Reality & Fantasy

[Badran]

For some people, such as myself, the idea of living in a fantasy is quite scary. For example, when i imagine living my life in a dream, literally, one that is extremely beautiful, compared to living a truth that is mediocre or perhaps even dreadful, i always shiver at the idea of living something that is not 'real', or not true, whether or not i'd be aware in this dream of the fact that i'm living something that is only happening in my head (i'm not sure which is more scary, but i know i'm terrified of both, and likely to be more terrified of the one where i'm not aware of it).

Why do you think that one would feel that way? Why the need for awareness of what's supposedly actually happening, regardless of it's nature, and even if another supposed superior reality (in a certain sense) is available?

I have all sorts of thoughts about this, and can see all kinds of connections, but want to hear what other people think about it. What do you think motivates this fear, this preference, this need, or whichever other word that describes your experience with it and/or thoughts about it?

 

[Copernicus]

You reject fantasy to stay alive and well. You accept it because it motivates you to survive for a better day. If all your fantasies were fulfilled, what would you have to look forward to?

 

[Badran]

To put the question more simply, consider that i'm offering a hypothetical where someone is offered a choice to live in their own dreams, which will be guaranteed beautiful dreams, or to continue living in the real world, where you're currently living a mediocre or terrible life (in terms of how fulfilled or happy you feel).

If someone is frightened by the thought of choosing and living in the dream, what do you think is behind this fear (need, preference etc...)?

Why would someone want to choose attempting to better their reality, or embrace it, as a way of dealing with it rather than living in a different version of his own of it (and this emotion being strong)?

 

[Madhuri]

Perhaps it is about control. In a fantasy, you have no real control of anything. Control is an illusion and that means anything can happen, including your worst nightmare.

Maybe it's a good thing you aren't Hindu...we kind of believe this life now is an illusion!

 

[Quintessence]

I guess I don't have this problem because I accept that everything I experience is real and exists. I don't experience every aspect of reality in the same way - so you could say there are different "planes" of existing, but it is all existing. I don't feel threatened by something supposedly "only being in my head." It's still real, as I'm still experiencing it.

 

[Kemble]

Why do you think that one would feel that way? Why the need for awareness of what's supposedly actually happening, regardless of it's nature, and even if another supposed superior reality (in a certain sense) is available?

Great question. Not fully sure, but when an experience lacks the context of being at least partly shareable with others it seems transient and it just doesn't satisfy. We've seen rampage murderers implode that have spent a good chunk of their lives in intensely private mental environments outside consensus reality, which sort of says something about the importance of keeping yourself anchored to the real world when exploring dream/fantasy environments.

I have all sorts of thoughts about this, and can see all kinds of connections, but want to hear what other people think about it. What do you think motivates this fear, this preference, this need, or whichever other word that describes your experience with it and/or thoughts about it?

I think from an important angle there is a healthy check going on to keep you sane and alive. That's my guess.

 

[Badran]

I guess I don't have this problem because I accept that everything I experience is real and exists. I don't experience every aspect of reality in the same way - so you could say there are different "planes" of existing, but it is all existing. I don't feel threatened by something supposedly "only being in my head." It's still real, as I'm still experiencing it.

I was not trying to discredit things that are only in our heads as not-existing. Rather i'm asking why someone would be disturbed by being restricted, almost restricted or depending on it for happiness. When i dream i feel pretty real and powerful emotions, and their impact sometimes lasts even after i'm awake. So i'm definitely existing when dreaming, for example.

I understand why the wording would give that impression, but i'm actually comparing between two 'versions' or aspects of existence, and trying to understand people's thought process in regards to both of them.

All that said, what you shared actually strikes me as something that can play a role into someone feeling fear or dislike towards the idea. If that is how they interpret the two things, then i can see why they'd feel that way. But i just wanted to clarify that i'm not actually proposing that in my question.

 

[Kemble]

I guess I don't have this problem because I accept that everything I experience is real and exists. I don't experience every aspect of reality in the same way - so you could say there are different "planes" of existing, but it is all existing. I don't feel threatened by something supposedly "only being in my head." It's still real, as I'm still experiencing it.

Yep. But, if you see an elephant and no one else is seeing it -- although it's real enough that you're experiencing it -- it classifies as a hallucination (i.e. private experience that no one else shares). Seems that some private experiences can impinge on objective reality in varying degrees and some just don't. Making those distinctions between your various experiences can influence whether or not you end up in the nuthouse. So maybe getting away from the real-unreal distinction and seeing things in terms of shareability on a continuum makes things easier.

 

[Penumbra]

I like fantasy as long as it's recognized as art. It's pretty interesting that we live in a world that has some aspects of darkness or dread or dullness, and yet humans create depictions of other worlds, other environments, other truths, other ways of existing that are generally grander, or magical, or more beautiful. Or alternative real-world scenarios, like dreams coming true and life being better than it is currently judged to be, and that sort of thing.

I like to draw characters and write stories, and sometimes the experience can be kind of immersive. I think one of the things that drew me into learning about religion and spirituality at a fairly young age is that in some religions, things can be depicted as pretty nice. Beautiful other worlds, higher beings, greater joys, compared to this world.

But I wouldn't particularly desire to live in a world that isn't real, even if it feels better. Although, in the religion I was raised with, it's all an illusion anyway. So even though I no longer believe that, it still kind of rubbed off on me and I view life as a game, or as a movie that I'm watching, rather than real. Especially because even the real world goes through so many filters before we're cognizant of it- tiny portions of it get converted into information and then it passes through our brains that have evolved to organize it, even if that organization isn't necessarily objectively true but rather just allows us to function.

Why do you think that one would feel that way? Why the need for awareness of what's supposedly actually happening, regardless of it's nature, and even if another supposed superior reality (in a certain sense) is available?

Eudaimonia, basically.

The sapience of humans desires more than just subjective joys and pleasures, and wants truth.

 

[Caladan]

It's interesting to examine that some religions and philosophies declared this world to be a dream and an illusion and that the Truth lies behind the world as we perceive it. So people have been pondering escapism for aeons now.
The Gnostic philosophy has become very popular in film. In movies like Inception (and of course The Matrix trilogy) the protagonists obsessively fight to reveal the truth behind deceptive layers of reality.
I love Gnostic themes, and especially writers like PKD, which might be why I believe I'm pretty much like you Badran. The real world holds much more intensity for me in a sense. Not in light of mediocrity or banality. But because a perfect world would have no spice or danger.

Out of curiosity, what kind of fantasies are you thinking about? I see you are talking about a beautiful reality, but anything specific?

 

[Secret Chief]

Someone has been watching The Matrix....

 

[Desert Snake]

Someone has been watching The Matrix....

I thought of the Matrix too.

 

[Caladan]

Someone has been watching The Matrix....

I thought of the Matrix too.

Does it render this discussion useless?
Furthermore, I pity the people who never read any fantasy books or who are oblivious to fantasy concepts outside the world of Hollywood. The Matrix is inspired by decades of film and literature which explore such concepts.
The scene in Matrix in which Cypher says he prefers eating a juicy steak and live in a false reality and in ignorant bliss Vs. living in a real world of pain is good material for forum discussions.

 

[Desert Snake]

Does it render this discussion useless?
Furthermore, I pity the people who never read any fantasy books or who are oblivious to fantasy concepts outside the world of Hollywood. The Matrix is inspired by decades of film and literature which explore such concepts.
The scene in Matrix in which Cypher says he prefers eating a juicy steak and live in a false reality and in ignorant bliss Vs. living in a real world of pain is good material for forum discussions.

Agreed, in fact the OP is different in that the "reality" would actually be the reality that we would know/percieve

 

[Badran]

It's interesting to examine that some religions and philosophies declared this world to be a dream and an illusion and that the Truth lies behind the world as we perceive it. So people have been pondering escapism for aeons now.
The Gnostic philosophy has become very popular in film. In movies like Inception (and of course The Matrix trilogy) the protagonists obsessively fight to reveal the truth behind deceptive layers of reality.
I love Gnostic themes, and especially writers like PKD, which might be why I believe I'm pretty much like you Badran. The real world holds much more intensity for me in a sense. Not in light of mediocrity or banality. But because a perfect world would have no spice or danger.

Out of curiosity, what kind of fantasies are you thinking about? I see you are talking about a beautiful reality, but anything specific?

For a major part, it's the same reality but with modifications in regards to purpose. Some of the ideas proposed by religions are attractive to me, and they give a nice sense to things, for example. Some are more helpful to feel a sense of justice in things, at least from my perspective of it. This is not to say that religious ideas are fantasies, just that since i don't personally believe them, embracing them to me would be like embracing a fantasy in the sense that i'm embracing something i don't think is actually true. For a smaller part, the modifications can be related to our abilities or attributes.

I can relate a lot to your description of reality as intense. I like that aspect a lot about life, and that might be one of the factors as to why i'd always rather stick to this reality. On the other hand though i can also see merit in some alternatives. When making this thread, i was thinking about an idea i read here once, among other things, of people experiencing what they think is going to happen to them after death. That is, the idea as i understood it proposed that everyone experiences something different when they die, depending on their minds or their subjective experience, and i always wondered whether or not i'd like that.

I concluded that i'd rather we all experience the same reality, with our differing 'touch' to it (very much like how things are now) whatever that reality is, rather than the option of everyone experiencing something completely different and separated from others, even if it's more beautiful to each. This assuming of course that there would be anything to experience.

Of course a lot of this is affected by my experience and relation to this life. It seems that sharing experience with others, being part of the same thing and living it together is pretty important to me. I sometimes feel that it's the most important aspect of our lives. The idea of separation, or of a wall between me and others seems dreadful to me. It's part of why i quite fear death.

 

[Badran]

Someone has been watching The Matrix....

Let me step into the fantasy world for a minute and assume that you're interested in knowing my thoughts when starting this thread. They were partially religious related thoughts - consideration of some propositions and possible scenarios - partially thoughts about death and what follows, and finally the one touch from Hollywood was actually a scene from the movie Inception.

It was the scene were a lot of people were sleeping and dreaming in a place which provided that as a service. Where it was said that they spend many hours a day there to live in the dream world.

 

[Iti oj]

what is real? how do you verify it is real? whats more real then what you sense and experience?

even reality is an illusion created by our physical bodies.

 

[Badran]

what is real? how do you verify it is real? whats more real then what you sense and experience?

even reality is an illusion created by our physical bodies.

As i tried to explain earlier i'm not trying to discredit certain experiences as 'unreal' or get into the issue of what we label those differing experiences. Rather comparing between two states of experiencing.

Do you agree that there are differences between the dream world and the world when you're awake, for example?

If you do, consider those differences to be the topic here.

 

[Quagmire]

To put the question more simply, consider that i'm offering a hypothetical where someone is offered a choice to live in their own dreams, which will be guaranteed beautiful dreams, or to continue living in the real world, where you're currently living a mediocre or terrible life (in terms of how fulfilled or happy you feel).

If someone is frightened by the thought of choosing and living in the dream, what do you think is behind this fear (need, preference etc...)?

I would guess it's rooted in the inherent isolation of a dream reality. I think that in order for experiece to be fullfilling in any way it has to at least have the potential of being a shared experience.

Or to put it another way, communication between minds is essentail for any reality to have meaning, even if the meduim itself is illusory: like the material world according to Hinduism (or the internet. ).

I think that in the same way that it takes two eyes to turn a flat, 2 demonsional reality into a more "real" 3 demonsional one, it takes two minds experiencing the same reality in order to give the experience meaning, even if they're interpreting the experience differently.

 

[Copernicus]

There is a sense in which we all do live in a dream world. Over half a century ago, the predominate view of psychologists was that we somehow directly perceived the world from sense data delivered by the peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system (i.e. the brain). That was a passive model of perception. However, it was impossible to ignore the fact that perception was really active. That is, we perceive reality by actively matching expectations against incoming sense data. The brain builds models of reality and tests those models against data that it gets from the peripheral system. Optical illusions are phenomena that best demonstrate the active nature of perceptions. The way we interpret the same visual image can change or 'flip', depending on how your mind interprets the data. Reality does not exist independently of the mind. It depends on how the mind interprets with the senses. To put it in more general terms, reality is an idealization of what actually exists. We all live in a virtual reality generated by the mind.