Saturday, November 30, 2013

Earth Quick and Easy

earth quick and easy:

"so it came to me. the dream world is created in an instant, right? or maybe not an instant, some of it may have been swimming around in the unconscious for a while, but still it's pretty fast, right? coupled with that, the idea that i dreamed my way into earth, well what do you have? the concept that maybe earth is somehow part of the dream world, or was created out of the dream world, and that maybe it too was constructed pretty fast."

"the word "constructed" that you use, that just goes against what we normally think of how things, you know, buildings, roads, manufactured items, are made, like really slowly and using mechanical means."

"right, mental manufacturing is quicker and easier than manual or mechanical ways. the difference between the dream and earth is that the dream world is a blur most of the time, but the dream world extension that is earth is clear and in more detail, but it's still just an extension nevertheless."

"well it's the detail and the stability that make it seem real. it's like a computer image file loading slowly, a few big blurry blocks to start with and then it clears up into detail. the dream is the blurry image and earth is the clear image. that's a thought. i suppose it's a problem for some, the whole earth thing and science seeming to work perfectly in a lot of cases. there's the thinking i've read that how could we tell if everything were virtual, you know, if it were like a vast computer simulation, and obviously this is coming from a position where everything seems normal and odd things don't happen, you know, like it's all physical science in perfect order."

"we see glitches, real errors in the coding of earth."

"yeah, like the program has bugs, if it were a computer simulation, that is."

"right, things have happened, definitely, that make it impossible to really believe anymore. it's almost ironic. it's like the only person who knows earth isn't quite real is the person running a pretty bad, poor quality "earth simulation computer program". he's the guy with the crappy software or computer. the guy with the bug free perfect program probably still thinks earth is completely real, all science is true, and Physicalism explains everything."

"perhaps, but maybe no one buys it all, believes in everything like that."

"you're right. i guess everyone has doubts at some point. you know, but yet we're probably dismissed as crazy schizophrenics. it's like, oh you just have problems with your perception, a few crossed wires there in your brain, that's what it is, which is somehow getting divorced from a physical world."

"well ok, back on track, so earth was created in an instant or pretty quick. so when did it start? because then the earth history that we have is a lie, right?"

"well, at the start, i guess we were all in worlds of our own or in little groups of neighbouring people sharing a world. and then we imagined and dreamed earth into existence some time later, and then we slowly started to populate earth, of course, earth being a world full of philosophical zombies to start with and just a few real people."

"your best guess?"

"i don't know. from what i'm led to think, i'm guessing earth began in the 1800's. maybe the first real person on earth came before. but then, i think reality is only a few hundred years old. i know this is very alternative. what we have in the general domain of theories is that it is anything from a few thousand years old to billions of years old. what i think they've grossly underestimated is how fast things happen and how large the unconscious is and what it's capable of and how much existed right at the start of time."

"but you're an Idealist. you believe in the greater mental. it's an extreme position perhaps. it certainly means you disagree with both Creationists and people who think evolution is true."

"people who believe in evolution believe in Physicalism."

"and ok, so what is the true date, assuming that one, an accurate calendar was kept right from day one, and two, that you know what it is?"

"the year is 442 and today the date is September 24."

CLEARCHARGE

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Hallucinations Gone Wild

hallucinations gone wild:

"so that's pretty much how the hallucinations started. i was feeling quite paranoid, very alone. then i started hearing people's voices. it's interesting even though a lot of it was about what i was thinking, so i should have known really, i assumed they were real. you could say i was really naive about the whole thing. i was 20 years old. i didn't know what schizophrenia was at the time. and that all makes sense the normal way. anyway that's how it all began."

"but what triggered it? something must have happened. and what do you mean by makes sense the normal way?"

"in my case i think it was just fear. but to start with it was just auditory. the visual hallucinations came later. what i mean is i worked out that probably most of the voices weren't real at that time, which is more or less what a psychiatrist would say. you know, your brain's not working the right way so you hear your thoughts and so on. what i wanted to tell you is the visual hallucinations became a lot more in an episode i had over two years ago. i really saw things! at night i looked out of the window and saw buildings move and the atmosphere, it was like my house was a starship and i was flying over a huge city. that lasted on and off over a couple of days. it's when you don't sleep, you start thinking a lot, the hallucinations pick right up."

"it doesn't sound safe."

"it's not. you have to be careful when it starts up. but the thought presented itself to me clearly that if in the general equation of everything the mental component of reality were more, that the world even could be generated in a schizophrenic fit in a moment. and even before objects seemed to appear from out of nowhere, i mean that could be touched. i'm not 100% sure but i think i got an extra bottle of Coca-Cola in my fridge, for example. the thing is, i couldn't prove it, because i wasn't sure about the number. also, in the dark, i'd see ghostly images of extra cigarettes in the pack and i was kind of hoping if i could just touch them they would materialize. and then i'd never run out of cigarettes!"

"let me get this straight. so what you are saying is, a real magician is someone having an extreme schizophrenic episode!? magicking objects up from hallucinations?"

"yeah. i guess. but i haven't seen anything out of the ordinary for years."

"but can you make things disappear?"

"well, i have lost a few things over the years."

"if it's a world full of philosophical zombies, maybe you could delete a few people here and there."

"hold on. that's dangerous territory. what if you tried to delete a real person? not good. or just thought about it even? i don't want to go there."

"no you're right. but what if you deleted all the zombies to just leave only the real people on earth?"

"well that might sound fine to start with but what if everyone was left stranded? say 9 out of 10 people disappeared?"

"yeah, you're right again. but what i'm trying to say is, if only you could control it, it wasn't a dangerous out of control thing, you know what i mean?"

"no, i see what you're saying. it did occur to me that maybe all the other real people were in different countries but who knows, right? i had this experience a year after it all started, when i was 21, of sitting in a train to London from Durham and i had this definite feeling that no one else on the train was real, i was completely alone. it's just that the mood changes so drastically sometimes you're forced to go along with it."

"yes. that's true even when you're what they call mentally normal, not schizophrenic. what do you suppose will happen when you die?"

"i expect i'll start dreaming of somewhere else beforehand and then i'll wake up there one day. just how i got here. and that will be that, the end of my time on earth."

CLEARCHARGE

The Building Blocks of Thought

the building blocks of thought:

now what we have in our minds or our brains perhaps is a network, a web of connected ideas and concepts or what we might call items of thought. these relate mostly to real things but also those abstract. by real things, i mean images, actions past, sounds, and so on. yes we all have imagination and a surprising capacity to think about things that do not exist in actuality and also we can think about abstract subjects like mathematics.

now i digress. can a fiction, a made up story, ever allow us to wander far enough away from reality to ever be truly believable? a word always connects to something real. we cannot turn off thoughts about real things that we have experienced and seen and heard. a writer creates a work, but the audience has its own individual interpretation of it. of course, if we were less strict, yes it could be admitted that we all share a general sense of this work, but each individual brain whilst reading it works in its own way. i might mention the word "drink", but whilst i think of the coffee i've just had, a reader elsewhere in space at another time might think of whatever he or she just had, orange juice perhaps. the word triggers something in our own experience. what i am saying is that we cannot truly have a "clean" reading of any work, fiction or non fiction, for everything is coloured by individual experience. to deconstruct any work is to work out what is connected to what in the world of real things, to undermine imagination really, and in so doing perhaps we discover more of the impossible and the possible.

it is clear that the conscious mind is little in relation to the unconscious and memory. it is a slim "holder" of thoughts, like a tiny screen lit up on the side of a mainframe computer. it can only hold so much at any one time. it is volatile like a multicoloured flame of a candle or lighter blowing in the wind. i would say it is incorrect to attach all of our identity to our consciousness, for we are more than what we are thinking of at any given moment. i think, therefore i am, but i am not only what i think.

let's say an intelligent person's consciousness, or mental "holder", could have 50 discrete items of thought at once. of course, let us consider that this could be a variable number. perhaps in concentrated thought, even a 100 in one go, like the flame were adjustable. now the items of thought are like building blocks which a person might play with, each represents something real or abstract. in writing this work, i've thought of a computer, a flame, building block toys, etc. i have ghostly images of these things in my mind's eye now. i have a little collection of building blocks of thought. now what lateral thinking is, briefly, is the manipulation of these building blocks, creating a new collection or arrangement of thoughts, by adding a new, different block to what we had before, something seemingly unrelated usually. what do we have now in our conscious mind? what has the addition forced us to think of?

there is an argument that the consciousness is not the leader of the total mind, rather it is the larger unconscious that is so, even that calculation is led by the unconscious. then the concept that the unconscious is the supercomputer seems more apt. the conscious mind is more like a passenger viewing the scenery of thoughts.

CLEARCHARGE

Saturday, November 9, 2013

To Forget and to Sleep

to forget and to sleep:

"...well, no, that's not the point. i'm not theorizing or speculating or whatever you call it just for the sake of thinking a lot. there is a purpose to it. i want some answers. really, like how did i get here? why am i on earth? what happened before and so on."

"right, don't get so worked up. i wasn't attacking your opinion. it's just that some would say, you know, here's a guy that could better spend his time thinking about more practical things, things that you can verify, be sure of..."

"i know, i know. and that has its place. i'm not knocking that. it has its value. but don't you think there's a mystery here? this a pretty vaguely discussed topic but there must be a lot of people interested. when i was young, i mean, i had all these questions but then, you know, life got busier and they faded into the background but now i'm older they're back. you want to know what i think? and i don't mean to force my ideas on to you but i'm pretty sure about a few things."

"go right ahead. and i'm not saying i agree with what i said. i'm just communicating an opinion from somewhere or someone else."

"ok, we'll get your true opinion later. no, so i've been thinking a lot about what i'm thinking while i'm thinking, if that makes sense, becoming more aware of how my thoughts drift, kind of keeping track of what's going on inside my head."

"right. being aware of your thoughts."

"yes. so there are a couple of things i've noticed. one, you can forget something you were thinking about within two seconds. it's really that fast. you know, so, normally you may think you have a pretty sharp memory, that you remember most things, right? wrong. you can forget something instantly, especially when you're thinking fast. i mean, i know, sometimes you can recover that thought if you dig a little, right, sometimes you can get it back."

"yes, it's amazing when that happens. but i never thought i had a very sharp memory."

"and the second thing is, when you're falling asleep, there is an incredible onset of these random thoughts from the subconscious. it's as if they're from an alternative life where the rules and baseline assumptions about your world are slightly different. and in a dream, there is always a concept to it. say, for example, i'm dreaming about being back at school. ok, i'm not actually seeing that much, but i know it's at school, exams are on, i'm obviously going to fail because i don't remember the subject material anymore and so on. and the dreams are so powerful they wipe out whatever our regular daytime awake thoughts are. you know, so i can see that if life on earth begins in a dream which you wake up from actually being on earth, i can see how you might have amnesia about what your life previously was."

"and it's easy to forget anyway, right? so the argument we might make that we generally have a good memory is perhaps not so true?"

"we remember a few things very well and a few more things pretty well but which only disguises the fact that a lot of these things slip right past us."

"well i don't think you're wasting your time. i mean, it's definitely not something that anyone could say they have absolutely no interest in. it's something that concerns everyone on earth, where they come from, how did they get here... i don't know. i guess it's a different focus. and it's like the brain can only focus on a few things at a time, right? that's why we forget too, i guess, come to think of it."

"yeah. do you remember exactly what you were thinking ten seconds ago?"

CLEARCHARGE