I just settled down to eat my breakfast and noticed that the main headline on the latest issue of New Scientist is as follows:
REALITY IS AN ILLUSION. Why we are blind to the quantum truth.
Yes. Let the message be proclaimed on the front of every newspaper. Let the true exploration of imagination and human potential begin! Is the world catching up with me at last?
I suppose I'll have to read the article inside to find out. It might be quite different to what I expect. But I can't read it yet, as it's not my subscription, and I'm too polite to tear off the plastic-wrap.
Anyway, it's not really a question of the world catching up with me. But regular readers of this blog and my stories will know that I have long questioned the whole idea of 'reality', which is based on a blind faith in materialism. The most recent discussion of that on this blog, I think, was here in the comments section. I might come back to this discussion at some point, after my life has settled down a bit. I'm currently horrendously busy.
The idea of the world being an illusion is truly ancient. Maya, lila, samsara… there are many names for it. But materialism has built its empire in the world and subjugated native intuitions, like the British Empire colonising people 'for their own good'.
Changing the subject, here's my favourite YouTube clip at the moment:
Why don't they make comedy like that anymore? I mean, comedy with actual wit. Once more I sigh. The world is full of crashing bores, and I must be one, etcetera…
I suppose one can think of our reality as an “illusion” in the sense that we only have five senses available to interpret the “thing as it is”. But I don’t find anything positive in this. I suppose what I mean is, there is no reason to assume that what we can’t see is any less ugly than what we can.I seem to remember Orwell saying something along the lines that Nazism would never catch on in Britain because people were too busy laughing at the goose-step to take the regime seriously.
I see it as positive in as much as it’s an opportunity to wake up. I’m still waiting for the magazine to be unwrapped, however, so I don’t know what it will really mean. I suppose I see us as being trapped in a kind of dream, and everyone insists that the dream is real, so we go on being stuck in a quite arbitrary version of reality. If we can realise that there’s a dreamer outside of the dream then it might be possible to start lucid dreaming.
I’d just like to add that, although I said I was changing the subject, of course this wasn’t true. Stephen Fry talks about the role of language in shaping reality, about the dangers of taking things too seriously (in other words, as absolute reality), and ends by showing the creativity of language that can result from seeing all sorts of realities and not plodding through the same ones over and over again. I think these are the kinds of things that make me see the idea of there being no reality as a positive statement.
Robin Davies writes:Great Fry and Laurie sketch. All four series are now out on DVD and they’re still comedy gold. EXtrinsically… EXtrinsically…
life really goes around in circles… so, scientists have discovered what they have dubbed “the quantum leap” and wasn´t it Dantes that said that Reality wasn´t Real??? I have this in a book somewhere… can´t remember the exact quote. Or was it that life was a dream… and reality was when we died that life began? soemthing like that… :p
Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.– 1 Corinthians 13But of course, I am not as optimistic as that. I see the truth as unattainable.
Then there’s always Dr. Johnson’s refutation of Bishop Berkeley…”I refute him THUS,” or something like that. I like the idea of illusory reality, but it’s getting the rest of the world to realize the same. And I’ll have to wait to watch the Fry & Laurie sketch, darn it, as I’m on dial-up here at work.
“I suppose I am beginning to care less about such things, or whether I’m right or wrong or mad or sane…or that kind of thing.”I agree. I’m finding that more the case with my own sense of reality.Have a good dinner!
Hello.”But of course, I am not as optimistic as that. I see the truth as unattainable.”I’m basically not sure. I find it very difficult to put into words. I have certains instincts and so on, and one of these (well, perhaps more a perception than an instinct as such) is of the unreality of existence. As to whether this perceived unreality is something ultimate, I don’t know. But the lack of ‘an ultimate’ is in itself something that tends to support the idea of there being no reality. And yet, I’m open to the idea that there might be a reality somewhere, otherwise I’m simply proclaiming unreality as the new reality, which is a faily meaningless switcharound. Does that make sense? Probably not.”All four series are now out on DVD and they’re still comedy gold.”Yes, I think it’s a shame he doesn’t seem to be doing this kind of stuff these days. (Stephen Fry, I mean.) He seems to be resting on his laurels, rather, with QI. “Then there’s always Dr. Johnson’s refutation of Bishop Berkeley…”I refute him THUS,” or something like that.”Yes, I think that came up in the discussion linked to. I actually thought his refutation was pretty pointless. There are problems with an illusory reality, and these interest me, but I won’t go into them right now, because I have to cook dinner (that, in itself, is one of the problems, perhaps).”life really goes around in circles… so, scientists have discovered what they have dubbed “the quantum leap” and wasn´t it Dantes that said that Reality wasn´t Real???”The oldest sources I’m aware of explicitly questioning whether our experience of a material world is real, would be something like Plato’s metaphor of the shadows on the wall of the cave cast by some greater reality outside the cave, or of some of the Taoist texts, which talk about the dreamlike nature of existence. In a sense, I feel like it’s a shame for me to point out that life is a dream, because in some ways it might ‘spoil the game’ if we can’t take our roles seriously. But I suppose I am beginning to care less about such things, or whether I’m right or wrong or mad or sane or… that kind of thing.
Hope you guys don’t mind my 2 cents in the form of a question, but do you think that we were being sent a subliminal message in the London Bridge song? I’m referring to the ending, ‘life is but a dream.’ :eyes:
Yes; I was actually going to mention this, although I wouldn’t say that the message was subliminal. All of these old nursery rhymes have ominous origins.
Hello Jennie.In answer to your question, there is this.Sorry to be so lazy and self-referential.Changing the subject (perhaps), is it just me, or is Lady Sovereign weirdly talented?
Justin writes:We live in the same world in which mass murder is constantly occurring and most people alter their lifestyles because of what I consider written works of fiction (i.e. the Bible, the Koran, etc.), so I feel pretty confident in saying that dreams, fiction, etc. are not separate from ‘real’ reality. Even the scientific method is just an example of language and conceptual thought that uses a biological processor (i.e. the human brain) that is far from ‘objective.’I suppose I see us as being trapped in a kind of dream, and everyone insists that the dream is real, so we go on being stuck in a quite arbitrary version of reality. If we can realise that there’s a dreamer outside of the dream then it might be possible to start lucid dreaming.I think I feel like there’s no dreamer, or else the dreamer is not separate from everyday reality, and so nothing is any more or less real than anything else, whether it’s dream or alleged ‘consensus’ reality. I think probably a bum pissing against a streetcorner is real and me eating ice-cream in a ‘dream’ is also real, since both occurrences arise out of the world of matter (broadly defining subatomic particles and electrical phenomena as ‘matter’) but both also depend on perception for us to be aware of them as apparently existing, since I’m not sure how we can talk about anything without automatically assuming that the central nervous system underpins it. Descartes felt this proved that matter existed; Berkeley felt it proved it didn’t. Both positions seem fairly indistinguishable to me; I’m not sure how anything can be either added or subtracted.(not sure if that made any sense)
PS The problem with talking about this kind of thing is that it all turns into nonsense. Looking at what I’ve written it seems to get off the point somewhere, since the point would be….
“I think I feel like there’s no dreamer, or else the dreamer is not separate from everyday reality, and so nothing is any more or less real than anything else, whether it’s dream or alleged ‘consensus’ reality.”I suppose the idea of a dreamer suggests an ultimate reality, and this is where things get tricky, because it’s hard for us to concretely conceive some kind of ultimate, just like we can never get to the last turtle in the whole tower of turtles supporting the elephants supporting the world. You know the old joke – “It’s turtles all the way down”. I don’t think, however, the dreamer has to be outside the dream. Thinking in terms of something like Zen, the dreamer would be… well, the dreamer waking up would be the mode of non-attachment. You’re still in the dream, but you don’t believe it anymore.But if there is an outside, then I suppose I think of it as being outside time. Time, or the perception of time, seems to be a symptom or cause of most human problems.This ‘outside time’, however, is a bit like ‘outside life’ or ‘after death’, and, as Robert Aickman says, there is no speculation as futile as that of the nature of the afterlife. I agree to some extent, although I do tend to speculate on the nature of the afterlife in what I write (often very pessimistically). The problem with the afterlife is highlighted brilliantly in Python’s The Meaning of Life. The characters die and ascend to heaven to find that “It’s Christmas every day in Heaven”. After all, this might as well be hell.Any attempts to fix ‘heaven’ into a particular form seem doomed.In this connection, more than the ascended Buddha, the figure of the Boddhisatva interests me. The Boddhisatva awakes but remains in the world, waiting for everyone else to awake. And what then? Does the world end? Well… perhaps we’ll find out.
There is a Polish science fiction writter (Stanislav Lem), who explained much better (also with ironics;)) your thoughts, but I dont remember how was the name of the story about that (read it long time ago), but it was from d-r Korkoran’s memories :)I recomended to everybody (and he is a great writer) 😉
Hello.Well, if Stanislav Lem can explain my thoughts, I must read him. I didn’t think it was possible. Nice cat, by the way.Actually, I feel like adding that, although I used the word ‘pessimistic’ at one point, I don’t really think of myself as pessimistic. I know some people do, because they’ve told me. But for me to call myself that would suggest I had some preformed pessimistic bent to which I wished to shape any conclusion. I don’t. I actually have a sense of enormous potential within existence, which seems, rather tiresomely, to be thwarted again and again by human stupidity, my own included. Some people have tried to find the way out of this trap but it tends to turn to the way back in, because as soon as they call themselves ‘right’ and start preaching about it, it all goes wrong. I suppose that’s why I prefer to be wrong from the start, to be a ‘lost cause’ and to write fiction rather than philosophy.
I’ve read the article now, by the way. If anyone wants a brief precis, I’ll give one. As I suspected, it’s actually not as earth-shattering as the headline suggests. This is quite usual for New Scientist. Still reasonably interesting, I suppose.
Anonymous writes:Having just seen David Lynch’s INLAND EMPIRE for the second time, my own grip on reality is a bit fragile at the moment…
Justin writes:Quentin, if you haven’t already, I suggest reading Grant Morrison’s amazing comic series The Invisibles. He deals with lots of similar material, such as the concept of a divine or perfected intelligence from ‘outside’ becoming trapped in its own dream or creation. Lots of influence from P.K. Dick, R.A. Wilson, Terence McKenna, gnosticism, etc. but he eventually comes out with a fairly Zen or Taoist outlook on existence (i.e. there are no ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys; both form parts of the same whole). Also worth checking out is this interview with Morrison, where he gets into just about every topic imaginable:http://www.disinfo.com/site/displayarticle54.htmlI'd put his comics up there with Alan Moore’s in terms of overall quality, but I think I’ve gotten more out of Morrison overall (as well as his other works like The Filth and Doom Patrol).
Hello Justin.I’ve read some Morrison – at the least the Arkham Asylum stuff, or Dark Knight. Well, I’ve read some of both. That was him, wasn’t it? As you might guess from my vagueness, that was a while back, but I enjoyed it. I’ve got a birthday coming up, so I might put The Invisibles on my list.