I'm coming back to this one though. I don't do that much. I don't know why I'm doing it now. I used to be a thinker, now I'm much more of a doer. I do because my actions make me real to the outside, whereas my thoughts make me real to me. I already know who I am.
The structure of reality is something that comes up so much in conversation for some reason. What constitutes real and the like. Truth is, each person is capable of total autonomous control of their reality, but few ever realize this, and those who do would be dismissed as insane, much unknown to themselves. Neurologically speaking, I don't see why it isn't theoretically possible to rewire one's brain to dismiss sensory information and construct a new system to feed the part of the brain that receives sensory input. I think it'd be more trouble than it's worth, anyway, and it cuts out any room for external interaction, so that your delusion continues until your moment of death (likely from starvation or dehydration).
But this idea is touched by people every day. In another part of my "external memory," I once commented that I maintain the delusion that tomorrow will always be better than today, because it makes my life happier to think so, and that I "manipulate" my perception and interpretation of reality to benefit myself or encourage particular actions or feelings.
Found it. This is what I wrote however long ago.
"People try to base their lives around order and certainty. They make plans, keep schedules, plot out their futures, all that junk. I've watched people around me do this for years now, and I've always thought about why. For a long time, I was satisfied that it was to provide some measure of certainty in their actions and lives, just a method of reducing the chaos in the system. Then I started to suspect that it was something more subliminal, that it was not the actual act of reducing chaos in the system of their lives, but the illusion that chaos was being suppressed, whether true or not. You see young girls picking out the dresses they want to wear to their weddings, then some older girls even start mock-planning weddings before so much as even having a boyfriend. Some claim that it's just an exercise of imagination, some are dead serious about every aspect, but all seek the same goal.
What I've come to is this: they need that assurance that there is order in a chaotic system, the pseudofalse truth that there is a controllable future ahead of them. It's a thing at the core that reduces to inherent meaning. There can be no inherent meaning in chaos, for chaos itself denies meaning; the very act of introducing threads of meaning tying together the advancing tide of chaos destroys the thing that makes it chaos. So they hide it behind plans and wedding dresses, just lock it away so they don't have to stare into it as they let it overtake them. When the chaos takes their dreams away, when these truths they keep seeing are destroyed over and over again as time marches on, people lose their hope and idealism, become overtly delusional, or lock themselves away behind books and televisions and computers. It's an act of self-preservation through the preservation of the meaning attached to an existential world.
Is a delusion a delusion if you know it's a delusion?
I maintain one true, consistent delusion: I believe, under any circumstances, that tomorrow, things will be better. Not that things are bad today, no, things are perfectly lovely today. I just believe that they will be better tomorrow, regardless of anything. I recognize that it's just a delusion I place upon myself to fight the fear of the unknown that tomorrow embodies, and to keep a positive outlook on life overall. You see, as I said before, you can't predict the future. I only plan loosely when others need me to be a part of a plan. I don't claim to know any more about what tomorrow will hold than anyone else; if anything, I claim to know less. I rationalized that if the future is unpredictable, than worrying or stressing over it can only worsen things right now, and maintaining positive feelings about tomorrow improves my state of being today. So I have this delusion set up, that everything will work out, and tomorrow will be better, and that there's no need to worry. I have created a delusion out of sheer rationality.
So why does it still work?
I do this in little bits on smaller scales all the time. I set up delusions and take them down all the time. I pose irrational beliefs on what the people around me are thinking or the outcome of a particular action all the time. Set 'em up, knock 'em down, just to make myself feel better, and I recognize it. In recognition, shouldn't the delusion shatter? Have I mastered the Orwellian concept of doublethink?"
Okay... what was I saying? Oh yeah, reality. Why do I blog like I'm talking out lout to myself?
Fundamental core: There is no determinable objective reality. Nothing exists outside of your head. I run with this because the mind exists independently of the world, or even the body, around it. I can't prove that there is no such thing as objective reality, but I can show that it's irrelevant what that reality is. Colorblindness, hallucination, any crippled or increased sensory ability in humans or animals destroys congruence between realities, hell, two people being in different places destroys that congruence. The old existential argument about automata can even be introduced, where you have no proof that anyone else can think for themselves because you can't perceive it. For all intents and purposes, the world may exists solely for you and solely in your head. This is personal reality, the sum of everything you are given and everything you grant yourself: thoughts, etc.
We then have perceptible reality. This is your input. Anything you can detect with your senses falls into this category. This is the world around you as far as you can perceive it. This is a sub-level of personal reality, and it is unique to you, since no one can be in your place and receive that same information. And, in theory, it can be obliterated, leaving only your mind.
The outermost level is interactive reality. This is the effect you have on the world around you. You need to draw some basic logical conclusions to have this function, like that when something falls off a table when you make contact with it, it is a result of your interaction with it. Or that other people can perceive you when they look your way or talk to you. This is the evidence that you aren't completely independent of the world around you (although theoretically it can be erased, just like perceptible reality). Specifically, it is any reaction to your existence that you can perceive.
Subjectivity Demands It has something to do with all that. I forget how. What a shame, I never wrote it down.
I wish The Fire Restart had never broken up. They barely released anything, but it's probably some of my favorite music of all time, and it's consistently been at the top of my list of favorites since I heard them. Something in their music calls to the most desperate pieces of what I feel is human, the need to be a part of destruction and creation, for the desire to be everything supernatural at once, to scream and let your soul escape your body. It's fundamentally human to want to be more than human, or at least more than you are.
How do you "want?"
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