Beyond humanity? ..Are we "real"?

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Outer space --Has anyone ever truly thought about this topic? I mean, usually when Space/Planets etc is brought up, people roll their eyes and do their best to change the subject because it's "boring". How can anyone think something so fascinating is so boring? (Wait, don't stop reading, there's more.. tons more)

Think about it this way: We're all a bunch of beings crammed into this small planet, this sphere, but there's so much more to the universe than just that. There's more to everything than the people were surrounded by, the things we "know" or learn about in school, the languages we speak, the steps we walk on. There's so much beyond us. Too much to even begin to think about that I, myself, start to question reality or even just life in general.

Am I getting through to anyone? I'm not sure if I'm putting this the way I want to put this. I've never been good at trying to intrigue someone or even get them thinking.

I remember my junior high science teacher telling the class, "For all I care, you could all just be a figment of my imagination. All of you before me may not even exist.. Heck, that includes myself."
No, he wasn't a nutball, he was actually too smart to even be just a science teacher. (Let me just put it this way for you: He's a genius) And it really got me thinking.

It's kind of depressing, not knowing. Not knowing beyond humanity, or.. anything for that matter. I think I only feel it's depressing because I'm over thinking this whole thing. Thinking about what might be out there --I'm pretty sure I have television to thank for that.

A huge part of me wants to know more about what's out there, soooo badly. Then another part of me feels that these questions are best left unanswered.


ps.
I apologize if this isn't making any sense. I couldn't sleep at all on account of all of the thinking I've been doing. I just needed to let everything out.
 
keelytown said:
I remember my junior high science teacher telling the class, "For all I care, you could all just be a figment of my imagination. All of you before me may not even exist.. Heck, that includes myself."
No, he wasn't a nutball, he was actually too smart to even be just a science teacher. (Let me just put it this way for you: He's a genius) And it really got me thinking.
Such questions have existed for centuries. I used to ponder about my existence too. But such a question can be answered (well not really answered but...put to rest? You know what I mean) by the simple statement by Descartes "I think, therefore I am."

It is true that I will never be able to prove that everyone else actually exists. However, it doesn't benefit me to believe that everyone in the world is just a figment of my imagination. Hence why I give people the the benefit of the doubt. I believe I exist and I choose to believe that everyone else exists and if a man in a big black trench coat ever offers me a blue pill or a red pill, I would probably run away screaming.

keelytown said:
It's kind of depressing, not knowing. Not knowing beyond humanity, or.. anything for that matter. I think I only feel it's depressing because I'm over thinking this whole thing. Thinking about what might be out there --I'm pretty sure I have television to thank for that.

A huge part of me wants to know more about what's out there, soooo badly. Then another part of me feels that these questions are best left unanswered.
I used to get depressed about this sort of stuff too. However, because there was no way I would be able to answer such questions with certainty, I learned to just accept reality for what it was. There was no point getting all depressed over a question I would probably never find the answer to. I still find it interesting to discuss such questions, but I try not to dwell on them too much. If this life really is real I want to enjoy it rather than get all depressed over nothing.
 
I wouldn't say I actually ever got depressed over it, but it was a little sad to think about.

Thank you so much for your post though, it makes sense and it's how I try to convince myself to look at things. I mean, I can accept this so-called reality easily. Here I am typing out something to someone else. It feels pretty real, so it's not hard to accept. Though, just because it feels "real" doesn't mean it is.
Either way, I can learn to accept. Although, I do find these types of discussions pretty interesting too, and I don't think I could ever let go of topics like this
 
Same here. I am sure there is something else out there, but there is no way to really prove it. I really don't know what's out there, but I just can't come to grips with us being the only creatures in the entire universe. On this tiny small ball, which is not even 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 of the Universe. But, yeah I doubt there will be anything found, at least in our life times.
 
I have thought things like this for a long time now. I think since you first start to realise your owm mortality, for me it was when i was about 12. Since then it has branched out, it's not something that I try to think about a lot but sometimes you just can't help it.

I remember when I was at school and in a physics class and covering space etc and i was thinking that we may have already met other lifeforms, but they just don't comprehend our existence, like that they could exist but we're so primitive we can't sense them. I seriously doubt this but just like your science teacher said, you'll never know.

I also think about the matrix thing as well, as it poses some interesting questions. Is this reality all a dream? do other people exist? What happens after life?

Like SaShman, It's best to recognise that you will probably never get answers to this, and I think that you should just enjoy life as much as you can. There's no sense in worrying about things you can't influence or figure out. This is something I have only recently come to terms with, and still have slight anxiety when i chance to come across thinking about it.!
 
I've taken entire Philosophy classes based off this subject in college. It is a lot to wrap your mind around to be honest. It takes a very intellectual person to sit down and think about this stuff, and a very stupid person to look on him/her as insane.

What you know is you exist. Why? because you feel, you touch, you taste, you see and you smell. You think, so therefore you are. Is your body real though? Who knows.

The arguments of Kant vs Hume vs Descartes have been argued for centuries.

My personal opinion on this subject is very complex for those that do not understand.

I believe we are mind, but not body. We exist but we are all one. We fight like little cells trying to counteract eachother or mesh, but literally.. we can all be reduced together and formed as one being.

There is only Heaven and Hell on earth. There is a god, hince the reason for cause and effect. It might not be hebrew/christian/whatever else.. but who knows for sure.

All of our achievements are small compared to what actually could occur on this earth if we were as one, working together. (peaceful utopia)

We all have patterns, we are all conformist, and we are all the same. We exist because we believe we do, and because we "think" so therefore we are.
 
More to the point, does it matter?

There are two possible outcomes, and a subset: A) We are not real. B) We are real. ---> B1) We are real, and we are not alone. B2) We are real, and we are alone.

A) If we are not real, then nothing matters. Nothing we do matters, nothing we say matters, nothing anyone or anything does or says to us matters. The very concept of existence becomes irrelevant. Simply because, in essence, existence does not exist. Paradoxically, this is simultaneously depressing and liberating. If nothing matters, what's the point the of doing anything? At this same time, if nothing matters, then there are no repercussions to our actions. A lack of consequences precludes us (theoretically) from having any inhibitions. There are no social norms, values, or mores, because society does not exist. The next step is that it doesn't matter if we are alone in the universe or not, because the universe does not exist.

B) We are real. If we are, in fact, real, and we do exist, then our actions have consequences and we can affect change in the natural order of outcomes. If there is life "out there," then we have to decide how we interact with it.

B1) We are real, and not alone. Arguably the most intriguing discussion out there. How do we interact with the extraterrestrials? Are they hostile or friendly? Do they value the same things we do? Can we understand them linguistically/philosophically? Do they resemble humans or a humanoid form, or even resemble an animal found on earth? Do they even exist in the same dimension as we do? The interaction may be key to the survival of our species.

B2) We are real, and we are alone. This is where my thinking tends to put us. The sheer amount of coincidence and astonomical odds of the right molecules crashing together to create what would become our planet leads me to believe that the chances of it happening twice are miniscule at best. If we are real and we are alone, then we had better figure it out quickly, because we only get one chance.

But again, of all these things, does it matter whether we exist or not? If we don't exist, then it doesn't matter, because there are no consequences to our existence. If we do exist, then we have already put ourselves along the path that we are going to lead for the foreseeable future, so is it worth the wailing and gnashing of teeth?
 
To my own knowledge this might as well be one huge trip and I'm currently in a coma somewhere hooked up to a massive computer mainframe. You can't prove you exist. You can smell, touch, hear, taste, yada yada. All that is the same when you enter a mushroom educed trance. Does that mean that when you trip that hard that what you see is real?

Dimension traveling is impossible. At least coming back from the other dimension. You enter a pod. Your sent to said parallel universe. Here's the tricky part. Since the universe you just entered is parallel, they WONT have a pod for you to travel back with. Your white in your own realm, your black in theirs. Moms a genius in your realm. She's dumber then a bag of bricks in theirs. Ect ect ect.

All in all, you can't prove anything about if you exist or not. Never have been able to, never will. We will always sit here to question and ponder or entirty of existance.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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