# Getting to the stars **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 11, 2013, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676 "2013-11-11T21:41:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2013, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/1 "2013-11-11T21:41:29Z")
Didn’t want to take [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=707495) too far afield. but in there: > [@Is there a philosophy where I am everyone?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-philosophy-where-i-am-everyone/673622/2): > > Well, in Neoplatonism every human soul - well everything at all, really - is an “emanation” or aspect of the One, which is the only thing that really exists, but is beyond description or comprehension. Didn’t even know this was an official thing–just something I’d come up with on my lonesome. Guess not. Anyway, just this weekend I was looking at the stars and lamented how we’ll never get to go there. Not just us today, but us any time. Ever. And then a little voice piped up and teased, “Well, not as long as we think of ‘travel’ as getting a physical presence from point A to point B.” “What do I mean?” I asked. “We mean, our bodies are pretty much where they’re going to be relative to some planet in Andromeda, but if we can let go of the idea that we need those, then ‘travel’ becomes a simple matter of imagining yourself at any point, and possibly any time, in the universe.” This is all based on an idea I came to a long time ago that, not only is the universe a single thing, it is a single _mind_ we have no more hope of comprehending than a neuron does of comprehending the body it is a part of. If we could somehow learn to stop thinking of ourselves as individual beings, we could slip loose of our self-imposed physical constraints and flit between points in the grand consciousness at will. Needless to say, anyone who has any amount of success in such an endeavor would appear to the rest of us to be dead as they would have abandoned the task of animating the body they were born into. Or maybe that happens all the time involuntarily and we, in our continuing ignorance, mourn. ---
**Author:** ![HorkusBoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@HorkusBoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorkusBoy)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/2 "2013-11-12T13:42:06Z")
Pass it to left. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/3 "2013-11-12T16:26:04Z")
🙂 freak time: this is me _without_ weed. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/4 "2013-11-12T16:29:07Z")
Cite? Which is my snarky way of pointing out that without evidence to back this up, this is just another in a long, long line of speculative “what if” ideas that haven’t gone anywhere. ---
**Author:** ![Atomic\_Alex](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atomic_alex/32/175_2.png) [@Atomic\_Alex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atomic_Alex)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/5 "2013-11-12T16:41:25Z")
If you haven’t already read it you would probably enjoy ‘Star Maker’ by William Olaf Stapledon, which touches on some of the concepts you mention and is one of the most profoundly disturbing things I’ve ever read. On a semi-similar note I was walking home last night when I called in to say hello to my uncle’s dog _(he’s a working dog not a pet and kept outside on his lonesome a lot)_ when I had a thought, what if there is a higher level of intelligence than ours that is at least as capable of greater complex thoughts than we are compared to a dog, Max _(for that’s his name)_ doesn’t really understand why he’s kept in a cage at night _(a big roomy one, he’s not mistreated)_, why he helps herd sheep, what all the farm equipment is and what it does etc. You couldn’t even begin to explain these things to him, what if its the same with us in respect to a higher intelligence? I don’t really believe this is the case but it did make me wonder. ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/6 "2013-11-12T17:21:45Z")
Sounds more like peyote to me… The key word in the OP is “imagining”. Traveling off to some star in the manner described will show you what you _think_ it’s like there, not what it’s really like. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/7 "2013-11-12T17:50:45Z")
> [@Twoflower](#): > > Traveling off to some star in the manner described will show you what you _think_ it’s like there, not what it’s really like. For all practical purposes, is there a difference? ---
**Author:** ![Twoflower](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/twoflower/32/22_2.png) [@Twoflower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Twoflower)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/8 "2013-11-12T18:33:22Z")
If there was any way to physically visit some other star, you could learn details about things like the types and arrangement of planets, whether there’s any life on them and what sort of life it might be. An imaginary visit won’t give you any of that kind of information in a reliable way. I guess I don’t see the point of visiting other stars in you mind, if the only thing you learn is what’s already in you mind. I think of travel, whether near of far, as a way to learn new things and have new experiences. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2013, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/9 "2013-11-12T18:39:11Z")
It’s not much of a point, really. No more or less provable than God. Just something that makes me dread death a little less. I’d unpost it if I could, I should learn to keep these things to myself. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2013, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/getting-to-the-stars/673676/10 "2013-11-13T13:17:34Z")
> [@The Great Sun Jester](#): > > It’s not much of a point, really. No more or less provable than God. Just something that makes me dread death a little less. I’d unpost it if I could, I should learn to keep these things to myself. The unavoidable result of trying to save a few bucks and drinking the cheap stuff. Stick to drinking the good stuff and then turn in early. 😉