Existence Failure

[kippurbird]

I think I have an existential crisis on knowing if I exist or not. I realized this last night.

I've always craved attention, which is normal, of course. Thinking about it last night though, I think I've wanted it so I know I exist. If people pay attention to me, obviously I must be there, right?

These thoughts began about a week ago when I was looking at some webcams wondering if I should get one. My mom, who was there at the time, didn't think I should. She said I should have some privacy and if I did this, I wouldn't have any left. My thought was but I have nothing private. I don't mind sharing things about my life. It doesn't bother me. Descartes' "I think there for I am" doesn't seem to apply to me.

Some more on that. I have no internal reality. What I see outside I believe exists. If something has changed - like recently with the construction here at the university a tree had been cut down - I will doubt my memory. I will wonder if I remembered seeing the tree and if the tree existed at all. After all the tree is not there, so how could it exist? How do I know my memory is correct? Memory is a fuzzy thing and subjective. There is nothing that confirms what I think is correct except the outside world. The outside world is reality. I exist as part of reality, but I don't exist inside my head.

If I'm in my room alone, I have the tree in the forest conundrum. If I'm by myself and no one is around to see me, how do I know I'm there? Really? What proof do I have? Myself isn't proof, there's just me and how do I know I'm right? Of course I believe I'm right, but I have no outside proof.

However! If more people know about me and pay attention to me then I must exist. People don't pay attention to things that aren't there. I'm reminded, perhaps to explain this better, of a story my mom told me. She said that as long as a person is remember then they're still alive. And this is why Jews name people after dead loved ones. As long as their name exists, their memory exists and they're still alive and with us.

The more people that know about me the more assurance I have that I exist. I think this is why I want to be famous, so that I have validation of my existence. If I'm in a history book somewhere then the likelihood of my existence being false is downgraded significantly. Admittedly I won't be around to see it, but if I do things that would put me in the books! Ah then I know I exist.

I have no idea if the previous made any sense or not, but this is something that I've been thinking about the past couple of days.

Comments

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because I used to think the same way. I even have a character based around this mindset, who feels she does not truly exist as a person if she doesn't surround herself with people to make her feel valiadated and that she exists. She's also very focused on being remembered.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Well it's nice to know I'm not the only one who has this issue.

[authoressarktos.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone fascinated with psychology and philosophy, you shouldn't let it bother you. The phrase 'life is what you make of it' pretty much sums it up, and the fact you debate the question in the first place means you exist.

I don't know if this helps, but after a lot of consideration, I figured that being famous and remembered by everyone isn't so important to me as being remembered by the people I care about. I'm here and I believe I exist, I have personality enough to want people to care about me and to be remembered, so I might as well have fun with this life!

Remember the matrix

[(Anonymous)]

Weell.. you have not any proof about the world existence, either. So, you probably don't exist, and me too, and everyone is a.. dunno?

Duh! I should stay away from philosophy at this hour of the evening!

Also, I remember this line from Planescape Torment, where the Nameless One made a poor sensate disappear just by convincing him he didn't exist.

Do you feel comforted yet? And if I say (with my crippled english, please laugh at me!) that if didn't exist I would find the world a smaller, sadder place?

Ah, I'm returning to my little spot of darkness in that corner, thanks for the attention.

Re: Remember the matrix

[(Anonymous)]

-edit- ... if you didn't exist...

sorry, I have a disfunction commonly named "banana fingers"

Re: Remember the matrix

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

I've never been one much for philosophy either and I really don't want to think about what if the world doesn't exist. The fact that other people say it exists is enough for me.

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

Ah, but that's the thing. The outside world is also subjective. You can doubt the existence of anything outside yourself and the only "proof" you can try to give is what you can detect with your senses. And even your senses are subject to doubt! People often see things incorrectly or which simply aren't there, whether it's because of shadows or insanity or something else.

However, the thing with the phrase "I think therefore I am" goes like this. Descartes decided to doubt EVERYTHING and only when he came to doubting himself did he have trouble. He could doubt himself all that he wanted but that still meant there was someone there to doubt his existence. He could remove everything else but he couldn't seem to remove himself from himself.

Of course, I'm paraphrasing and going off memory but Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar is a fantastic little book on philosophy (well, for people like me who need it explained in simple terms and wouldn't know where to start with the actual books written by those people.) XD

That said, I'm in a similar boat but it's not quite the same. I suppose on some level I doubt that I exist. I think we all do if we're not already famous. And perhaps even they wonder! However, my main reason for wanting to be remembered is to validate myself after my death, not during my life. To me, it makes death seem slightly less frightening. It gives me some purpose to keep on going as well.

I don't really want to deal with being famous while I'm alive because I hate being bothered and I hate dealing with large amounts of people. I work retail but I can handle that for the most part because there's always breaks and I'm ignored if the customer's aren't looking for help. If I was the center of attention, I'd go mad. I find it amusing that retail has further instilled my dichotomy of how I actually enjoy helping people, I love to be useful and to make others happy in doing so, but I HATE people because we can be so stupid, insulting, and annoying at times. And that includes me. I realize I have those failings too. XD

I'll stop rambling now. (Please note that I wasn't trying to say your opinion was wrong, btw, I was simply explaining mine.) :D

[emily-goddess.livejournal.com]

Oh lord, I can get bogged down in thoughts like that for hours. Mostly I just have to ignore them.

[torylltales.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

I really don't like when my friends start questioning their existene. The way I see it, if you are CAPABLE of questioning your existence, then you must exist. If you didn't exist, you couldn't question it.


Besides, my own personal philosophy ios so much easier to live with. "I don't care, therefore I accept." I don't care about whether something exists or not, so I accept what's in front of my eyes seeing is believing, and all that. If I can see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, hear it, choose it or question its worth, it must exist.

Further, I exist as a function of my acceptance. If I didn't exist, I wouldn't have the ability to accept or to choose or to think or feel or taste or hear or see.

Or I could take the linguistic route: I exist as a function of "I". If I didn't exist, there would be nothing for me to refer to as "I", and further I woulnd't be referring to anything at all.

[christinaathena.livejournal.com]

I kinda understand what you mean. I've only recently really began to consider my "internal reality", although I never really cared about other people's thoughts. I mean, I never had any doubts about my existence, but it wasn't a ... relevant issue. Like, I tended to see myself as just an observer.

However, If something has changed - like recently with the construction here at the university a tree had been cut down - I will doubt my memory. I grok that. I used to fear that everything would change, that I'd find myself in a sort of "alternate reality" or whatever, and have no idea what was going on. When I'd see something that didn't conform with what I expected, I'd worry that it had actually changed, rather than having misunderstood. I think that's why I prefer a messy room. There's a certain sense of continuity there. If I leave something on the floor, it'll still be there, instead of constantly being "reset". And why I loved paleontology. The idea that, even after hundreds of millions of years you could find evidence of past events was very comforting.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

If you don't exist, how can you be thinking about anything?

[(Anonymous)]

The flaw in your logic is that you have no way of proving that other people exist. Therefore, even if they pay attention to you, there is no way to prove that their attentions are not a figment of your own imagination. There is no way through extreme solipsism, which is what you seem to be talking about, to prove the existance of the self through external verification.

Yar!

[(Anonymous)]

I have the opposite problem. I love watching the world change around me, and learning the stories behind people's eyes, but I absolutely HATE it when people start paying attention to me and aknowledging me. I do everything to erase myself, from wearing plain baggy clothes to huddling down and not talking much, I've been nicknamed "the Ghost." As I see it me as myself doesn't matter. I don't care if I'm remembered, but I have created stories and characters (and so have you) that wouldn't exist without me, and I have to throw them out into the world because I don't want them to die with me. I guess it's not who I am but what I do.
I never much worried about the "do I exist?" question because all I have to do is wave my hand in front of my face. I see my hand! I'm moving it! I can see it exists, and it's a part of me, so therefore I must exist, too.

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

I sort of know what you mean. It's not that I'm not sure I don't exist without external validation, it's just that I feel as though I might as well not exist, since I'm not making an impact on anything else. It's why I never keep secrets that I don't tell to at least one or two people; if no one but myself knows, then it isn't important, and if it's worth keeping secret to me I want it to be important. Does that make any sense?