Artificial Stress

Last night, I had many bizarre dreams. One of which was somewhat of a combination of my current college and my past high school. Many occurrences took place in this dream, but I distinctly remember the one I am about to share, for I dreampt it right before waking up.

I was nearly done with finals, I just had one more to go, and for some reason, I was really stressing out about it. Then I remembered, there was no reason to stress, it was just my english final, with mr stenberg (I took english with Mr. Stenberg as a junior in high school). IT was then that I had realized, of course, I hadn't gone to mr stenberg's class all quarter, of course, (because it doesnt exist where I go to school...duh). Nonetheless, I go to the final, and sit down with some friends. Stenberg looks the same as he always has, but for some strange reason he has a thick east european accent; he can't pronounce anything the way I remember him being able to in the past.

As I enter the room, he is harping at us about how nobody came to his review sessions, let alone, his classes. I look at one chalkboard, and see a huge list words under a category titled "Illiteral", In addition to these words, there are many complex puzzles and diagrams, all of which I had little to no understanding. On the other board, there were many words under the category of "irrational" which I did not understand either. I thought to myself: "well, here goes, I'm really going to fail this one"
and I began kicking myself for not attending class. Stenberg said "im sure you are all very scared for this final, well, I taught 42 empty classes, so...so am I!"

that is where the dream ended.

Looking back on the dream, I see it as a message to myself. A message telilng me that I stress myself out over the smallest, most unnecessary things. In this case, I am on spring break, and have nothing to stress over, so my mind created this dream, and I woke up stressed as hell!

It is very clear to me now that the feeling of stress is entirely separate from a huge workload, a struggling relationship, or anything like that. Stress has its own entity, and I believe it can be avoided in nearly every circumstance. As we see in my dream, my reasoning for stress was completely fallacious, my dream was a shitty situation, but for that stress to carry over to real life when I awoke, was complete nonsense. And somehow, I think it is no coincidence that the words on the chalkboards were "illiteral" and "irrational," for they were a description of my thoughts at the time.

So uhh, there you have it.

[end]

huh

Well, theres a blank text box looking back at me. The cursor flashes, urging me to write. Lets see, for the last day or three, I lived life freely, ideally. Sixty seven you're close to heaven your crew still reppin but im like losing my train of thought here god dai thought up a whole lecture for the last twenty or soe iinutes when we played stupid whateveritscalled god dan i cant remember the name for the life of me. wow. wow. wow. shit. i am so sleepy at present I just closed my eyes so while i write this my head is likely somewhere else in dreamland. tell me that ainta trip


END?!??@?

Brain in a Vat

Throughout the past week, lectures, articales, descartes, and films have all tried to bring to light to me that for all I know, I may very well not be anything more than a brain in a vat. There is no us to deny this because there is no way for us to hold the knowedge that we are not in fact, a brain in a vat. This is extremely frustrating, with all this talk of dystopias (see 1984, brave new world), it makes SENSE that I would be some sort of experiment, does it not? Today I read a paper with a possible objection to this argument which presents us with the harsh condition that we have no means of proving we are not brains in vats. Meaning that, our insensitivity to the idea of being brains in vats because "CLEARLY, I AM REAL, I SEE MY HANDS! IM REAL!", that insensitivity does not imply independence, meaning, in proving that we are not brains in vats, there is not necessarily a need for independence of our proof that we are not such, from our past experience, as reasoning.

Sure, thats really dense and you probably dont know (and trust me, you probably dont want to know) what I am talking about. (Although I have recently thought that the more uncomfortable a thought makes me, the more necessary it becomes for me to think about it, within reason, of course, as Leo Tolstoy can attest*).

But what really troubles me about all this--this "not knowing if im not this, or not that" thing is that---

by that same reasoning, I could broaden that perspective even more to say

How do I know i am not dreaming? How do I know that every concept I have ever learned even exists in reality? How does ANYONE know what reality is? What is reality? What is a brain? What is a vat?

What if there is a whole species of aliens who have some crazy complex way of dreaming that brings others temporarily into existence for merely the purpose of their dream---these people are real, have feelings, etc, but exist only because of an aliens dream?

How can one argue that wihtout appealing to past experience?

What I am getting from any of this is that it does not really matter in the end, because as David Hume concluded, (with his problem of induction---read it, im certainly not gonna try and explain it...) by nature, we will eventually just think "OH WELL" and go back to our daily lives.

Or commit suicide....

Anyways its time to get back to my reading...


^^WOW DID YOU SEE THAT?! I JUST EXEMPLIFIED MYSELF!


Well, Hope you get my point. If you do, Please let me know.







* Tolstoy thought too much about the meaning of life and became very depressed, even suicidal. He concluded that to think about those questions was a setup for depression, as well as a dead end. Maybe he's just lazy and negative...but who am I to judge?!

[end]