It's interesting how timeless certain thoughts are. Jung once claimed that we have a collective unconscious, where the members of a certain species share a collection of personal experiences in similar ways. He described it as "a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals." While I am unsure whether or not there actually is a collective unconscious, whether or not we do all share some universal nature, it's interesting to consider the fact that we do. Look at philosophers over time. In Plato's Allegory of the Cave, men are chained to and facing a cave wall. They live their whole lives thinking that the shadows coming from the fire behind them are reality, that this is the only truth. Yet, it is only after they break the chains and walk out of the cave that they can see what reality truly is. The same idea is illustrated in the theory of the brain in a vat. In The Matrix, people live their every day lives in what they know as reality, however reality is really them being harvested by machines which simulate reality for them. Again, it's when they are able to break the barriers of their false reality that they will be able to see what reality really is. This causes questions of one's consciousness and reality to arise. In Daniel Dennett's short story, "Where Am I?" the narrator undergoes a surgery that disconnects his brain from his body, but still allows him to function. The narrator then questions where his consciousness lies, in his brain or his body. He spends a significant amount of the story bouncing between the two, until his brain is cloned and he has to decide which brain is his true self.
So what is the self? How can we know where are conscious lies? Where is our consciousness, who is our consciousness? How do we know if we are chained to a cave wall, living an illusion? Or being fed an alternate reality by machines? The reality is that we cannot know either thing. I believe that our consciousness and our selves are what we make them. In existentialism, philosophical thinking depends on the experiences of the individual. We will never know whether or not there is a God or some greater force, such as machines stimulating what we believe to be reality. Instead we have to make the conscious decision to believe in one or not. The narrator in Dennett's story struggles to decide whether his brain or his body is his self and his consciousness. In my opinion, Dennett's narrator is more aware of this classic struggle: mind, body, or spirit; than most others. The narrator has the ability to consciously decide what he wants to believe, because there is no way to ever know.
So where does that leave us? Am I the philosopher walking out of the cave, seeing the world for the first time? Has anything thing changed? Yes and no. I am consciously aware of my abilities as a single human being. I can make my own reality. I can choose what I want to believe. But can there be another reality I am unaware of? Yes. Because I would have been born into it and programmed to lack that awareness. All I can know is that my conscious mind exists. It's possible that my body isn't even real.
The real question is: will I try my best to wake up from an alternate reality if that's the case? Yes. I would take the red pill if given the chance.
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