Well then, take this!!!!

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Someone just moved my parallel universes theory post to the religion landfill, the trashbucket of the clique.

I really don't get why people feel so incredibly threatened about God that they'd move that hopeful post to the garbage can, but okay. Here's a new post... I took God completely out of it.

Now, it's quite depressing actually by comparison. But I wanted the theory read, so here you go... you damned godless heathens

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Parallel Universes Theory: Without God


Consider that each of us lives in our own universe. That universe is specifically built for us based upon our own interpretation of reality and our own ability to imagine that reality.

This reality begins in the womb. While our brains are being developed, we are creating a reality. First, the mother becomes real, then we begin to develop sounds around us, and while we dream, we create a world and sometimes a universe.

During our childhood, we invent other things, such as races and animal breeds so that color is a dynamic part of life even among the living creatures and people that surround us. Then we make the spaces around our tiny town into a planet. This planet might be small like Mercury or Pluto, or it may be large like the Sun or Jupiter. Then we create the rest of the universe, which might be a light-year or a few hundred billion light-years across. We create our history and the history of the world and the universe so that stars explode and die, presidents are assassinated and we put people like Ghandi in our history so that there is balance.

Perhaps we learn that we cannot change things and decide to accept that we can no longer create. Whatever the cause, we mold our specific parallel universe to our own imagination abilities and to our will so that in my reality hurricanes and famine can exist. Perhaps in your reality they do not.

It is impossible, however, to bridge the universes in any way except to reason that they may exist. So, from your perspective in my reality, having 6 billion unique people allows it. You cannot alter reality because it is not your reality. It is my reality. So you are made powerless as I am now powerless.

Yet, you do have your own personal reality. In that reality, I might not exist at all, or if I do I might be an old man or a young woman, or perhaps I’m in jail or was born an African and live in a tribe that practices cannibalism. I don’t know. That’s your reality. It may be that I have some control over your reality in your reality. I don’t know. That’s your reality. Just as you don’t see your own reality from within my reality, yet it still exists. Maybe in your reality there are only a million people or 100 people. Maybe it is like Corisant and there are 100 Billion people living in a single-city, a world-wide city. I can’t know. I only know that whatever reality you have in your parallel universe, that you are or once were in control of what it would be like. Maybe you made it so that cement was brittle & could be broken by jumping on it because we all weighed 40 tons and we were the dinosaurs. I can’t know what you would make in your reality. I only know my own reality.

Eventually, I will have to make a choice about how to live & live by it. I can continue to “pretend” to live, working, sleeping, eating, and not actually being engaged to a lifestyle that has meaning; or I can make a conscious decision to begin taking control of my reality in an active sense so that my life has meaning. I could raise a child that I teach all that I have learned and speak with him throughout his life until he has all the tools with which to live to the potential I squandered while I lived to please myself. I could take every opportunity to wake people up to the realization that we are only here for less than a mere hundred summers. But in the end, why should I care if the ozone layer fails, if there is litter everywhere, and all the world’s water systems are polluted? None of this matters to me if I die and fail to continue existing. Even if I think it matters to me, once I’m dead it fails to matter to me at all. There will not be one single shred of me that cares then. I’ll be dead.

[The Leper Fairy]

Zeph, I did not move it because it was threatening (far from it) nor did I move it to a "garbage can" I only moved it because it involved God and The Close is where things about God are supposed to be discussed. If it didn't involve God it might've belong in the Think Tank. I think either are more appropriate than General Discussion.

[Gil galad]

Ok i read it all and within the theory it all makes sense...

my question is what use is that theory? It doesnt tell us any new information nor does it point us in any direction of investigation nor does it explain anything we already know. You know i think you might have wasted 5 minutes of your time to type it.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

Ok i read it all and within the theory it all makes sense...

my question is what use is that theory? It doesnt tell us any new information nor does it point us in any direction of investigation nor does it explain anything we already know. You know i think you might have wasted 5 minutes of your time to type it.

Well, I was just stating that everything you've ever known or will know until I die & remove all my reality & you are also extinuished is all due me. Not that I take any personal joy in the matter, but for you I might make an exception, although much more likely you will have merely been an insulting jerk I once knew on a forum years in the past that I have now forgotten and just takes up space and resources like the rest of the nearly 6 billion useless people that inhabit my reality.

But thanks for readin'.

[I'm Murrin]

Fact is, you only ever experience the world from within your own head, and because of that there always exists the possibility that things are not truly how you perceive them. You have no way to know that anyone you meet really exists in the same way that you yourself do. The only thing you can truly know is that you yourself exist - I think therefore I am.

[Bucky OHare]

Fact is, you only ever experience the world from within your own head, and because of that there always exists the possibility that things are not truly how you perceive them. You have no way to know that anyone you meet really exists in the same way that you yourself do. The only thing you can truly know is that you yourself exist - I think therefore I am.

Exactly, it is tautological and nothing more can be gleamed from it. (though descartes used it to prove the existnce of god)

[Avatar]

Solipsism is alive and well!

[CovenantJr]

Well, I was just stating that everything you've ever known or will know until I die & remove all my reality & you are also extinuished is all due me. Not that I take any personal joy in the matter, but for you I might make an exception, although much more likely you will have merely been an insulting jerk I once knew on a forum years in the past that I have now forgotten and just takes up space and resources like the rest of the nearly 6 billion useless people that inhabit my reality.

But thanks for readin'.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

How about a nice cup of doing something original & stop ripping off old crap from the 90's?

I know that some people believe that original thought is dead, but at least *try* to pretend that you have half a brain. MMMMmmmmkay? Thanks.

[Edward]

What's all this shouting? We'll have no trouble here!

[hierachy]

Edward! Edward! He said he wanted to see me naked!

[Edward]

He did What?!

[[Syl]]

No offense, Zef, but you say that like your post wasn't itself a rip-off from philosophies that predate the 90s by at least a few millenia. Solipsism is nothing new, and it's not even new at this board. Of course, if you bothered checking out the Think Tank you probably would've noticed this. And c'mon, dude, Mr. Mackey is soooo '99.

Ribbing aside, Zef, you might enjoy a small book called Einstein's Dreams. It proposes a lot of alternate reality (or alternate ways of viewing our reality) scenarios like that.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

It wasn't a rip off to me, since I thought of it without the assistance of reading it somewhere else.

If this is a case of "no original thought" due to the fact that there are too many people on the planet and too much history of people on the planet, then that's fine. Then again, I could have designed it so that it would be like that. This way, you would say what you have and then I would doubt once again, thus surpressing any change that might have otherwise taken place had I not placed these things into history.

You could say the same about anything. If a person says that they knew that another person was going to say what they did, then you really can't believe it because they might have just had a misfire in their brain that made them think that they thought it when indeed they did not and only thought they did once the other person spoke. "I wish I would have said something."

Then there are people who will swear something is a miracle when it could have been coincidence. And slowly but surely, it becomes less a miracle and more coincidence. We wouldn't want to have anyone believing anything beyond obvious reality now would we? So we shoot them down as quickly as possible. No, that isn't true. No, that can't be right. No, you are plainly wrong. This way they can't have anything special. We do it all the time. Sometimes we do this to people who believe in God, much like a mean kid will say that Santa Claus doesn't exist to a younger kid. It doesn't matter if they exist or not, but we just like ruining other people's miracles and any sort of hope or fun in their lives. Misery loves company.

Is my theory the ultimate form of selfish conceit? Perhaps it is. Maybe at the root of it all, I'm the most selfish, conceited person I know or will ever know. But if that is true, then at least I'm willing to look at who I might be. I think that most people are content to continue robbing the hope of others, the joy in another's eye, the love that someone my share innocently. Maybe most of us aren't really too much different than cruel, negative, jerks that will go to any length to tear down anything special in other people's lives so that they feel superior intellectually and can find favor with the many others who share this warped mindset?

Or maybe I'm just looking in the mirror again.

[Avatar]

I must say that I think most people come up with solipsism on their own. I know I did, years ago, and was thrilled by the brilliant originality of my idea.

Imagine my disillusionment when I discovered that other people had been thinking the same thing for centuries

I think that it partly stems from a lack of true empathy (my own problem) and the automatic human assumption that there is nobody on earth who feels the way that you do.

I still struggle to comprehend that the thousands of people that I see passing me every day have lives, loves, ambitions, plans and problems of their own, completely seperate and independant of me. (Whom I rightly? feel to be the centre of the Universe, just as you all are the centres of your own Universes.)

It's a wierd thought, and one I'm still not completely over, even all these years later. Still, I think most people get over it eventually.

Later
--Avatar

[ZefaLefeLaH]

You are not real.

[Worm of Despite]

I bet a dollar I'm not real. Pay up.

[ZefaLefeLaH]

You don't exist.

[Avatar]

You are not real.

A possiblity I'm always willing to consider, and from a certain perspective, true enough. Unfortunately, from that perspective, neither are you.

And the Beauty of it is, we can both be right. There's no way of knowing

--Avatar