Uncertainty: The world is a dream, and your memories are only generated as you remember them
We're walking along the street in my hometown, and I pull some meat pies out from my backpack and hand one to Dan. As he's eating it, a memory forms in my head. I remember that, for some reason, I ejaculated on that pie. "Oh no," I think. "I've read about perverts doing stuff like that. Now I'm one of those perverts!" Then I consider it a litle deeper. When did I have time to jizz on the pie? I didn't have time to do that, between now and the time we left Dan's house - which makes it likely that I never did it. It was a false memory. I'd remembered something that had never happened
Soon afterward, I woke up.
Dream memories
When we're in a dream, we can remember many things. The dream starts in a certain place, and we have the feeling that we've been there for a while, and if we look at a thing or a person, we get a sense of what we know about them. We assume that those things point to something that happened in the past, and they are rarely as so unusual to lead us to think that they are false. Yet, when we wake up, we say that they are false, entirely false, as false as the dream stiuations we were in.
The characters' backstories
You start writing a story, and jump straight into the middle of the action without introducing the characters. Do the characters need to have backstories at that point, or do the backstories only appear when they are necessary to the story?
Our backstories
We all assume our lives have a consistency, that reality is constant, that when we wake up everything will be as we left it, and when we wake up everything was as it was left. Yet, there's no guarantee of that, and there's nothing we can do to prove that it's so.
You can look around your room and give everything a backstory, or remember the story of how that thing arrived in your room - but is it really being remembered? Or is it just being generated? Being filled in, coloured in as necessary to give your mind the impression of a constant reality. Just as in your dreams, just as a writer lays out a novel.
For some of us, it's an uncomfortable thought to think that nothing is permanent, that perhaps we could wake up an emperor or a pauper like the story from 1001 Nights - to think that we're all floating in a sea of possibility with no firm ground in sight. For that reason, many will reject what I've written here, and many will refuse to understand the ideas I've explained, to wonder about the implications, and even tell me "There is no debate." At least, that's what my memories tell me people have done before.
Some people run from uncertainty. I embrace it. Uncertainty is possibility; uncertainty is magic.
About me
My name is Kurt Robinson. I grew up in Australia, but now I live in Guadalajara, Jalisco. I write interesting things about voluntaryism, futurism, science fiction, travelling Latin America, and psychedelics. Remember to press follow so you can stay up to date with all the cool shit I post, and follow our podcast where we talk about crazy ideas for open-minded people, here: @paradise-paradox, and like us on Facebook here - The Paradise Paradox
Some other cool posts
Here are some other posts of mine to check out:
Skeptic meets ghost: a skeptic's experience with the supernatural (podcast/video)
I forgot to put in the final thought, which is the most important.
Identity
People identify with their life situation, their possessions, the people they know, the way they dress. But if you woke up in a different situation, with different things and different people and different clothes, would you still be you? What does it mean to be you, after everything is stripped away? Who are you?
I have actually given this a lot of thought. I have always had certain dreams where I go "back" to certain places and situations and I always "know" where I am and what I'm doing inside the dream. I remember facts that can only be possible inside a certain dream. The backstories are certainly present. So I sometimes wonder which moments are the "real" ones.
Very cool. Does that mean that certain dream worlds that you visit have their own laws?
Yes they do! For example, I always go back to a dream where I am in a certain building (I know my way around it in the dream) and the elevators go up, down, and sideways. It doesn't seem odd to me in the dream. I also have a recurring dream where I'm being chased. And I KNOW that I can fly away if I jump off someplace high enough. Again, it just seems natural inside the dream.
Have you got a hidden fantasy about pastry lol
Well, I haven't watched American Pie lately. It was probably just from something someone told me about a teacher giving his students tainted cookies.
Our dreams can come across as very worrying at times lol
Yes, it's not exactly one I'm particularly proud of, except for the part where I noticed the false memory.
Sometimes my dreams are so lifelike it messes with my real memories
Just as plausible as memories pre-existing, I think. But what about those times when you can't remember something? Looking around the room right now, I can't remember putting most of the things I see in their current positions, though I know I must have. So what determines when a memory is generated or not?
If a memory is generated now, and I recall that memory tomorrow, is it being generated for the first time?
If you believe in the idea that only the present moment exists, then past and future exist in this present moment, as memory and imagination. They converge at this point we call now, and generate our present experience. Instead of thinking of ourselves as moving along a predetermined line from past to future, we can imagine ourselves at a stationary moment. The possibilities of the future and past both flow into this moment simultaneously, generating our present experience. Things that we pay attention to in the present become memories that shape our understanding of the present, or clearer visions of our future.
Something like that.