What if I’m asleep in a hospital somewhere and I could die any moment they decide to pull the plug?!?!
Jesus why has my mind been giving me existential crisises at night this week?
the answer to solipsism is that you have to engage with the reality you experience. it doesn’t matter if it’s a dream or not.
Once upon a time, I dreamt I was an owl, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a owl. I was conscious only of my happiness as a owl, unaware that I was myself. Soon I awaked, and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then an enby dreaming I was a owl, or whether I am now a owl, dreaming I am an enby.
Zhuangzi_Owl
Do those “how to know if your dreaming” strategies, like looking at the time on a clock, looking away, and then checking the clock again for consistency.
There was a kids show with that plot called The Odyssey. The main character was fighting through a fantasy land that reflected their struggle to reawaken - I think I liked it? I can’t really remember.
Here’s a nicer existential musing (the second paragraph, but the first is related to it):
With some commentary:
All of these comments are way more wholesome than expected
Nothing is real except for the endless void that this stimulative universe spawned out of, but I think we should enjoy our unreal reality, because it’s all we’ve got.
God I swear I had a dream recently where there was a “Wake Up Party”, like a political party based on the ideology that everything was all a dream and the solution to all the world’s problems was simply to identify whose dream it was and wake xem up. Like they’d hold rallies where they would just chant “WAKE UP! WAKE UP!” with cowbells and banners reading “WAKE THE F#CK UP!” and they’d hold speeches in parliament encouraging “The Dreamer” to wake up and all sorts of stuff, and they were actually a super popular party just because people were that desperate.
You gotta register the copyright for this quick before someone sees the post and it becomes a Netflix movie.
Fuck, I’m jotting this down. This is an amazing writing prompt.
Vishnu 2024!
Looks like it worked, unless… 🤔
It’s dreams all the way down
ya gotta wake the wind fish, lad
not exactly this, but this
I unironically love that comic and have had almost that exact argument before I even saw it, which made me love it even more. Yes, I pretty much talked like Comrade Mickey there too.
you’re all little gay people stuck in my computer and i must free you with a rock
Use a screwdriver
Easier to punch through the LEDs
I’d be so fucking pissed if this life was the best dream my shitty brain could come up with.
I watched one (1) show were this was going on, and I think I’ve concocted a way of telling.
How much David Bowie are you hearing in your day-to-day life?
If you look at a TV screen or turn on the radio, do you hear doctors arguing about how best to treat you?
Have you shot back to the 70’s or 80’s to work as a cop?
No, no and no
…Whew
I would NEVER be a cop
I would NEVER be a cop
Ok Narc_Owl
Don Siegel’s Dirty Owl (1971)
I’m hearing a lot of David Bowie in my day to day life, should I be concerned?
we did it! we found the dreamer!
If my life is the dream then I genuinely fear for what the real world would look like
Not necessarily, there are other possible explanations. For example - you may be in suspended animation on a space ship sent to colonise mars.
Am I on a King Bazinga colonizing ship or a USSR2 colonizing ship? That determines what I do when I wake up out of suspended animation
You’re in an American remake trying to outsmart the source material kinda ship.
Wait, this isn’t about 1899, right? Because I can’t recall the purpose of the spaceship in 1899 ever being clarified before the show was cancelled.
I was shitposting about Life on Mars.
Fantastic show. Though to be fair, it was never quite clear if he was in a coma or just insane.
The follow up series, Ashes to Ashes makes it more clear, but is also a much worse show.
Oh yeah, I watched an episode of that then wiped it from my memory. Fair enough.
I’d be pissed if this is a shitty dream with 90 hour work weeks
Man back when I worked at one of the pizza chains I would have dreams where I just worked a very normal shift. It sucked ass, I would wake up feeling like I just worked for 8 hours, and then have to go to work.
Swear down. I barely get enough sleep and I be dreaming of work.
Internet is the proof that you’re not in coma. You have endless supply of information on any topic imaginable and there’s no way you have all that stored inside your head
What if one’s mind is making it all up as one goes through the dream, and inconsistencies are rationalized away as being the result of not remembering details?
than inconsistencies would happen WAY more often
They are already happening annoyingly often.
A “consistency” rather than an inconsistency would be vanishingly rare.
You can look at people’s political opinions as an example.
those are consistent “inconsistencies”. most of them are consistently explainable with real phenomena, they just don’t make sense if you’re trying to follow the same train of logic. other things, like the material situations people have can lead to tons of inconsistencies in their beliefs based on what they’re exposed to and, to an extent, “paid” to believe
How do you know your mind isn’t simply ignoring them, or altering your memories to make the inconsistencies fit?
Idk how do you know a goblin isn’t replacing your brain and piloting it around and hiding in the folds between reality when you check
This sums up this thread very well Not to minimise experiences of breaks with reality/paranoia/psychosis, it can be very scary.
So you’re not living a life facing endless, exhausting inconsistencies?
It’s true I am pretty stupid
But what if you are just imagining having endless supply of information, but you mind is able to actually visualize only porn, pictures of cats and arguing with other communists?
Could you dream me up a little cash
The human brain doesn’t have the capabilities of synthesizing the richness of life de novo. Dreams and hallucinations are transitory and ephemeral things. Longitudinal consistency makes the idea of such a long-term hallucination absurdly implausible.
Oh thank god that makes sense
Longitudinal consistency makes the idea of such a long-term hallucination absurdly implausible.
Incidentally, this is why liberalism exists. /s
What if it’s not a human brain that’s dreaming?
That’s true… it could be a techbro:
We can only really think in terms of likelihoods. Why would a non-human super-organism, who had the mental capacity to simulate the external universe with such consistency and fidelity, dream up such a human life?
It’s all a fun reasoning puzzle of course. We don’t really fear that we’re dreaming, we fear that we’re awake and that this is what life is.
They’re playing us like the Sims
I don’t think I’ve ever had a dream wherein I was not human, but I have had dreams about interacting with Martians and My Little Ponies.