Sorry I’m depressed af and need answers. Are y’all even real? What if y’all are just part of the program to torture me? What if this is a test? What if this is a VR simulation and the societal collapse is just moral character test to see if I would be do anything about it? Like imaginr a society in the far future like 26th century and in a history class where people are wondering “why didn’t the 21st century humans rise up against their oppressors” and then this VR simulation is just testing the students “what would you have done”
(Sorry for the bizzare question, its just brain chemicals acting weird today :P)
I can’t believe you figured it out.
You can’t technically truly prove any of these not to be true, but given that if you reject all the evidence available to you for what the world is with the notion that it could be fake, you end up with nothing left to make decisions with, you might as well just take the world at face value until things are proven otherwise.
That’s what people refer to when they say “it is what it is”.
There’s no way to break out of it if it is, so don’t get caught up thinking about it too hard. It’s better to live life as if it isn’t.
When shit gets bad in my life I feel like this sometimes. The movie I Saw the TV Glow really fucked me up. I don’t think I can watch it again until I’m in a much better place and much happier about the state of the world. It just hit too close to home on too many of my anxieties. Like, obviously I didn’t think the movie was going to make me kill myself or something, but it really scared me how close it felt to that. It is so tempting to believe there is an escape hatch. To get out of the nightmare. But there isn’t. Looking for one is only going to bring you grief.
Pursue your joy. Focus on what you’re thankful for.
First existential crisis? Don’t worry, they get easier after a few. The answer is simple once you learn how to embrace it: it doesn’t matter. Real, fake, it’s completely irrelevant. Go get high, play Halo, get some ice cream, and let somebody who gets paid to think about this stuff deal with it.
First?
Oh no lolol.
Its like my 10th
You’ll get better at it
Either way, the answer is that we don’t know. We don’t know if we are real, we don’t know if you or I are real, we could all be part of a simulation, we could be an AI that some student built which is wandering in a virtual space.
Hell, we could be a Bolzman brain for all we know.
So it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is just be nice to those around you. Assume they’re all real and alive and can feel hurt, can feel pain, can feel scared, just like you.
Just be nice to everyone else, try to leave each space a little better than it was when you arrive there. Do that with life and whatever is real, you’d be awesome at it
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If you have no way of discerning what’s “real” or not, just play the game and try to enjoy it as much as you can without disrupting others’ enjoyment.
It’s just a ride
Maybe that’s just what THEY want you to think/j
It unironically might be! But if I can’t do anything about it either way, I’m okay with it.
Yeah me too lol, it is what it is
Exactly, carpe them diems, we’ve got few enough to waste them worrying about stuff we can’t fix.
With regard to the possibility that life is an elaborate trap or test, this (slightly long) extract from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, might be a helpful perspective especially the bit I’ve made italic. I hope so, and I hope you feel better soon 👍
Ford and Arthur continued their journey through the wood. A few hundred yards past the clearing they suddenly came upon a small pile of fruit lying in their path-berries that looked remarkably like raspberries and blackberries, and pulpy, green skinned fruit that looked remarkably like pears.
So far they had steered clear of the fruit and berries they had seen, though the trees and bushed were laden with them.
“Look at it this way,” Ford Prefect had said, “fruit and berries on strange planets either make you live or make you die. Therefore the point at which to start toying with them is when you’re going to die if you don’t. That way you stay ahead. The secret of healthy hitch-hiking is to eat junk food.”
They looked at the pile that lay in their path with suspicion. It looked so good it made them almost dizzy with hunger.
“Look at it this way,” said Ford, “er…”
“Yes?” said Arthur.
“I’m trying to think of a way of looking at it which means we get to eat it,” said Ford.
The leaf-dappled sun gleamed on the pulp skins of the things which looked like pears. The things which looked like raspberries and strawberries were fatter and riper than any Arthur had ever seen, even in ice cream commercials.
“Why don’t we eat them and think about it afterwards?” he said.
“Maybe that’s what they want us to do.”
“Alright, look at it this way…”
“Sounds good so far.”
“It’s there for us to eat. Either it’s good or it’s bad, either they want to feed us or to poison us. If it’s poisonous and we don’t eat it they’ll just attack us some other way. If we don’t eat, we lose out either way.”
“I like the way you’re thinking,” said Ford, “Now eat one.”
Hesitantly, Arthur picked up one of those things that looked like pears.
“I always thought that about the Garden of Eden story,” said Ford.
“Eh?”
“Garden of Eden. Tree. Apple. That bit, remember?”
“Yes of course I do.”
“Your God person puts an apple tree in the middle of a garden and says do what you like guys, oh, but don’t eat the apple. Surprise surprise, they eat it and he leaps out from behind a bush shouting ‘Gotcha’. It wouldn’t have made any difference if they hadn’t eaten it.”
“Why not?”
“Because if you’re dealing with somebody who has the sort of mentality which likes leaving hats on the pavement with bricks under them you know perfectly well they won’t give up. They’ll get you in the end.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Never mind, eat the fruit.”
“You know, this place almost looks like the Garden of Eden.”
“Eat the fruit.”
“Sounds quite like it too.”
Arthur took a bite from the thing which looked like a pear.
“It’s a pear,” he said.
In the big picture and when you realize the vast universe that surrounds us and how short of time we’ve been on earth, we are just a spec in time and none of us are important. Just live your life and try to be kind to others while you’re here. I find comfort in knowing we are all the same and we are nothing.
We are important. We are special. The most important thing in your life is how you make others feel. If you can give yourself someone, then you should.
Nothing else is important. Nothing else matters. All we are is dust in the wind.
@DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works, turn off Lemmy Now! The mission is a failure!
I hear it’s amazing when the famous purple stuffed worm in flap-jaw space with the tuning fork does a raw blink on Harry-curry Rock. I need scissors! 61!
It may very well all be fake and you’re living in a simulation.
That doesn’t matter though. It doesn’t change anything. That simulation is all you’ve got so you either play along or you end it for yourself. The only thing that is undeniable is consciousness - the fact of experience. That it feels like something to be. Any story about your existence that you add on top of that is just thinking. It’s appereances in consciousness.
Are y’all even real?
Upvote this man!
The Truman show is one of my all time favorite movies and sound tracks
It is impossible to prove that it is the case that everything is fake and it is impossible that it isn’t. Lots of things like this we cannot know for sure. However, you parents being real, society being real etc is a less complex explanation than everything being a VR simulation. If you do not have additional information, then the less complex explanation often is the most likely. So, if you assume reality is not a simulation, you are more likely to be right.
Pretty much what everyone else is saying as far as it can’t really be proven. Everything you experience is your brains interpretation of the stimuli it received from outside the body.
One of the few ways I rationalize it for myself is: there’s no fucking way at all that I am the “main character.” I’m the most pathetic, least important thing to have ever disgraced this earth with his existence. I’m not in a simulation that is centered around me, that universe would be absolutely insane.
Except that your evaluation of yourself only holds under the framework of ideals provided to you from childhood by your environment. If you are in a simulation, you have no possible insight into what is considered good or interesting outside the simulation.
True, but if someone has determined I’m interesting enough to waste resources on then I fear for their job stability. Someone’s getting fired lol
I think I’m slightly above you on the simulation leaderboard.
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I think you would enjoy the concept of solipsism. We’re all just thinking computers driving around skeletons with flesh armor. Maybe our flesh mechs are part of the simulation too.
I struggled with a lot of this myself until I stumbled on Taoism. It teaches that you can only interact with one moment. Now. The future and the past are an illusion that can easily slow you down.
Trying to understand the why will ultimately lead to no answers. A big part of this challenge was the idea of identity. There is no ‘you’. Everything you think of as ‘you’ is ultimately ‘dead’.
We assume all the living things around us have souls and perspective and feeling and life, but this is only perception from us. It’s a trust of our senses. But that’s all they can be. Senses.
When you describe who you are, you might tell someone what you do for work, your hobbies, where you grew up, your favorite pets, flavor of ice cream, and what terrifies you and makes you cry… But none of things are you.
Existence is only the moment through which you can perceive. It is right now. The choices you make in this immediate moment are the only thing you can be. Planning to do something tomorrow or wishing you did something different in the past is not you and never was or will be you.
The person in the past that made all those mistakes or successes is gone and that person that might fail at something risky doesn’t exist either. Only you can make choices and changes and it’s a responsibility to act accordingly.
This is something you can do for yourself at any time, in any place, at any moment. Take a moment in the place you’re in right now to stop for several minutes. Just do nothing. Observe the room you’re in. Listen to the sounds around you. Smell and feel the place you’re in. Let it wash over you with its infinite detail and complexity.
This is always there, available to you. It is a power known as mindfulness. If you are able to accept it, and make active choices to pursue it, you will find the world is filled with magic. Even in the worst places.
If you want a really good video that gives you a bit more of a grounded explanation, see Kurzgesagt’s video on Optimistic Nihilism. Waking Life is another recommendation along with Everything, Everywhere, All At Once.
