Solipsism Syndrome
 

it's a contagious disease so i don't feel comfortable saying too much about it, just curious if anyone else has had similar experiences? talk of synchronicities and singularities does seem to be on the rise... this has to be the most absurd topic in the world so let's talk about it... somebody

... what is it?

I don't know, on one hand I believe this is my life and everything is my love, or hatred and ultimately a manifestation of my own senses. But I think the world, as I know it (well not exactly as I, myself, know it but as we, as a collective species know it) could go on and will go on without me. I guess it's just as likely as anything that this all some clever ruse I've dreamed up but that's too hard for me to grasp. I guess I'm not egocentric enough (or maybe too self-loathing) to believe I have the intelligence to form a world like this, with all it's scientific rules and joys and sorrows and adventures. I'm not sure I have that brain capacity or creativity. I don't know eh, I'm certain of my insignificance, my simple intelligence and the universe's indifference.

there is a gap between solipsism and solipsism syndrome though, on the one hand we have a super-skeptical philosophical argument an on the other hand you have an intangible experience, a depersonalization from reality, the feeling that life is a dream, the feeling that, as someone on another forum put it, "to stay sane we must ignore"

don't watch this:

I think about this a lot actually. I didn't know there was a word for it. The most difficult part of this idea is thinking that you're capable of making a system so complex. Whether true or not it's probably not the best idea to completely convince yourself of it.

I agree, but one realization that scared me was that the system is only as complex as the complexity you read into it. People ask, so you're saying your mind could have generated Shakespeare and Beethoven? You are capable of such things? But their brilliance is only proportional to the brilliance your mind can read into their work, most of us just rely on other people to tell us that they were great which to a solipsist of course proves nothing.

If everything we perceive as reality is in fact a dream, then what are we?

Irrational ideas are irrational. Why would I want to believe this?

I've entertained the idea on occasion, mostly when trying to fathom eternity. I figure at the very least, I'm a part of the divine creation that couldn't handle eternity anymore, so a seemingly elaborate and endless system of life and death and illness and fear was created to make it all bearable. Other people might very well be real, but were created as diversions from the horror of neverending existence. This also goes in line with my recent, somewhat oriental line of thinking that everything serves a purpose, and I seem to be finding a lot meaning and obvious purpose in the things that happen around me...which could fit into the ego-universe theory, I think (it's all about me me me). Did any of that seem at all pertinent?