i have been thinking alot philosophy and now, I’m unable to make sure about anything, i feel like i live in several different worlds. i have a strong sense of loneliness. because i feel like i can only feel that i am a lonely thinker. when i look at something that is funny, i cannot completely put my emotion in it, because i doubt that this could be my illusion or something. yes, it could be not, but only “could be” is enough for me to not peacefully enjoy the fun. sometimes i even guessing that i am the only one exist in the universe, and everything is just my different feelings. even “making sense!” is a one of the feelings.
for example, when you read my post, how do you make sure that this is not your illusion? yes, you may say “because so and so…” , then think again, isn’t “because so and so…” a simple feeling also?
I’m kida confussed by what the primary point of your post is. Bear with me:
you said:
Are you trying to say that, the reader of the quoted passage cannot be 100% sure that the passage is really a real passage, and not some hallcination created by the reader’s brain.?
Sometimes philosophy has a tipping point that can spill a fertile mind into a sort of psychosis akin to derealisation or depersonalisation. A solipsistic hell where the world is projected on a flat screen that wraps around your head. All is absurd and microscopic, enclosed, and you are alone, a consciousness imploding…a true Nowhere Man. The only escape is redirection. You must step back into the “game” and be a “gamer.” This involves buying into some beliefs and tricking yourself long enough for them to “take” so you can live a semblence of a normal life. Food, sex, movies, friends, working out, the occassional drugs, lots of earthy adventures, these things help keep the game going…
If I said that post is problably just an illusion and passed it by, I would be ignoreing the very real possibility that it is real and I can do something about it.
So the mere fact that everything could be an illusion has little effect on descion makeing.
If we instead knew that everything was an illusion that would be a bigger deal, but we are no where close to such a conclusive statement.
I reccomend you do your best to figure out what is illusionary, i.e. keep studying.
Oh, and you’re assumeing a consistent identity, look into some Philosophy of Mind and your find that there is little reason to even think your you from day to day, let alone that the whole universe is you.
In short your problem is not questioning to much, you’re not questioning enough. Your doubt is unbalanced towards an undesirable conclusion- solipism. Consider another possibility, there are only two real people, you and the one you will love, and the entire purpose of the universe is to give you a chance to create that love. Is it likely? No, but neither is solipism.
Let’s assume you’re right. It’s all an illusion and everything is relative and without meaning. There you are sitting in Plato’s cave. Fact: you still have the power of reason. (illusion or not) As long as I have the power of reason I can construct a beneficial knowing of the world and act upon it. The fact that it may be an illusion is interesting, but it just might be that our ability to reason isn’t an illusion. That we cannot know one way or the other throw’s us back upon ourselves and there we are stuck with reason again.
The other possible answers are a laxative, or whiskey, or both. Please don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.
In all seriousness, relax and continue your studies. I promise it will all be clear to you eventually. I went through the same thing many years ago and managed to survive the experience. (I think)
It can be depressing to realize that little to nothing you hold as being true is necessarily true outside of your own personally held beliefs.
This seems to negate all truth, or lead to one just throwing their hands into the air and say “fine whatever I believe is true for me and that is all that matters.”
But, since your being cannot be logically reduced to nothingness while said being exists (somewhere, at some point, some entity that is you exists, be it here on earth or as a brain in a vat on the planet Gabogol)
And
that this entity that is you is experiencing ‘something’ whether it be the true thing or not
And
that from these experiences you formulate judgements that used to serve as an unexamined foundation for your life… you are still free to examine every idea you come across… and nothing in your existence absolutely demands that you choose one idea over another, you can settles for what you think are the best ideas, using a simple standard… like human reason.
I say nothing in your existence absolutely demands that you favor one idea over another because, if there were such absolutes in relation to being, then being isn’t quite so subjective then, is it?
I was also once where you are at,
but instead of depression it was debilitating panic attacks. I had thoughts running through my head and I couldnt control them. I kept thinking I was going crazy because I had same thoughts like: Am I the only person in the universe, for that matter is this ‘universe’ all in my head. I was so afraid I could not even go one minute without panicing. (note this is before I even read on philosophy) I soon felt symptoms of depersonalization - where I dont feel like I am myself… like im floating somewhere, and my body doesnt belong to me. derealization - where the world feels like I am merely in a dream, nothing exists outside of my mind. Both truely terryfing beyond belief. I soon got help with medication and was able to calmly think about the thoughts I was having without my overwhelming panic/anxiety. What got me over this thought of what if everyone I love is merely an illusion in my mind, was I said “fuck it, I may never know if everyone I love is an illusion but even if they are, I still LOVE these illusions. It is highly doubtful that they are illusions, and im not going to live the rest of my life like they are, because if at the end of my life if they arent, it is truely a waste of life”
Sometimes I wonder if I am the only one in the world who have feelings, thought, etc, while world is constantly happening around me as programmed machines. But then I will think," Even if that is the truth, I must continue living my life as I do. It is no use to eradicate oneself over a question of what the world really is. We are only subject to what the world seems, and that should be the foundation for us to build philosophy from. We may never know what the world that is in hiding from us is in truth, but we can build from what we do perceive. I hope I am of help to you.
through my experiences dealing with solipsism, i found that some people are quite calm facing it, and some people just got depressed, nervous, uneasy, and even panic. i belong to the latter, i sometimes feel really lonely and helpless in some way? did anyone get this? what you think is the cause for that? is it just that some people are tend to think the worst? is it a temper thing? how did you guys handle solipsism?
i remember those days, from when i was about three until about 9 or 10 (im 14 now), i was always perplexed by that state of mind…am i the only “real” thing? does anything exist? do i exist? what is the self, and if i cant understand or percieve my conciousness, does it exist? well luckily, i had enough choir classes to space out in and think of these types of things (spacing out in school lends more to education than listening to the lectures) and i basically started to think of these questions as childish, and foolish. i was aware that my conciousness, if it exists, cant comprehend the anwsers to these questions, in its present state, and thats where i found solace, that and religion. truth be told, reality is based on perception. all of reality is, in essence, whats in your mind. if it does exist in some “real” form, outside and independant of your conciousness, you cant really know, but you percieve something, and wether or not it has any “reality” to it, its what you percieve. kind of like, you look at a tree. you dont see the tree, you see the light reflected off the tree, making the image of the tree that your mind percieves. a zen master put it best "two young monks were looking at a flag, one monk said “the wind moves!” the other said “the flag moves” a zen master walked by and said “niether the wind, nor the flag moves, it is your mind that moves”. so even if nothing is “real” in the sense that you had belived it before, it is real within your mind, and in your perception. and in that case, the best thing to do is to act accordingly, to respond to your senses, and to live as if everything were real, as you thought of real before. what is “real” anyway? personally i try to disassociate myself with reality, to realize the everything is an illusion, thats one of the main goals of zen. as li mu bai put it in cthd “it is all an illusion, the master would say, a mans goal is to let go of what he sees, only then can he attain what is truly real”
You should cherish depression, loneliness or whatever sad feelings you may have. Because you have joined a very special club, the club of thinkers, philosophers, existentialists.
The feelings you are experiencing is perculiar to us, the thinkers. Only we can live a life of reason, others just drift here and there, not knowing what’s happening, living the life of an animal. We are the ones truly alive.
