PoorOldPo

So I really think a lot about stuff like this. I had a psychedelic experience once and it changed everything about how I look at life.

One thing that I realized was that everything and everyone is connected. I remember seeing myself through my friends eyes in the room with me, I remember feeling love for everyone in this world, absolute love.

I have been thinking...Lately about reality....Life just seems to be this thing that we have fallen into, an event composed of constant transitions. We seem to be (and I am trying to find ways of explaining this in my limited and simplistic human vocabulary and understanding) making do with what has been presented to us. Who has presented this " reality " or existance to us? or what? We do not know.

Let me explain further on " making do ". We came into this world and we were taught how to live life and to get by, we learned consistancies that our ancestors passed on to us to help us get by. But do we really understand......anything?....Do we really know anything about what the **** is going on? Why we are here? No.

Now don't relate what I am about to say next with the last paragraph. As I have mentioned before, I am a human so I really don't know what the **** I am talking about. Is this reality? Or is everything you are experiencing a subjective reality based on the collective human subconscious? Maybe this is not reality, maybe " reality " does not really exist, maybe reality is whatever we think is real.

I know one thing for sure, what we see, physically with our very eyes, isn't what that physicality actually looks like. There is FAR more going on in the world than we give credit to.

Anyway, I probably sound mad. I genuinely believe that all people and animals and well...Everything is connected. Just wanted to spill all that ranty ****e out at ye and see what people have to say.

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https://www.instagram.com/hennas.lullaby/

Above

Bill Hicks.

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Be pure,
Be vigilant,
Behave

Stephen

I don't really have the eloquence to go too deeply into the philosophical side of your ponderings but when it comes to vision apparently our eyes only see maybe 10% of what's in our field of view at any time. The rest of the details are kind of inferred and filled in by our brains. I guess part of the psychedelic experience is probably the brain being a bit befuddled and just making some pretty random guesses about what it is seeing.

PoorOldPo

Yeah, I dunno about our brain filling in the spaces, I think we just see more of what is actually there to be honest.

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https://www.instagram.com/hennas.lullaby/

Howard the Duck

i think about what you said in the OP all the time

when i think too much about it, i get a disengaged and discombobulated feeling

i then try to pierce my own "consciousness" and end up feeling totally alienated from my own senses, and what i perceive as everybody's "reality" ( or "consensual hallucination")

we're just building the world according to our own limitations and sensory perceptions

nobody ever thinks out of the box

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Malaise is THE dominant human predilection.

mr dave

Every last one of us is truly a special unique snowflake. I really do mean that, no patronizing sarcasm.

Problem is, we're all special unique snowflakes within a big mother****ing blizzard

Also it's impossible to read Po's intro post and not have this pop into my head... sing it with me people!

Is this the real life?
Is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide...
No escape from reality...

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i am the universe

Guybrush

I think we do and I could explain why - and have probably done so many times here in the past as similar topics have sprung up over the years .. but I don't think you'd buy it!

edit :

I often feel like people will accept f.ex quantum mechanics helping us make orbiting satellites or computers and they'll accept that one can use a knowledge of chemistry to synthesize various substances for example. But, if you use disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology to explain why we're here, you're suddenly touching ground where people get spiritual and stuff and then they suddenly don't like explanations that seem "factual" anymore.

Or, possibly, they don't understand them when they hear them.

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Something Completely Different

duga

While I think you can make a "working hypothesis" based on science, there are still limitations to its application. The problem with science in relation to philosophy is that science won't say we know anything until we have hard evidence pointing to whatever it is we are curious about. While you and I could probably go back and forth on very specific details and how that relates to life in the bigger picture, it still doesn't answer a lot of the philosophical questions people have. One day, maybe will be have advanced science enough to be able to provide these answers, but for now there is a limit. This is why people aren't satisfied with a scientific answer when they are asking a philosophical question.

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Confusion will be my epitaph...

Guybrush

I don't think this is quite right. It's a well known "fact" you can't prove anything What you do in science is gather evidence, typically by trying to prove your hypothesis is wrong (attempt to prove null-hypothesis) and then basically building evidence for your case. After all, it typically "only" requires a certainty of 95% or more for an assumption to be accepted as "true".

At some point, you just have to apply a little faith and I think people might as well put faith in the things that seem the most likely, ie. is supported by the most evidence.

Of course, that's just how I feel and I realize that.

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Something Completely Different

duga

Yes, of course. I didn't say anything contrary to this. What I am saying is that to get to that 95% certainty, you need some hard evidence. Eventually with philosophy, you have to get too abstract to present any hard scientific evidence.

So how far do you think science can go before we consider something as "taking it on faith"? Can it answer what happens when we die? I think most people have a hard time mixing faith and science. Most either take something completely on faith or they stick completely to science. I myself am comfortable learning what I can through science and then extrapolating that to the most logical conclusion in terms of philosophy, but I think most have a hard time doing this. That was my point.

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Confusion will be my epitaph...