Dreams, Metaphysics, Cats, Tanzania

It's shocking how real dreams feel. I mean really shocking. I had a dream last night that felt like it took place over several hours, and the whole time I thought it was real life. It felt exactly like real life. Every sight, touch, and emotion felt completely authentic, even if the surrounding circumstances were completely dream-like and ridiculous. But suddenly, I woke up and was genuinely startled to realize I was only dreaming.

The fact that our brains can create realities that are so vivid but completely imagined is a little scary. Even before the movie existed, I've pondered more than once whether we really do live in The Matrix – not that we're all human batteries being cultivated by a race of robots, but whether I'm just a brain (maybe not even a brain) in a jar somewhere, with an artificial reality being pumped into me. Maybe the people I think are all around me don't even exist. Maybe it's just me and the mad scientist controlling my reality, and that's all there is in the universe. Maybe nothing in my world exists outside of my direct experience – like a messed up metaphysical Schrödinger's Cat experiment. When my officemate walks out the door, and the sounds of his footsteps fade away, how do I know he doesn't just disappear to save processing power in the computer that's feeding my brain? How do I know that the evening news is even real, and that Tanzania even exists? I've never seen Tanzania, have you? Oh, you have? How do I know that's not just a pre-programmed memory? How do I know you are a real person, and not a character written into my world to convince me that my world is real because you've been to Tanzania?

I know I'm opening up like seventeen different cans of worms here: conspiracy theories, metaphysics, physics, religion, philosophy, etc., but I don't really believe all that stuff. It's just bizarre to imagine. It squeezes the juice out of my mind grapes.

While I'm on the subject of mind-bending metaphysics, have you ever imagined what it would be like to completely cease to exist? I mean not just think about it in an abstract sense – really try to imagine it. It's not just poof, the world is gone, and you're floating in blackness. It's poof, you're gone. You don't remember your life, you don't have anymore thoughts. The End. Stop reading this for fifteen seconds, and try to imagine it. Scary, huh? I don't know how atheists can stomach the thought of death. If I didn't believe in eternal life, I'd have to believe in reincarnation. Living then dying and ceasing to exist is far too pointless for me to embrace.

Well, that was way deeper than what I originally intended. Oops. Here, this should help.