you don't. that's why i started by saying it's a contagious disease. best to just leave it alone.

yes, thank you, we're on the same wavelength.

figments of our own imagination?

But what is imagination? What is its source? Basically, what is reality?

It does get kind of mirrorical (yes I made up a word). I made something complex and great and the reason why it is complex and great is because of criteria that other people made up meaning that I really made it up meaning that it is only great because I'm the only one there is.

It.

I suppose you wouldn't. Why would anyone believe it? The concept of questioning everything.

Well to me solipsism leads in one of two directions, either dualism or monism. Either I exist and because there is an external reality, God must also exist, and reality is possible because God supports both me and it in his mind, or only I exist, and I am God, and have essentially split my own personality to escape from an all-engulfing loneliness. In that case the imagination is all that exists, and everything is a product of the imagination, and to produce meaning it also had to produce ignorance.

for instance, what produces my dreams? my imagination, my subconscious perhaps, but most people agree that it is themselves. and yet, i can't consciously access my subconscious. so how do i know my subconscious does not also generate reality? how do i know my subconscious isn't God? hmm...

Indeed, which is pretty much the sum of all Buddhist wisdom. Schopenhauer says it pretty well in The World as Will and Representation. It's like the will is in an endless hall of mirrors and the representations it generates are distorted views of itself. Nothin' but smoke and mirrors, as they say.

Right. There's an apt Lovecraft quote for this I think:

What is better (or worse), an end or no end (to existence)? Neither, the best would be a cycle of life and death, which gives you the illusion of end, yet the impossibility of knowing the real truth opens up hope. Also a hope that, in his (or our) infinitive wisdom, we crafted a foolproof system, which sort of precludes us (or me) from ever knowing the real truth (if you're inclined to have a darker mind, like me and H.P. here). That's why I don't think a simple thought exercise like solipsism could lead us to the truth. If and when we get close to it, someone will hit the reset button...:/

Ramble ramble...

neverending existence is the most beautiful thing in the world.


it's weird, i've actually been thinking alot about this topic lately. however, i had no idea that it was an established line of thought shared by so many people.

the idea that just because reality is one big dream, nothing truly exists in a permanent physical form is ridiculous. just look at the dreams you have now. do you always dream of things that aren't in existance? no, right? so why does it have to be that if life is a dream, then all things in that dream are automatically fictional? i don't see it like that.

So we ourselves must not be real, as who we are is, to a great extent, shaped by our environment and experiences. If this environment and these experiences are only products of our imagination, than our idea of the self must also be a dream. So we are in fact just... nothing. A passive source barely of life? This is the understanding im getting from it.

i don't understand why everyone deals in absolutes.

the idea that you can make something from nothing is very easily grasped, especially if you believe that everything is nothing. i don't really agree that we are defined by the setting we are in, either. a tree isn't shaped by the forest, the forest is shaped by the tree, no?

Really? How do you figure? How is eternity (which should include) of all encompassing knowledge a good thing? There is no progress, no goal to strive to, just stationary (eternity means the absence of time which only leaves space) bleakness. Nothing can happen to you, there is no fear, therefore only indifference which is a euphemism for death. Either way you lose. *party pooper* :/

I should note that this is all just philosophical. If I really believed this was how things were, I'd have gone batshit crazy long ago...I just can't seem to abandon hope.

Yes, the forest is the product of many tree's, just as society is the product of the people within it, but i also think we are influenced greatly by our upbringing, our relations with others etc. I dont think the self is defined from within, at least not entirely.