12 Reader Responses

1. Relative State Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 9:58 am

   because talking to people gives you more ideas for your personal reality.

   because talking to people helps you clarify your own views.

   because other people are wondrous and fascinating and you don’t need any more reason than that really.

2. Zeno Izen Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 11:03 am

   Let’s put this together with the previous question about whether totalitarianism would be so bad. Here’s the answer: Physical danger. Other people, whether they be the Secret Police, or the overt police or your next door neighbor or the family in front of you in line at the supermarket can be very dangerous.

   Next time you’re feeling solipsistic, try getting yourself arrested. Next time you wonder about the relevance of other people’s worldviews, try walking through a housing project at 3 am with an iPod and a nice pair of sneakers. Next time you wonder about the downside to totalitarianism, try driving around with a copule ounces of any given drug in your glove box, or take some photos of your local federal building. Yes, objective reality has a lot of cheshire cat/silly putty qualities to it, but it’s still there.

   Magick is real. Synchronicities are meaningful. We underestimate the power of our minds. But bullets are still real. Prison is still hell. People are still the most dangerous creatures on the planet. Reality is still out there and it can hurt you.

   Not to be negative. Life can be beautiful and good. But if you should ever start to wonder why you should engage life or participate in the human project, then look to the simple pragmatic fact that you are the first and final protector of your own personal well being.

3. Gina Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 11:18 am

   because you are not a single reality but a part of a group of realities bound tightly together in the net of Indra.

   In the Heaven of Indra, there is said to be a network of pearls, so arranged that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object and in fact IS everything else. “In every particle of dust, there are present Buddhas without number.

   Sir Charles Elliot

   but for the life of me, I can’t convince myself that it’s worth exuding the energy attempting to do so. . .

   The fact that you must convince yourself to exude energy so as to become aware of the validity of others realities is disturbing, do you feel other’s realities are without merit? or is it merely a case of youthful disaffection or do you feel that you are isolated from the rest of humanity for some reason?

4. prnsqlr Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 11:23 am

   Solipsism/non-solipsism is a fine question to stumble over. It is very near THE question.

   Why does it seem that the outer world is so real, and that the inner world is so personal as to be incommunicable?

   When you make two one, and when you make the inside the outside and the outside the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and female one and the same…then you will enter (the Kingdom).

   Do not be mistaken: all knowledge of the outer world is known only through the senses. If you get down to it, you can only indirectly perceive the outer world. Therefore, all knowledge is rooted primarily in the inner personal experience. The fact that the outer world seems coherent and logical is no proof, since your faculty to discriminate between “coherence” and “incoherence” is entirely internal.

   However, solipsism is not warranted by these observations. There is the possibility there is a universal, transpersonal component to the inner world, a universal ground of being which can only be found through introspection, not outrospection of sensory phenomena.

5. prnsqlr Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 12:44 pm

   The net of Indra reminds me of Leibniz’s Monadology: http://philosophy.eserver.org/leibniz-monadology.txt

6. thoughtographer Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 3:05 pm

   why bother talking about yours with someone else?

   Because it’s fun.

7. Tim Boucher Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 3:19 pm

   Gina:

   because you are not a single reality but a part of a group of realities bound tightly together in the net of Indra.

   Technically though, that belief falls into the whole thing about having created a private reality vis-a-vis your belief system. Doesn’t it? Even if your private reality includes others?

   The fact that you must convince yourself to exude energy so as to become aware of the validity of others realities is disturbing, do you feel other’s realities are without merit? or is it merely a case of youthful disaffection or do you feel that you are isolated from the rest of humanity for some reason?

   First off, I didn’t put this up here to criticize this person, but because on a lot of levels I can identify with what he’s saying. I think he’s just asking why keep going? What does it matter? I don’t think asking those questions is inherently disturbing. It’s necessary at certain times.

8. Tim Boucher Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 3:20 pm

   Thoughtographer:

   Because it’s fun.

   Amen to that. I would get bored without it, definitely.

9. Citizen Candy Cane Says:
   March 26th, 2006 at 3:43 pm

   The President of Reality was a King until he got beheaded by the surrealist Karl Marx. Marx was not a materialist. He said “I will vomit out all my lil’ demons inside my stomach who live inside LaLaDreamLand which lives inside a walking (metaphysical) zombie brain.” SO while the landscape was interior after he vomited his creatures they walked and walked on the exterior and they subverted logic, reason, and comic-bools. Needless to say the people now elect the reality to serve all our individual and collective perceptions of the sun, power, moon, and love.

10. pete Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 5:13 pm

    Well, I might as well admit that I’m the one who asked that question to Tim in an email. I don’t regret it either, as I feel it’s an accurate question for revealing my thought process as of late. I don’t really see it as disturbing either. Yes, I feel isolated from other people…inasmuch as everyone else does. Actually, probably moreso. . .because I’m more of an observer than an active particpant, for reasons I’d rather not discuss on a public forum. However, I agree with the post that say discussing one’s own perceptions and beliefs with others is fun. That’s one of the best reasons to do anything, and I have a wonderful time discussing my philosophy with my father. . the only man I know in real life who is at my present level of understanding. But since I’ve been coming to this page, I’ve discovered a whole treasure trove of like-minded indivduals and honestly, I’m warming up to the idea of sharing and learning from one another, just because it IS entertaining and you can learn (ie; accept or incorporate another idea into your own cosmology) a great deal.

    Basically what I was asking is precisely what Tim noted in the comments above. About why do we keep going on with this incessant quest for truth, be it from our own memory, experience, or from other points of view….when nothing we do really matters in the grand sense? And his reply, because it’s all we have, seems pretty spot on as far as I’m concerned.

11. Tim Boucher Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 5:30 pm

    Hey now, I didn’t say that nothing matters. It’s more like everything matters. Somebody sent me a Joss Whedon quote onetime: “If nothing we do matters then the ONLY thing that matters is what we do.”

12. pete Says:
    March 26th, 2006 at 5:50 pm

    Yep, that’s a Joss Whedon quote from Angel to be precise. And i’ve always liked it, though I did actually want to change it to “If nothing we do matters then the only thing that matters is who we are.” But I guess that’s kinda redundant, seeing as how your actions already speak volumes about who you are to begin with.

    Also, I actually agree that everything matters… to whom a specific thing matters. But nothing inherently matters outside of a person’s perception of said thing. Not very eloquently worded, but I think you catch my drift.