reinhold Niebuhr quote:
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."
Nah, they'd ignore that, if they even notice. You have to forcibly make them take notice. Like take over a galaxy and make all the stars in it blink in synchrony in some sort of code and establish a communication channel.
You are assumming they higher beings are functioning on timescales comparable to ours. Imagine a colony of microbes on an agar block writing out morse code intended for us - but there is no-one and the labs are locked for the night. Yet they keep trying for generations...
Alternatively - the spatial scales are very different and an entire galaxy or ours is not observable by their 'naked' eyes.
Sure, it really depends on the speed of the simulation relative to their own, and the level of resources poured into this (is it a high school project, or the combined output of their entire civilization? what do they look for inside, if anything?), and of course, their actual objectives.
Honestly, who wants to talk to some snot-nosed humans? They probably don't bother checking until the universe becomes one giant superorganism anyways. And even then maybe they just make their observations and ignore it as it tries to wave them down.
Even if "you" (who/what is "you" by the way?) do understand the principle "you" have mentioned, the mind will experience cognitive dissonance. It can't be avoided as it happens on a layer below conscious perception.
"You" seem to think that beliefs exist on a conscious self-aware layer of thought, thus "you" should be aware of them but if "you" have done any serious psychonautics or experienced traumatic events in childhood, "you" will realize that is not the case. It takes a lot more than simple affirmation to rid "yourself" of such demons. Reading books about ceremonial magick and the techniques that had to be invented over the years to deal with such problems can be very enlightening, if not fascinating.
So, when the mind experiences cognitive dissonance, the effects propagate to the upper layers and "you" may become aware of them. I guess my point (through experience) is that as long as there is a "you" there to begin with, cognitive dissonance and dissociation will be problems that "you" will have to deal with :-)
As to your original question, it has long been my view that "most people" are not self-aware enough for such matters to even register. Even those who do have the curiosity and inclination, don't really like spending a lot of time in that UNCOMFORTABLE space, and quickly reach for the nearest distraction or escape (living in a make-believe dream world) to help them cope with daily life. When the luster starts to fade, a new dream bubble (new goals and aspirations) is quickly conjured and entered.
I highly recommend Celia Green's "The Human Evasion" [1] to you, something tells me you will enjoy it very much.
I agree. My words fail to express how horrifying and depressing it was for me to see the uncertainty of everything, but I worked through it and now my experience of everything is both "real" and "not real" at the same time. I feel as if I'm in a state of perpetual cognitive dissonance. However, I've decided that state is beautiful, enjoyable, and the only state of mind I can actually understand well.
There are people living with full blown ego-loss, no "I" there at all. It can be quite hard to get to grips with, like being part of a 2D canvas (the perception of depth-space and also time is extremely warped).
It is fascinating to contemplate that dissociation may be the next stage in human evolution (leading up to ego-death and an emergent hive mind?) and that it may happen on a mass-scale, not through mysticism or magick or psychonautics but technology that has become so ubiquitous nobody can really escape from.
Apologies if this is getting too paranormal for HN, but you might want to read up on the online cult of Kek (watch "Esoteric Kekism" on YouTube). It's founded on the idea that consciousness forms reality, and that the internet has connected/aligned our minds tighter than ever before. Thus, internet memes, propagated among the collective consciousness, are said to have the ability to alter reality itself.
Of course it's kookery (which I'm forced to say to avoid mockery), but it's quite relevant.
Expand that to questioning also whether time exists as we perceive it and you have a real mindfuck there.
If you can't even convince yourself that you will experience the future then there is no reason to do anything. Suppose every moment you are transferred into the head of a different person. Or let's say that time runs backwards. What possible motivation do you have to do anything? Why take your hand away from a hot stove if you have no evidence that you will experience the after effects?
Existence is simply perceiving something while simultaneously being limited to how much perception and interaction you can conduct with the reality over a given moment. Consider it a resolution/cost of time, if you will. It's also the side effect of everyone believing they are them and not someone else "playing" them.
Limiting perception should not limit the objective reality, but I hypothesize it does limit the ability of the perceiver to easily manifest their own non-objective reality here in this "real world". Strangely enough, I just picked up Galapagos by Vonnegut yesterday and he's presenting a similar concept and I'm curious to see where he goes with it. I've been remiss in reading more of him.
When you are going in or exiting a VR or gaming existence, it feels just like shifting existing "goals" into existing "get it done slots". In Astronomer, for example, the "goal" is gathering Oxygen to breath/live and the "get it done" part is gathering building materials to construct devices which help you learn how to do more things. It feels like a life because I've done similar things in the real world to survive. I get sad when my little guy/gal dies, so who's to say they aren't "real"? I hope someone is sad and happy for my existence as well!
I wonder if the the dissociation may result from the resistance to comprehending an eventual truth which cannot be "unheard"? I'm OK with it because I think about it all the tim, but I'm sure it's frightening to just have it spontaneously happen to you without realizing what it is that is occurring.
Sometimes late at night after playing video games I get serious existential angst. As if I realize that the game can and has ended several times in front of me, all the goals and mechanics of it are over. And I realize that we in this world are also facing the prospect of an end at any time.
Does anyone else have that? Late at night. After video games? I am 33.
I play Fallout a lot. I know exactly how you feel. Every time I play I am saddened at how my actions in the game reflect a last desperate attempt to prolong existence before entropy comes for us all. Even more so when I consider how technology is making the end of the world easier to accomplish every decade.
Having worked in a factory at about the same time I discovered Dwarf Fortress caused me to heavily objectify all the activities going on in that factory. Workshop there, stockpile here, dwarf moving goods with wheelbarrow (guy on forklift)...
I'm not sure the question of existence comes to us naturally. I've known, very few people, but some people who were raised without anyone ever bringing up the topic to them, and they simply seem to not care about that question or its answer. Yet I, who was actively raised where multiple people brought up existence and the point of it and why we are here, and what we must do, etc., I feel an anxiety for it, like I can't satisfy myself not knowing and just being here, doing things without reason.
I've come to piece with this now though, by managing to really accept that I actually don't care either.
In deep sleep there is no thinking, but there is 'amness,' so 'I am' seems closest to the Truth. Otherwise you could not declare "I had a good sleep" — how do you know?
The point is that the amness is independent of any particular personality you happen to assume in any of the three states of consciousness (waking, dream or deep-sleep).
The difference is between "I think, therefore I am" and "I am, therefore I am"
I came to understand that years ago. It was agonizing at first, but I've come to terms with it. I learned that if I align myself with things that are probably true, I can be happy. Certainty is simply not required anymore.
It seems to me that people who don't understand this principle (that almost nothing is certain) would be more prone to dissociative effects. As for myself, I find it hard to imagine VR would have any effect on my state of mind since I'm not convinced reality isn't VR anyway. :-)