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When does reality break down?
I started typing this earlier, and realized it didn't make any sense, so I decided to start over. I'll try to write it in a story-like format, to make it easier to understand.
I seem to do that a lot, don't I?
John last saw Mary at the store. She waved goodbye, and got in her car, and drove off. Later that night, John gets a call from the police. Mary had gotten in a car accident, and died.
How much of her life was real? What about the part after she left John? Nobody witnessed anything that happened to her, and she's no longer alive to relate the details. Did she cease to exist when she left John? We don't know what songs she listened to, or what thoughts were going through her head. We can make guesses, but how assured are we that we're right? She can no longer tell us that she was thinking about her upcoming promotion, or that she listened to this station for 5 mins, then flipped to another. We can suppose that everything that happened to her was real to her, but what if it wasn't? Have you ever blacked out, and lost sections of your memory? Or drifted into a lower level of conciousness, where you go about your normal activities, but everything seems surreal? I go through weeks at a time like that, sometimes. It seems like I'm watching my current experiences from behind my eyes. Are they real? I certainly hope so, but what if I'm wrong? Have you ever noticed that a 5 minute dream can last you all night? What if my "life", the "world", and my "experiences" are actually just a flash of a daydream that my real self is having, while I'm waiting on the coffee to finish brewing, or something equally mundane.
Do people stop existing when there's nobody else around? They stay in your mind, but more like memories of the past, and expectations of the future. You expect to see someone later today, but what if they don't show up. Did they ever really exist?
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