Solipsism (are you the only sentient person?)
Before I was able to name it I was fascinated by solipsism, the belief that your consciousness is the only one that you can know to exist. Throughout first grade I was able to further convince myself that I was the only sentient person. Let's just say it wasn't my best year and that it ended with me annoying my mother to such a sadistic degree that after months of reassuring me she finally broke. In an unnerving robotic voice she unflinchingly stated, "I am not your mother." This confirmed in my tiny, deranged head that I indeed was the only truly aware being in a world filled with robot monsters, including my mother.
Since my little episode I have improved in my understanding and interactions with solipsism. There are many compelling stories that can be woven around solipsism; A Sims like reality that could be used as a sort of isolating purgatory for criminals, a tool to teach future young people about the dangers of the old world, or perhaps to allow the conscious person to relive someone else life which is only filled with the memories of other people.
These are fun shower thoughts, or topics of conversation, but I have never fully believed in any one solipsism based idea. This is because solipsism makes one fundamental assumption; your own consciousness exists. The root of my obsession with solipsism is that I never felt assured of my own consciousness. How could other people exist when I can't even be sure I exist?
I have always had trouble rising past this Descartes state of mind. This fundamental doubt could make everything harder if you let it. Much more so than solipsism, which still leaves you yourself. It’s irrational to get out of bed, to talk to a friend, to put on clothes, to exist, or even to breathe when this feels no more concrete than a particularly memorable fever dream. Furthermore, by going along with all of it, by acting like you aren’t having extremely debilitating internal crisis, it feels like living a lie. A lie that few will understand and those that do understand will find you to be incurably stupid for believing such a thing.
I have always had a big imagination. I thought my imagination would deteriorate as I aged, but it still remains. This combined with my strong spiritual connections make it hard to have both feet on the ground. It’s a good day if I have one foot planted. I spend a lot of my time elsewhere, where things seem to be more eternal. It is hard to take this environment seriously, or to take yourself seriously, when you see how small and changeable it really is. The repercussions here are minute.
A few months ago I made a YouTube video about my thoughts on solipsism (now on DTube). Since then I have sort of progressed (or regressed). Recently, I was listening to a book on tape. Sorry literary purists. The author was speaking of how everything you touch, smell, taste, hear, and see is all trapped inside of you. Everything you will ever perceive will be in your head. This is elementary, literally. Yet, for whatever reason, in that moment it hit me hard. Since then, I have had a hot, heart palpitating, feeling that I am trapped within myself. Everything that I will ever do, every thought that I will ever think will all be stained with me. Even when I am outside of myself I am still very much still with myself. This also taints my experiences outside of this reality, now they too feel of me. I believe, or hope rather, that as I relax and stop dragging myself everywhere I go it will be as it once was.
The disturbing reality of this is that many people always feel this way, I am guessing. It only made me panic, because it was one of the first times where I felt alone in myself, unconnected. I felt much more assured that my consciousness was ‘real,’ but it made it much harder to experience the perfect forms of the self. If I am right, and this is what existence is like for some people, it makes it much easier to understand how so many get caught in the mundanity of life. I wouldn’t trade the nagging doubting of my consciousness, the Descartesness, for living with both feet on the ground.
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