(quoting myself)

You have way too much imagination? That’s like having way too much intelligence.

Vis Imaginativa

Science - what ever happened to the experimentation of mind and reality through first-person exploration with the power of imagination? Where is the hope in an all-objective method when reality can only be perceived subjectively?

Theory as Art and as Escape (1)

Sometimes people don’t seem to understand why/how there is so much for me to think about. It’s like, once you’ve drawn a conclusion - which I seem to have (i.e., there is no objective truth in anything at all, and reality IS exactly what you perceive through belief subjectively) - what’s the point of continuing with all this theorizing of reality? What’s the point of theory if it’s just that? Where does it ever get you?

Well, I think I have two answers to these questions that aren’t really related: 1. It’s not as if I’m after some sort of answer (as I’ve mentioned over and over again), I just like becoming immersed in the process of it, thought. The product is always secondary if of any importance at all. It’s like art. 2. It’s not as if I can’t see reality in the “normal” not bewildered state that most people seem to see it, it’s kind of like a search for any possible reason at all to live in a reality, to morph my reality to something that is completely detached from “ordinary unquestioning perception”. It’s like a vessel, like an escape. From whatever reasons, I cannot stay put in “reality”.

I will elaborate:

1. I think I have come to believe that philosophy in the academic sense is terribly boring and rather meaningless. I cannot read “philosophy”* even though I guess you would classify what I write as philosophy wouldn’t you? Maybe I should just give it a different name. I’ll just call it theory. Theorizing. I am a theorist. That is what I’ll say I do.

I would like to speak of philosophy as a medium and compare it with a set of watercolors. Academic philosophy is like when you focus on all the techniques of painting and try to figure out and argue which techniques are better and which will allow you to paint the best picture of the universe and such. Theorizing (what I’m calling it) would be like just painting freely and losing it and not caring, just going with it for the sake of it just because the process is so incredibly captivating, and then ending up with some sort of picture of the universe that happens to be amazing anyways. Yes, you see the clear bias from my words, but I’m not arguing that academic philosophy is objectively meaningless. I don’t want to argue or “prove” anything. That has no point to me. It’s just my view on art. I do not think the former use of watercolors is what art is, and to me theory is an art where the medium is reality itself.

I think a great many people paint for the sake of perfection of skill and satisfaction in the production of a precise painting, but I don’t think that is what artists do. It seems strange to go and ask an experienced artist “Why do you paint?” “What is the point of continuing with painting if you already have such skill and have decided which techniques are your preferred?” “Where does painting ever get you?” So why should you ask me the same questions when reality is my set of paints? Don’t you understand the point of painting at all? Haven’t you ever painted anything yourself? Do you not know/can you not relate to what it feels like to paint?

I fear I have already presented myself as a terrible romanticist, but it pains me to think about how much the world (of artists) is missing out on the unbelievably extraordinary medium of reality. Talk of creativity - paints, pencils, music, words, whatever, those are just media, as is reality. But what is reality? With what could you possibly create with more freedom, more space for vision, more enchantment, wonder, than with the manipulation of reality itself?! How could anyone not realize!?

And then you would probably say, “What do you mean “manipulation” of reality? You can’t just change reality the way you create whatever you want on paper when you paint with watercolors.” But you would be missing the point! You can manipulate reality though! That’s what you do all the time! And I am NOT talking about it as if it were some sort of figurative thing. It is absolutely LITERAL!!*** (also see: reality the strange loop) You change reality into exactly what you (at the present moment) believe it is**. That is your creation. It is your work of art, just like everything else.

And how could I not be constantly addicted to this most inordinately immense field of freely floating imagination? Where would you possibly find more room for imagination than in the state of reality itself? This is infuriating! It’s like the most enjoyably possible explosion of my brain and my mind. It’s like, “Ughhhhhhhhhh, I can’t! All I can do is stare..”

But anyhow, this is why I don’t especially enjoy reading academic philosophy, academic “reality”. It’s like painters and painters painting so many paintings and for the primary purpose of presenting their painting as THE painting of the universe. That is absurd. It’s a painting. We enjoy its distinct aesthetic profoundly, but not nearly its attempt at persuasion. There is no “best” painting. The act of “comparison” based on subjective perceptions is bizarre. There are only paintings, all marvelous, magnificent, magical, each and every single one. That is why you keep on looking, living more paintings. Why would you just stop at one?

//Part 2 to be continued…//

*Most if not all of it angers/infuriates me. I cannot handle the restricted/narrow-mindedness of it. Can’t you at least leave your human mind behind first before you start floating in theory?

**This is why the inverted spectrum applied to perception of present moment time create a whole convoluted “mess” of overlapping realities assuming that other minds do exist, and other “realities” of all different natures would exist at the same instances in time (in space?). How? What?

***But of course - this is my universe, and this is what I believe. (And yes, of course it’s circular? What isn’t? What’s wrong with circularity? What’s not wrong about being non-circular?)

Real and Imaginary People

Just because something is imaginary does not mean that it does not exist. It would seem absurd to say that thoughts do not exist even though we clearly experience them. Perhaps more surprisingly however, just because something is real does not mean that it exists either.*

People, grown-ups in particular, have lived in and experienced reality the way they have for so long that they forget, or don’t even understand how to question and interpret through questioning what they experience anymore. General consensus of belief makes this even more difficult.

Let’s say the people who we perceive in real life every day - friends, family, strangers on the street - we can all agree that they are “real”, that is, they “exist”. And now lets say I decide to create certain “imaginary” people in my mind, that I know are not “real”, but that I know exist because I can think about them. In both cases, I can attempt to communicate my thoughts with them and also receive responses, but in the real case, I hear a response concretely through sound waves, through my ears, and in the imaginary case, I hear a response through the form of “my thoughts”.

“My thoughts”. What does this mean? Yes, any lay person could simply dismiss all of this as ridiculous because I have obviously “made up” in my mind all of the responses from my imaginary people that I have created, and they are not the ones that are communicating with me; I am communicating with myself, they don’t exist. Sure, but what really is a “thought”? Yes, I perceive it through my head. Yes, it seems so be associated with intention, and I seem to be the underlying reason why they are appearing, but how do I know that? I perceive them, but how do I know that I’m not also just perceiving intention as well? That there is actually no underlying causal relationship between what I perceive as “intention” and what I perceive as a “thought”? So there is indeed no way of knowing whether these responses that I get from my imaginary people are from the imaginary people who do exist, or I “made them up”.

Now, there is a more fundamental difference between real and imaginary people that does not have to do with whether I can physically perceive them and their behavior or form of communication, and that is their own underlying intentions and thoughts. We perceive the behavior of real people, but we do not perceive their thoughts. We believe we may know what their thoughts and intentions are, but we do not and cannot perceive that.

But - it seems like we do and can perceive the thoughts and intensions of our imaginary people. We perceive their consciousness directly from the inside as if it were part of our own. It most certainly “exists” - we may not know how exactly it exists, but we know it does because we can directly perceive it, rather than just infer it. Well, shouldn’t this make the consciousness of imaginary people be more “real” than “real” people? And yet not at all - this is exactly what makes them imaginary. That is, you can only be “real” when you don’t directly perceive it. And when you do directly perceive it, you somehow… are no longer “real”.

So, which do I choose to be the “real”? Which one is really the “imaginary”? Obviously there is no answer because there is no “truth”, there is just what I believe in - again and again it’s the same answer, it’s so obvious, just because of the nature of unfalsifiable things… But how am I supposed to know what to believe? Well, I wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t know, again. I’d be worried if I knew, wouldn’t I? Yes, Indeed.

It is 5:08 am again, and I can never find myself living in the reality that “everyone else” does.

*We could go into the definition of existence and raise books and books of arguments, but they would only be arguments based on definition and language, devoid of actual meaning, so I don’t want to go into that.

Imaginary People

They’re here and there and everywhere! No one ever believes they’re imaginary, because of course imaginary people aren’t going to believe that they’re not real - or maybe they do, they’ve known all along, they just act like they don’t for some reason. You look out the window, into the streets, in the classrooms, in the dining halls, and they are always there. Everyone sees them, but no one (no one? anyone? who? how?) knows who is real and who is not, who is alive, who is dead, who has died, who has not. They’re everywhere, and they seem to think they’re real. But I guess it doesn’t really matter what it seems like though, does it? The only thing that really matters is what I believe, what I’m able to believe, what I want to or would like to believe, for one thing. But what can I really believe?







Displaying again my Lights in the Rain photo dress from the Present Collection of •SPACE SHEEP• (collections inspired by the nature of time) by elliy.