Imagine you go to bed tonight, and each night after, and enter into the same, continuous, cohesive, coherent dream world. It remains as apparently constant, unchanging, and “objective” as our own waking world does. In other words, you’re living in two consistent worlds which you alternate experiencing (as opposed to one consistent world + lots of less consistent, less predictable worlds).
In this dream world, you’re aware that you’re dreaming, and that when you go to bed in the dream world, you’ll wake up in the “real” world. The other folks in the dream world, though, are exactly like the folks in the waking world. In fact, the so-called-“dream world” and the so-called-“waking world” are just about identical. You experience both as a fleshy being living on a planet, eating, sleeping, communicating, laboring, playing, etc. You’re Bob the Human on Earth half the time and you’re Flob the Fluman on Flearth the other half of the time. In fact, if it weren’t for the fact that you didn’t start dreaming about Flearth until now, you’d probably not know which one was “real”!
Question: What kind of lifestyle do you adopt on Flearth, where you know you’re dreaming? Do you watch Flearth TV shows, go to a mundane Flearth job, pay your Flearth bills, fill up Flearth trash cans, buy Flearth products in Flearth Flal-Marts, eat Flearth animals, etc.? Do you spend your time on Flearth doing about 90% the same thing as everyone else on Flearth? Or, maybe, do you try to solve world hunger, end wars, spread peace, etc.? Or, maybe, do you become a genocidal warlord? Prime minister? Sports star? Ascetic? Billionaire?
I pose this hypothetical because I want to know to what degree you put your money where your mouth is. If you really do experience the Earth, with all its capitalism, warfare, environmental destruction, overpopulation, etc. as a dream world, how does that influence the way you interact with it? Are you more, or less, compelled to help other people/civilization and society as a whole? What does that do to your ambitions and aspirations? Because there certainly does seem to be -something of a contradiction (and that may be a strong word) in living a totally mundane and ordinary life, nearly entirely identical to that of any conventional physicalist, if you’re awake to the fact that it’s all a dream. (There are some metaphysical arguments against this which are perfectly valid, but I’ve got that gut feeling and I’m standing by it.)
We talk a lot about contemplating, metaphysics, and dealing with very specific situations on this sub, but very little about the things that we likely spend the vast majority of our human lives doing. How does subjective idealism influence your life choices? What obligations do you feel toward being a human, other humans, human society, etc.? Do you have animosity toward mainstream culture or do you enjoy it? Are you all logging out of Reddit and turning on reality TV, or are you sitting in fallout shelters in the dark all night?
It’s not unlike that famous story from David Foster Wallace where the two fish are swimming along and an older, wiser swims by and says, “Hey boys, how’s the water?” And after a while, one of the two younger fish turns to the other and asks, “What the hell’ ‘water’?” As oneirosophers, in theory, you’re aware that THIS IS WATER. So, I’m literally asking you, “How is it?”
At the end of the day, this is your playground, right? I mean, this is basically here for you to play in (with the implications of play/fun not being limited to sheer pleasure). It’s game-like in nature. Are you treating it that way? If not, why not? Are you having fun? Does this life feel playful? Is there any gap between what you “feel like you should be doing” and what you are doing, day in and day out? Are you happy with this current life experience?
One word: consequences. In a dream you can do whatever you want and there are no adverse “real-world” consequences.
If I were to treat life as a waking dream, I would never go to work, for starters, but as of right now I cling to the belief that I must trade my life-energy for tokens in order to in turn trade those tokens for things like shelter, food, and travel.
This post also touches on one of my bigger questions about subjective idealism: if what I’m experiencing is “my” dream, why is there so much stuff in it I don’t like?
For example, a short, but by no means complete list:
animal abuse
climate change
species extinction
human torture
There’s no way the “I” as I currently understand myself would want to invent those things!! This list is very short as I’m in a bit of a hurry this morning, but you get the idea.
Further, if this is “my” dream, it is so fantastically detailed as to beggar belief. Like, how could I have conceived of everything from the billions of microorganisms in a cubic inch of soil, to Mahler’s symphonies, to the structure of a leaf, to the complete works of Shakespeare? “I” must be very deeply involved in this dream indeed, to an extent I can hardly understand with my human brain. If this is my dream, what am “I,” really?
(Please note I’m not arguing against the idea of subjective idealism. I accept it as a premise, but am wrestling with its implications.)
Originally commented by u/Xtal on 2016-05-17 01:38:46 (d37krek)
Check it.
Let’s look at just Abuse. I’m going to make an assertion that is rough on the palette, but hopefully by the end of this comment we’ll reach a point of refinement where we can understand abuse better.
Abuse is a contract. An agreement between two parties. One party, the so-called victim, says “I value this body’s physical coherency and if you take that from me I will submit” and another party, the coercer says "I value your submission, so I will take your body’s physical coherency. ". He proceeds to blow off the victim’s ballsack with the electrical force of a car battery.
And that’s it. The victim has decided that he has something to trade for submission, and willingly undergoes the trade, unwilling to relinquish his belief that he IS his own body.
If the victim hadn’t decided he was his body, then the coercer would not have taken anything from the victim. There would be no trade. It would just be a man blowing some balls up and that would be it.
This is deep. I’m asking you to relinquish the basic idea that all of ego, human history, and civilization is built on. I’m saying ALL OF THIS HUMANING STUFF IS A GAME. We collectively have decided on the rules and we’re collectively playing it that way because we are so afraid of breaking the rules. Dear god, can you even imagine the horribleness of getting your ballsack blown off!? Dear god, that’s awful! That’s a nightmare beyond nightmares!
Yeah, maybe, but why? Because you bought into the idea that it is. You’d give anything to not have your ballsack blown off. After it’s blown off are you going to lament that you’re nutless now? You can live the rest of your life in this dream, lamenting and having a shitty dream because the dream doesn’t fit your anticipation of it…
OR you can change your name to Sackless and become a really talented castrato singer. Adored by your fans for your courage in the face of sacklessness. You never gave in to those god damned terrorists and now you’re singing your glee to the world!
This is the basis for cancer support groups. Hell, this is the basis for any and all support groups. A bunch of people that feel they need support to overcome the loss of a pattern that they’re so unwilling to relinquish, namely, their body. I’m not putting support groups or their users down. It’s valid. This is all valid. But whether they know it or not they have the ability to relinquish their bodies right now and become entirely free from the tyranny of their ailments. It’s not a magical thing. It’s just a decision. It is THE decision that seeps into all of your other decisions and perceptions.
Now you’re onto something. All we know for sure is that you are at least the “I” itself. The “I” is an ability to know self. You’re an unlimited potential to experience self. This applies equally to the animals that are being abused. This applies to the air and the earth and climate itself that may soon wreak such havoc on the experiences of this world.
If you are an infinity of experience, then you’ve been playing games for a long time. A LONG time. This may not be the first time you’ve played this game on this Earth. Time may usually not even be a concept for you anymore, from this greater undying, unchanging, eternal perspective.
So in a world in which time is not even a real concept; a world in which you’ve been playing games for infinities upon infinities… How bad is it REALLY to play a single game in which you’re a sheep being slaughtered… a Syrian losing his homeland to climate change… or a man getting his ballsack blown off?
If you were God, you might get curious about what these experiences are like.
Originally commented by u/[deleted] on 2016-05-17 02:39:01 (d37n9az)