I’ve been questioning this for a while, and IMHO, things around me don’t seem ‘real’
It’s a weird feeling, but I for the past couple of well months I guess I’ve been feeling rather detatched from reality, as if none of it is real, or like I feel I’ve created the reality around me.
How do I know any of this is real and not some construct? Or that I’m in some computer programme or in some deep coma like in Inception?
It would be easy if you think about it, a guy goes into coma, whilst in coma, this persons reality is constructed from past memories and amalgamated into a new one which is indistinguishable from reality, subconcious adds a few personality complexes to prevent this person from waking up and is kept in this ‘reality’ like in Vanilla Sky, where the only way to wake up is to fall to your death kind of thing.
I think every time a movie like Inception comes out that has this as a plot point, people are going to wonder. But honestly, the best way to think about it is: who cares? This world is pretty all right, isn’t it? And if there’s something else out there, you’re going to have to re-adapt your entire lifestyle to fit into it. That’s kind of scary. Especially if it is like The Matrix and the ‘something else’ is a horrible dystopia where humans are farmed and enslaved by robots.
Besides, it looks like when you die in this world, you’re dead, so it’s probably best not to take chances.
If you start thinking you have some kind of incredible insight into the world with these beliefs, or that you have power over it that other people don’t do, and/or you start to experience an increase in your levels of energy and enthusiasm then seek psychiatric help - you’re having a manic episode.
Well, Ryan, you can’t tell. None of us can. Most of us, however, take for granted that reality exists and go on to worry about other things like jobs, mortgages, kids, zombie apocolypse, car maintenance and vegetable gardens. Consider that everything you experience is in the past, even what seems like right now has already been filtered through your senses, edited for sensible content by your own mind and then viewed through a filter of experience which usually forces the perception to make sense, often at the cost of fidelity to the actual stimulus. Once you accept that there is no such thing as now, you must accept that everything you know is subject to your imperfect memory, and that the fidelity of that memory degrades markedly with time. Do any of us really remember anything we’ve encountered? And since our individual perceptions of reality are based on our memories, do anyone’s realities really intersect at any meaningful level? We are, after all, alone in our own heads. Play with that for a while.
Alternately, you may be experiencing a form of seizure or dissociative disorder.
I’m reminded of a story Martin Gardner quoted in Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener, where the protagonist faced with a priest friend who was agonizing over the reality of the external world solved his friend’s problem by picking up a two tined pitchfork and pinning him to a tree by the neck overnight. “I stopped imagining I was God; it was too much of a strain.”
I thought about this, as I’m beginning to have a belief that reality, or my reality is nothing more than just a bunch of perceptions rolled out in a sequence, maybe I am having some sort of disorder, but I wouldn’t know about that.
Well…that’s what reality is. And surreality is everything else along with the perceptions. People have gotten rich and famous advancing that observation.
Assuming I’m interpreting this correctly, it is generally known as Depersonalization Disorder. I can’t say that I’ve got this or anything, but on occasion in my life, I’ve had quick flashes of something that feels very much like this. It’s really hard to describe - almost like life is a movie or play but you can see off-camera (or off-stage) out of the corner of your eye so you know that what you are experiencing isn’t real. You can’t visually see anything, it’s just an almost overwhelming feeling.
It’s one of the most bizarre feelings I’ve ever had and I’m thankful that my experiences have been fleeting and rare. I’ve never done anything about it as it hasn’t been an ongoing problem.
Sorry I didn’t see the post before mine. Depersonalization can be a symptom of depression from what I remember; it’s not necessarily a disorder in itself. Or isn’t always.
The feeling IS uncomfortable and bizarre, and I’ve had it last for months. There’s a neat little movie starring Matthew Perry called Numb that features depersonalization.