The basis of reality- beliefs and ethics

Lucid Lounge
1

I did start this in the DarkSiDe council but now that’s gone poooof I’m starting again. (YES, exempt the common belief that DarkSiDers are common, chatspeaking muppets who just long to take over the world…)

What is reality?

Could it be that reality is just a common misconception due to social and psychological conditioning and behavioural associations?

Is this world in your consciousness or mine? Do we actually have any control over our reality like we do in our dreams?

Could it be that we are all just DC’s or characters in some RP or computer generated beings and the universe is computer game…?

Please post your thoughts and beliefs…

2

i have a spoon in my mouth

when asked about zen a great master threatened the questioner with beatings

reality doesn’t need descriptions, although, social reality is descriptions only

the spoon fell out of my mouth and then i picked it back up and put it in

to see if reality is a dream, create something and demand that it come to you.

lets try only one example: i must lock my door or i will be mauled by a cougar.
is this reality, is this belief? do people that leave their doors open encounter cougars?

is there a war on cougars with cougar alert levels?

what IS a cougar

and most importantly what is a door, and who does it shut out, the outside, or YOU?

it must be understand that most people have very complicated progrrams put into them in the form of stories interwoven with fear and negative emotions to explain their irrational behavior

ask a gun owner, why own a gun? they will tell you, and say it is truth.
ask a pacifist, why be a pacifist? they will tell you, and say it is truth
ask a baby, it will say, wtf is a gun mate ?

crime? does crime exist, if you do not witness it ?

the word “I” is the source of this reality, because “I” exists we are taught that “other” exists and when other exists the world is cut in two, divided against itself infinite schisms in the fractal universe happen which cause harm to human beings

try never using the word I

if you are said say “pain” and then they will say “aww” and give you a hug don’t say YOU YOU YOU, YOU MADE ME, YOU DID THIS TO ME, I I I

what happens then?

ask Plato, there are many levels of reality, or ask the Buddhists, same thing, they all discover it, or look at the matrix

is reality just words? No. Reality BEFORE words was sanity and great peace of mind

if the sun was shining you didn’t sit worrying that “you” was going to take your bananas away, you sat and enjoyed the sun

that was it

dog zen

pure as we begin

stop thinking

3

The short answer is no…at least, I would hate to think so :tongue:

What I mean is this: take a question like yours, ‘Is reality just some sort of social construction or a result of psychological conditioning?’. It seems, to me at least, that the fact that such a question is even being asked at all is indicative of the fact that reality (or, what is real) is not at all a mere social construction or some kind of psychological condition we’re all stuck with. For if reality is ‘just a misconception’, then it can’t really be reality, can it? Rather it would only be a misconception of what is real: it might be your reality, but not the reality (as in an objective reality, which we can be pretty sure is a real thing, given all of the knowledge which science and philosophy have helped us gather thus far).

So, one could have a certain set of ideas in their mind about how the universe and everything in it works, and he or she might call that their reality. But if it’s merely a social construction, for example, then it isn’t necessarily real - this person’s reality might actually line up with the facts of what objective reality is really like, but if this person’s reality is a social construction, etc, then that would simply be a coincidence, unless that ‘construction’ is informed by facts about objective reality.

So I guess my final answer would be, there is an objective reality, but sometimes people accidentally substitute their own realities (which may or may not be in line with the facts of objective reality) in its place. But that’s alright, since objective reality probably isn’t the sort of thing a person can comprehend that easily :smile:

It could be…but how would we know? In any case, for our own purposes such a ‘game’ would be our reality (but not necessarily the reality).

Those are my thoughts :smile:

4

the objective reality is cookie dough and society are cutters

think of like this, you show someone a magazine cover, you say “look at that girl, she’s pretty ugly, right?” so automatically it puts them into very slight hypnosis, they can say " no not at all!" and then you say "well i know she is outwardly beautiful but take a look at this, and you scrutinize something about the way she is smiling and you explain “so this makes her quite ugly see” and then they are even further hypnotized, or else, say NO a lot stronger

red light / green light

top dollar watches for sale

so lets say a teenage girl is looking at those cosmo magazines and they make her feel bad, so you go up and say “look at that wretched harlot, she isn’t very pretty at all, i bet her life is miserable and she’s depressed all the time, now girls like you, i find beautiful.”

you just cookie cut her dough you know ? you can see this if you think about it while you go to sleep.

think about fundamental religious fear “that’s evil johnny, that’s evil too, this is most definitely evil johnny” whose to say who is right?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning

btw in my world humble girls that don’t look like cosmo are much more beautiful and easy to luvvv :wiske: :wiske: :wiske:

5

Thank you all for posting.

The origin of that question was originally a game a school to see how many ‘big’ words we could fit into one question and it still make ‘sense’.

I won…grins

But it did get me thinking, the whole ‘reality’ debate is one that I’ve avoided because it has just freaked me out so far. I can pretty much debate philosophically for yonks on most things but reality and ‘free will’ really freak me out. So its nice to know the thoughts and opinions of others around you…

Thanks… :smile:

6

Good thing to know I’m not alone on this one! :whew:

Very frequently I catch myself thinking about these things. And even though I feel like I’ve thought of everything I can and looked at the subject from all possible angles I can imagine, I sometimes get a new idea or line of thought that pops into my head and overwhelms me. I don’t know what I mean exactly :rofl: I guess it’s just to much for my poor little mind! :nuu:

Lucid Dreaming was the biggest discovery in my life (so far :tongue: ). It really magnified 1000 times the question “What is reality?”.

Although I love thinking about it, I have a feeling I’m not ready or capable to understand what reality is…

7

My sentiment exactly!! :nuu:

Run away!! :tongue:

8

Perhaps…but beauty is arguably a very subjective quality. I could say, “this girl is rather ugly,” and you might be inclined to disagree, and that would be fine since beauty is so subjective. But I can’t follow all the way on that hypnosis stuff - I say what I mean because it’s what i have reasoned to be accurate, not because I’m in ‘say the opposite of whatever person X says’ mode.

It’s interesting that you bring up Free Will Tundra. Say I’m in a situation like eyelids described. If we live in a completely deterministic universe (and don’t have free will), can we even help applying our ‘cookie-cutters’, if we do apply them in the first place that is? That’s the sort of stuff that gets my brain excited :content:

9

I think things like beauty and perfection are all in the eye of the beholder, anything that is considered desirable tends to be… :smile:

10

Why must things be either completley deterministic, or absolute free will? Could it be that the deterministic aspect of the objective reality is the overall theme and generalness (for their must be something common, most nearly like a law in such an objective reality, be it love, whatever, no?), while there is a free will, allowing us to fill in the details of this experience through our own decisions whilst the existence of the overall “theme” surrounds? The theme is the overall idea, the big picture,the bird’s eye view, whilst the free will is the details, the subtleties, the frog’s eye view. If solely the big picture existed, and this experience we call life, and even death did not, the big picture would be far less meaningful.

We can choose our own paths, deter from what we call destiny as far as the eye can see, but somehow, each trail/possibility/reality seems to have a knack for ending up in the same spot.

This reality is exactly what we make it. The same situation/object/event can be viewed as positive or negative, but in the end, it is still the same despite the differing perspectives. It simply is. I simply choose to view things with a positive perspective, it is so much more beautiful. why not? Each view is just as real as the other.

11

I don’t think question about what reality is makes sense. Imagine that we know, what exactly reality is, and it is something. Then there is a new question: what is this something? And there, we have a loop. That way we would never stop asking the same question. But we still can explore reality and try to understand, how it works.