Subtle Reality

31/12/2022, 2:11 AM is four hours since I should have slept. No, I haven’t read/know psychology, I'm just a tech guy with a lot of alone time. All of these are observations of self that I want to articulate. So read it like fiction.

Ever felt nothing? Like you just hit a dead end in your brain and you are just staring into the distance (Hopefully not at a person, that would be a whole other issue altogether) and the information that your receptors are receiving about the world is not being processed by the brain?

No? Try this. Be a part of a moderate crowd, sitting on a moving vehicle (metro is my preferred transport) that is unhindered in its speed or direction. Now, look around you without actually looking. Take in your surroundings and do nothing with the information. Let your mind go still. It is at that point that the world stops making sense. It seems like everyone/everything around you doesn't actually exist unless you interact with them or make sense of them.

Who is them

More importantly, who are we? You and I? No idea. If every “them” asks this, then their answer would be? “No idea”. If you don't want to sound like a lunatic, I would suggest you answer this question as “I am what I was and what I want to be”. Now you get a picture of yourself. You trace back in your brain to the farthest memory of you and from there you see yourself becoming you, some regretful choices and some even more regretful choices.

So the logical answer to who is “I” is a combination of

You can skip this bit of text: Am I trying to sound “Intelligent/Smart/I-Know-My-Shit” by putting in a hand-written equation with a variable? No. A handwritten equation looked like something people would take seriously, hence it’s inception. I mean I am just dressing up my thoughts. I knew you wouldn’t skip this.

We are nothing but our memory and x. We will start with the different possible values of x that I can come up with and then go to the memory bit. For now, let's consider memory exists and play with x.

X = Purpose

Jeez, not this again. Yes, you have a purpose! No, you don't have a purpose!

Very confusing diagram. Let me try to explain: From your memory, you create an Individual Immaterial world/IIW, which is basically your interpretation of the “Meaning of the world”. Purpose is a bias built within this IIW which if you follow, will make you the leader of your society or the supreme being, all limelight on you, everyone knows you kind of thing, ACCORDING TO YOU. Ok, It's still confusing. I'll try to expand it further and break it down.

Skip this if you understood previous bit: For years, we have accumulated memory and in that memory we have memories of other people intertwined. It’s all a big soup (Think of it like, you make a soup, then people in your life (people you see, people you interact with, people you have heard of, etc.) come and add their soup into your soup, and this happens in permutations). From these memories, we build a world of our own which revolves around us, where we are the one ultimate being. Now we project that “one ultimate being” build in the memory world onto the real world. And how to become that “one true being” becomes the purpose.

Hope you have clarity. So it is clear that we all have a purpose right? Well yes and no. Yes, because we have a “false promise” made to ourselves that if we follow the bias we will become supreme in the material world. But since it is a bias built in IIW and is not consistent for everyone so it does not hold in the material world. It’s like saying for each individual, the sun rises in a different direction for different individuals, which is wrong. So no, we do not have a purpose as humans but yes we have a purpose as individuals. Whatever makes you happy. Literally spent an hour thinking about this.

3:34 AM. I am officially having a conversation with myself. By the definition of “conversation”, I am two or more people. Yay!

Other Values of X that I can think of that you can play with: Death, -ΔMemory, and Time.

X = 0

Going to keep this short. No diagrams. If x is nothing, then we are just memory. We just keep on accumulating memory until we die. It’s like a CCTV camera that no one watches, or like memory foam. Basically non living? Sounds like it, which means, coming back to the topic, if we remove x from the equation like we did as we went on the metro, we stop existing right? Because even a dead person has only memories, doesn't mean he exists, his soup is in others’ soups, that's it.

What if Memories were 0

This would never happen because DNA Would always exist. So if memories are kept to minimal enough to function and we don't acquire new memories then X=Purpose won’t exist because for the purpose to exist you want the memory. So we are back to not existing but only existing in others as part of their soup.

Ok, now I am lost so going to sleep. Probably won’t think more about this because it is taking me into a loop after loop after loop and then circling back to the start. Feels unnecessary. Though might think about it again if I have another sleepless night.

4:21 AM, All I wanted to say was whenever I am in the metro I get hit by existential crisis and it is reassuring to be reminded that you are a minuscule mistake in the universe, don't beat yourself up.

“I is nothing without X, even if X is ultimately nothing.” — A Sleepy guy.