Reality and Earth and Dreams and Hallucinations and the Perplexing Question of What Is Real?

reality and earth and dreams and hallucinations and the perplexing question of what is real:

"i mean, what is the commonly accepted view, or opinion, about what is real on earth, or at least what everyone has to assume? i'll tell you, that there are at least billions of real people for a start, right? and for someone who is not, you know, a schizophrenic, everyone you see is real and you have to deal with them as though they're real, and also that there's some kind of science that connects everyone together but i'm not going to go into that, because i don't know a whole lot about science or how it really works or would work. and then it's like, that is the only completely real thing, everything else, dreams, hallucinations, you know, seeing or hearing things other people don't seem to, and other worlds, that's all deprecated or even dismissed as not real at all. it's like you have to believe waking life on earth is the only real thing in reality and only people you can see and meet and talk to that way are real, everything else, imaginary, or a product of the unconscious mind."

"so you're saying they could be real? i may really meet other people in my dreams?"

"listen, i can't say what is definitely real or definitely not real. i can't prove anything. what i mean is, i have doubts about the thing everyone on earth has to go by. what i'm saying is, in a sense, it's all real, it's all found in reality, you know? it's all sensory experience. the question is, are the other people you meet in waking life or in dreams or talk to in so called hallucinations, are they real or not? i mean, let's look at the possibility that even in waking life on earth some people are not real. i mean, people like to think in absolute terms, either everyone is real or it's all a simulation but it's actually more probable that, unless solipsism is true and you are the only real person in this reality, that some people are real and only some are simulated."

"i just hope it's not solipsism that's true."

"right. who wants that? but as a schizophrenic, you have to consider, you're forced to think really, at some point, that the whole thing, earth, everyone you know, is just a huge hallucination, and even if it's not, it's probable, as a schizophrenic, that some people you walk past or even know, are just not real. they're hallucinations."

"wait. but couldn't everyone on earth be schizophrenic, at least slightly? i mean, that's how we all got here? you know, it could be suppressed for most people most of the time, but my theory is the earth thing is based on, it's derived from some form of schizophrenia that everyone has, like everyone dreams, though maybe schizophrenia isn't quite the right word."

"it could be. a lot of people hear things, more than are diagnosed schizophrenic. and people have imaginations, right? it's not much of a leap to think that this feeds into what they see and hear. and who said science existed at the start of time? i'm sure it was a little different to start with."

"yeah, maybe it was all a woozy schizophrenic mess to begin with. anyway, so it's like you have to figure out all the combinations of possibilities. so like maybe i mostly live in a simulation but i know a few real people on earth and when i dream, i'm completely meeting real people sometimes, and perhaps some of the voices i hear, the so called hallucinations, i'm talking to real people."

"right. the problem is, if you assume it's neither 100% or 0% anything, you're left with a huge scale of possibilities. it could be anything in between. but i mean, it does come down to the question, how many real people are there, anyway? if it turns out there are only like 30 real people in the whole of reality, well, i mean, isn't the unconscious that's feeding the hallucination of earth huge? to power the whole illusion. if it's really in the billions, well, that means earth, as given, as it's put up to be, is something like the truth. but if it's only in the thousands or even tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, it becomes harder to think about."

"right. like who are the real people on earth?"

"yeah. and what is everyone else doing?"

"do you think they're the guardian angels? wondering about poor old us who went to earth and left and when are we going to come back?"

"you know, you have to consider that everything that's out there, in books, in culture, in myths and legends, is somehow real in some sense, though maybe there's a distortion of the truth."

"not everything is real surely?"

"well, the case may be that some things are only real in thought, truly imaginary."

"you mean, like some things in history never happened? they made it up?"

"i don't know if someone consciously made it up or history just appeared, you know. there is a theory the earth, as it is, is only like less than 200 years old. at the very start it came with a history that just wasn't real. reality could only be a few hundred years old. the real year on the calendar may be something like Year 442."

"that would be A.D. 1572 for Year 1?"

"right. except earth didn't start until about 1850 and then it was mostly illusion, a simulation."

"so gradually more and more real people went to earth. i guess you just have to think of everything, every possibility. but if it were true, why would people want to think everything is billions of years old?"

"i think people underestimate how fast things change and really how much existed already or was possible at the start of time."

CLEARCHARGE