Just earlier today, not for the first time in these few months, I wondered if anything around me was real. I wondered, whether I really was a skinny 16-year-old boy living in a nice house and going to a school that's full of idiots. What if I'm actually a lunatic, sitting in a cell in an asylum someplace far away, playing with the straps of my straitjacket. And what if there are people watching me, and I'm totally oblivious to them? Are people coming in 3 times a day to give me a bowl of water and some glucose syrup stuff?
Is anything around us real? Sure, you can say "look at this, the trees, the rocks, the idiots, the air and the water. Tell me it's not real." But really, if you look into the mind of a psychopath, you'll never be sure about what's real, and what's an illusion. How do I know, that this keyboard that I'm hitting right now, isn't just a product of my imagination? How do I know, that I'm actually communicating right now? It seems really absurd, doesn't it? But just think. It is so easy to just imagine that you're doing something. Close your eyes, imagine yourself touching a bottle. It's a smooth, glass bottle, fitting nicely in the curvature of your palm. It's somewhat cold, because it's been in an air-conditioned room for a while. If you want to be, it becomes so real that when you open your eyes, you curse yourself for getting tempted.
Still not convinced? Well how about something that we all experience, regardless of the power of our imagination. Dreams. Our night-time wanderings to places far beyond. The mind creates an illusion so real, so powerful, that we believe that it is really happening. Even when one enters a state of lucidity(when he realises that he is dreaming), it still looks, feels and just IS completely real to him. On a side note, people who can achieve lucidity are lucky bastards. The point is, that the mind is capable of producing an illusion so believable, that we can never be sure whether we're awake, or whether we're dreaming. A lunatic is simply a person who is constantly dreaming.
This is somewhat related to a rather famous(or not so famous) paradox that was thought up by some ancient Chinese dude. I mean, philosopher. He said something like this...
Ancient Chinese Philosopher Dude's Story(with missing bits filled in with my fragmented memory):
One night, I was dreaming that I was a butterfly, fluttering happily around. Or something like that. When I woke up at dawn, I saw a butterfly, not unlike the one that I had dreamt of being. Now, I wonder, can butterflies have dreams? If butterflies can have dreams, then perhaps that right now, I am a sleeping butterfly, dreaming that I am a human. Perhaps when I was "dreaming", I was actually awake, as a butterfly. Or something like that.
So, are we dreaming, or are we awake? Is this an illusion, or is this reality? Am I only thinking that I'm discussing this topic, or am I really expecting people to read this? Will I one day wake up and realise that all my time as a human, never happened? And then I would eat a deer. Because I figure that I'd be a snake. Hisss.
I could probably go on. But then I'd never stop. And then people would shoot a tranquiliser at me, put me in a straitjacket and lock me in a cell in Europe. With Batman. Yaaaay.
MindScapePlay it all the way to the end. You'll understand why I wrote this.
-Joe