Absolute reality, if it exists, doesn’t matter to the individual. What matters is the individual’s perception of reality because that’s all he or she knows. With that in mind, at what point does your subjective reality shift away from absolute (or should I say ‘collective’) reality?
This is what I mean: you might sleep about 6-10 hours a day, and the rest of the time you’re awake and conscious of reality. Well what if, through drugs or other means, you sleep 20 hours a day, leaving only 4 hours of “reality”? Do those 4 hours become insignificant?
I know what you’re thinking… of course not. Because our memory keeps running tabs of “reality” and picks up where we left off every time we wake up. Ok, so then what if, through drugs or other means, you are able to fry your memory or at least scramble your brains to the point that your mind can no longer keep running tabs? Can you theoretically escape this hell by making it just the smallest percentage of your consciousness, essentially reducing “reality” to a dream?
Or is it easier to just put a bullet through your fucking head and reduce reality to zero.
6 comments
This thread needs a few scoops of lorax.
Subjective vs objective (including “objective is impossible since we’re all entirely subjectively oriented beings)
Real vs not real…
This is a quagmire. Why? Because people are subjective, and everything is relative (except the exceptions), and each person interprets and employs language uniquely.
Also:
Subjective reality is the one that doesn’t actually “exist.” It is merely a unique interpretation of objective reality, which is the one that is real.
Also #2:
I would posit that the “correct” way to interpret your hypothetical scenario, is to apply the rarity principle, which would mean that turning 16 hours of consciousness into 4 hours, quadruples the value of your time units, meaning the opposite of becoming insignificant.
People who think they’ve got another 60+ years, probably aren’t living like each day is their last. People who think they’ve got only another 60 months or weeks or days, are typically going to value that shorter time much more.
But sure, some people could interpret it as a value reduction, since only 4 hours of consciousness per day, doesn’t seem like enough time to accomplish much of anything important, thereby reducing the value of that time (since it’s not enough to do anything with it, it’s worthless). It would be like if your life-saving operation costs $10m, but you can only find $10k.
If it’s not enough to trade for what you want, how much can it be worth?
Or you could look at it another way: for what you really want, how much of your time, sweat, blood, tears, and material resources, would you be willing to trade? And do you have that much to trade for it?
Interesting question. If you dream all day long and don’t even perceive anything of what most of us believe to be THE objective reality, you will probably start to forget about that reality. I guess it’s somewhat like a comatose person, even though when they wake they usually realize after some time that they are back in the “real reality”. The problem with perceiving dreams as reality is that they are not very consistent (try finding “laws of your dream reality” which apply to this reality 100% of the time). Anything can happen in a dream. Another problem is that you’re not fully conscious which means you’re not in full control of your thoughts. So a life like we know it isn’t possible in a dream. But: You still have emotions in your dreams, whether they are good or bad as in a nightmare. And if the only thing which counts for you is to be happy (even if it is “fake happiness”, but does that even count?) and if you think you are usually happy in your dreams (which you probably aren’t), then 24h sleep is an option, even though I would not recommend it.
I personally enjoy dreams even though when I wake up and realize I was only dreaming I get pretty depressed. Feeling (the illusion that) that life is good once in a while is a worth it.
*is worth it
Depends on what you consider Hell, Stain. That’s entirely perception, which you control. If you want to see your waking life as hell, well then fine. If you don’t, you change that perception. The world around us is entirely subjective. No one on the planet experiences the world as you do. People with high levels of empathy may come close, but not exact. You are in complete control as to how you see the world. Some people just forget that.