legolas

ever since the movie i've been wondering. was that movie made for me? was this message board made so i could share my paranoid tendencies? were other people put here with that movie so i could "relate" to someone else with the paranoia after seeing it?
i mean it's not that serious... or is it...

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"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

Redlemon

Back when I was in elementary school, I often wondered how I could prove that the world wasn't created around me. For instance, perhaps the town next to me doesn't exist, because I'm never going to visit it. Or what if I unexpectedly take this side street? Were they expecting me to take that street? What if they didn't build it out yet?

EDIT: I didn't actually believe this, it was more of a Gedankenexperiment.

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the_marq

Ever since I was a little kid I have belived that I was somehow more unique than everyone else. In that there was something horribly different about me, like a massive speech inpediment or I have a bizarrly shaped head.

But no one ever mentioned it to me, because my parents had talked everyone into treating me as "normal." Kind of like the way you never say to a mentally retarded person, "Hey, so you're retarded huh?" I still flash on it from time to time as I get older, but now it's my girlfriend who has conviced the entire city of Calgary to treat me like everyone else.




On a more philisophical level, I still do belive that I am the only sentient being in the universe. Everyone and everything else is just a construct created by some Overseer to entertain and test me. Even you.

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#3 in a series

Zeraph

Same thing here! I've never full on believed it, but occationally I look at other people and wonder. The difference with mine is that in some way I'm a deviant in the "real" world and this is a matrix like reality (minus the domineering machines) for a psychological experiement. Or that this is what a futuristic prison is like (you don't even know youre in it, so no need to worry about break outs) and that I'm some incredibly dangerous criminal in the "real" world.


Ya, sure, that's what a construct of my reality would say

Stiltzkin

Sorry to disappoint you pal, but I'm the only sentient being

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The most important thing in this world is love.

TexanAvenger

I dunno... The past few years have had the distinct feeling of having been "shaped" ... More than just growing up, it's like I'm being pushed in a certain direction...

But for all I know, that's the way it feels to everyone... I've only been around for 19 years, what do I know?

Miss Ina

I've never been very solipsistic--whenever someone has suggested that maybe the world was entirely a construction of my mind, I couldn't help wondering why my mind wouldn't have constructed it to be really awesome.

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The word "time" split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.
—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

Min

IF my life is a "Truman Show", mine would be the dark comedy on the t.v. line up. "Hey, everyone, watch this show. Better than the insanity of Jerry Springer. There's intelligence but nothing she does turns out right, but then, the producers, they let a few surprises slip in and things work out. It's called 'Murphy's Law: A Life'"

It would explain so very many things.

d*d

It's not only paranoid but slightly ego-centric, "the world has been created for ME"
to create such an illusion would require systems far in advance of anything currently available, if it is the case that you are in a truman style world you have to ask yourself what makes you so special as to receive this treatment, no offence intended I'm sure you have interesting lives and all that. Also if you are under the impression that people around you are pretending to treat you as everyone elsem, again think of the huge amount of orchestration involved also human nature would dictate that someone would tell you simply because they had been told not to.

...of course I could be saying this as a calming measure because you are so close to understanding the true structure of what constitutes your reality, and I'm afraid that just can't be allowed to happen

cellophanedeity

Thankyou! My thought's exactly! "If I'm the only one out there, why on earth did I create you?"

But yah, when I was little my best friend and I played a game where I was the star of my own TV show. I think I had myself mostly convinced. I would monologue and everything. I was one crazy little chick.

asudevil83

i think EVERYONE at some time in their lives wonders about the same exact thing.

wocidej

Wouldn't it be wierd if everyone could read your mind and communicate telepathicly, but they never taught you to do it and are all playing a joke on you?

sillygirl

Instead of wondering if the world was put here to amuse YOU, what if YOU were put here as entertainment instead?

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Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly-Rose Franken
....absence makes me miss him more...

d3cemberist

After I saw the movie, I did for a few days. I got over it after a few days though. Great movie, by the way.

Bagezio2

I had the same exact feeling growing up. But, I imagine almost everyone else has a similar one in some point in their lives, because for most people, the most important person is themselves. But man was it great, for me, it wasn't so much that the world was "The Truman Show," it was more like everything was my dream, and i would wake up and everything i did that was wrong, or that I got in trouble for, i would do the opposite. Instead of choosing option A I would choose option B, that sort of thing.

legolas

interesting responses. too bad they were all put here by the producer to try to make me think even less of it. =P

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"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems."

balderdash111

This is a classic philosophical question: how can you prove that the world exists? How can you prove that you exist?

My particular childhood version involved time: I just sat down. How do I know I was ever standing up?

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A little silliness now and then is cherished by the wisest men. -- Willy Wonka

thalakos315

my favorite always involved something i learned in jr high. and then twisted via my perverse imagination :P


supposedly we don't really see objects, we see the light they reflect. like plant reflects green light and absorbs the rest. so if we're seeing the light it reflects.. what color is it really? every color but green? white? clear?
so sight is all one big lie, as we aren't really seeing the object itself.
if nothing reflected any light what so ever, we wouldn't be able to percieve the difference between one thing, or the next, and would be running into walls constantly :P

NoSoupForYou

i too shared this feeling, especially after smoking a weed i am always thinking about that crazy stuff when i am high...ive thought the truman effect to be true man times but hey why would it be...im not that special..or am i ?

Miss Ina

Some responses:I would say solipsism is classic in that it's one of the simplest philosophical concepts to consider. I'm really sorry I sound patronizing here—it's just that whenever someone says that I'm reminded of the pseudointellectuals in my classes who loved such questions because they are so tedious to argue against.Can you really think of things in terms of colour then, though? If light is the only thing with which we can distinguish colour, we're not able to imagine what something looks like (as in how it would appear to our eyes) behind the reflection of light, let alone call them by the same names that we use to distinguish between the wavelengths of reflected light.

To say sight is a big lie because we aren't really seeing the object as it really is just doesn't ... you just can't use the same words that you use for sight when you're talking about a lack of sight, y'know? Sight is all about light. Our notion of sight as we know it comes from the fact that light reflects from everything, and eyes are naturally designed to absorb images in the only way they can be absorbed in this world—by relaying and interpreting those combinations of light to our brain. We'd have to consider some sort of non-light-based sense to replace ours. Though I guess if we didn't have light we'd have to come up with a completely different source of the planet's life, too, or just die.

... But that's not really related to the topic anymore. My apologies. Hooray for digressions.

__________________
The word "time" split its husk; poured its riches over him; and from his lips fell like shells, like shavings from a plane, without his making them, hard, white, imperishable words, and flew to attach themselves to their places in an ode to Time; an immortal ode to Time.
—Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway

Rhuwen

After watching the movie I questioned it myself. To this day I still talk to the bathroom mirror like there's someone there. Yeah, I'm crazy.

balderdash111

That brings up another oldie but goodie: how do I know that you and I perceive green the same way? "Green" is the word we use to describe the color our brain associates with certain wavelenghts of light. How do I know that, when you imagine the color "green" you aren't picturing something I would call "blue"?

Do you see the world as covered in aquamarine grass, with lovely azure skies?

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A little silliness now and then is cherished by the wisest men. -- Willy Wonka

flamingdog

Quite strange you should mention this. This guy believes he is God, Truman Burbank and a future presidential candidate (he's going to run with Bill Gates as his partner in 2008, so he says, though they've never met.) This guy's a lunatic.

http://mytrumanshow.com/

This is taking solipsism to whole new realms.

MSD

Although it would invalidate my lack of belief in a supreme being, it would also be entirely unsurprising.

Zeraph

That's also on my list of paranoid fantasies. Hey... how did you get ahold of my list?

Zeraph

Meh, I always talk to myself like someones there...but then I am there so..
Basically I believe that our minds are divided into parts and can be communicated to through verbal language, kinda like self-hypnotism. So far no actual voices replying though but I can hope

Zeraph

Oh and another thing I just thought of, how can you know you've even lived your life? What if you were JUST created this second and all your memories are fake?

biznatch

Yeah, I often was paranoid of that when i was a kid. I was like, really freaked out by that kind of idea because they would have known my deepest secrets as a child..(and when you're a kid you think those secrets are beyond deep)