[enigma]

What is it that I want to experience as real?

Is it the actual universe itself that I want to touch, to breath, to gaze upon and experience myself within?

So I always believed as a younger man.

Yet the biologic sciences inform us otherwise.

That the 'world' of our experience is but a mere 4-D (time included) holographic facsimile of something that is fundamentally unknowable through direct experience.

The organs of sensory perception (auditory,gustatory, visual, tactile, and olfactory) process outside stimuli, transform them into electrical signals, which the brain then translates into a perception of the world that is but one of an infinite number of ways in which the universe can be experienced.

A mere map that 99.99% of the time is mistaken for the territory itself.

So we are, each and everyone of us, living within a matrix-like simulation of a world that exists beyond our brains and skulls.

I am an inhabitant of a sort of radar room that informs me (via five different types of media displays) what is happening out there around me.

But that's all that they are.

So why does it matter so much to me how they feel?

Should it make a difference?

Logic tells me no.

The desire to feel 'real' seems but an emotional one.

And yet there is a survival imperative connected to this desire.

Because if my experience of the world were sharper, clearer, more real, so to speak. If I were more greatly connected to my senses, I could function on so much higher a level then I am presently capable.

And yet the irrational longing to sense and know directly something that has never been known directly by any person or species of animal is still the primary emotional drive that propels me forward on the quest for a cure.

But alas, I claw at the ground struggling to reach a vain of pyrite.

e

 

[Scattered]

The world is bullshit. Once I get past that I realize that all I really want is a sense of hope and security. And after that has been acheived (if that can be acheived) then all I want is some sort of pleasure, be it love or amusement or something else.

In all our complexity as human beings I still maintain that we are animals who try to artificially elevate ourselves to the level of man-gods. To create our towering skyscrapers and then puff our chests out and say that we have defeated nature and have risen above the natural environment and the animals therein. Its all artifice and distraction. Society is one great large and organized distraction. We are the ants who tirelessly build our anthills until something bigger comes along and crushes the organization that we've spent thousands of years trying create. We label, arrange, and order a reality that is inherently indifferent and proclaim that we "understand." But we don't "understand." We have specifically created different areas of knowledge that we fill our brains with in a futile hope to place order where there is none. To try to quantify chaos.

I don't give a shit if I'm real or not. If this is an elaborate illusion or if it isn't. All I really want is to avoid pain, feel secure, and then be provided with amusement to help me get through this until I die.

 

[Guest]

Enigma:

That's a very relativist argument of understanding the human brain, most empiricist today would disagree with it.,. I do not believe in relativism, or empiricism for that matter. You should read Polanyi instead, a philosphy of science. When you remove all the fluff, that's when you see reality. It is possible to see reality as it truly is, independent of our thought process. But to do that you have to be in awareness mode.

All the things we see are clues to reality. None of the things we see are facts. The concept of fact can't exist when you take away dogma or ideological thinking. Put the model aside and just see.

Read Plato too. The allegory of the cave is right on in describing how you can see reality. You see it when you turn around and see that the moving shapes on the walls are actually the shadows of the object behind us.

Just some thoughts.....

Nancy

 

[Homeskooled]

Enigma,
Through a glass but darkly. This is how those with DP see the world. "You" are nothing but the electronic impulses in your brain. Things exist whether or not you are there to observe them. But when you do, "your" experience of them is represented to this "you" through more electronic signals. But it has a direct correlation to reality. This is how reality testing is possible. The healthy brain never "adds" anything to the stimuli it is given. Sure, you may lack the abillity to pick up the ultraviolet spectrum with one of your senses, but thats something you know exists but unfortunately lack. But a DPed person has feelings that A) dont correlate to laws of physics B)add to the stimuli that the average person feels. The average person doesnt have visual distortions, color distortion, an ability to "observe" one's actions as a third person...When the brain works correctly, the glass should no longer be dark - you should look through the glass clearly. Sure, you still wont have access to the mysteries of the universe, the ultraviolet spectrum, or the 4th dimension, but your brain will be perceiving what it was meant to, in the way that most people's brains do. Distortion free. I cant remember which playwright wrote the "through a glass but darkly" quote, but I've repeated it to myself quite a bit in my 23 years. N boucha, its refreshing to see that someone else on here has been reading Plato. I've thought of the cave allegory many times myself. Anyone who has the time should look it up. All the great philosophers have dealt with these questions at one time or another. I would love to see a great philosopher come out of these forums.

Peace
Homeskooled

 

[Guest]

The desire to feel 'real' seems but an emotional one.

And yet there is a survival imperative connected to this desire.

Because if my experience of the world were sharper, clearer, more real, so to speak. If I were more greatly connected to my senses, I could function on so much higher a level then I am presently capable.

And yet the irrational longing to sense and know directly something that has never been known directly by any person or species of animal is still the primary emotional drive that propels me forward on the quest for a cure.

But alas, I claw at the ground struggling to reach a vain of pyrite.

I often wondered about the similarities between the little pods that humans were trapped inside in the Matrix, and our own brains. It seemed a rather fitting analogy for our physical brains, connected to a nervous system feeding us sensory information.

We cannot experience anything absolutely directly, we experience things with our senses. But as others point out, all the things we sense are clues to reality. Most of the time, most of us are not hallucinating...

As far as the emotional experience of feeling 'real', I think that is a whole different matter (but both are worthy of discussion.) Our human experience is largely driven by our emotions. I think most people that experience DP logically know that they are real and have their physical bodies, but it doesn't make the experience any more tolerable. Same thing with phantom pains- even if you know that you are healthy , the sensation of pain is still extremely unpleasant.

 

[Guest]

Jay Z posts on this website??

 

[Martinelv]

Scattered is Camus in disguise.

 

[Guest]

Jay Z posts on this website??

LOL, I had to pick some sort of user name...

I think someone else here has a pic of Jay-Z as a avatar. Maybe I'll confuse everyone and use your Ja pic-

 

[Guest]

i have Cam'Ron in my avatar

never Ja Rule

 

[Kelson12]

i have Cam'Ron in my avatar

never Ja Rule

Don't let him lie to you....Ja Rule is his favorite rapper.

 

[Guest]

i have Cam'Ron in my avatar

never Ja Rule

Oops, sorry! I didn't look very closely, with that scowl it kinda looked like Ja Rule.