LastThursday

Never mind the looks. What does she feel like?

Thanks @Natasha Tori Maru I should add, that when I wrote "emotional dysregulation" I only meant for this to be something to be aware of. Pathologising bad behaviour can be a dangerous thing to do, because in the the worse case it can be used to diminish and not take seriously someone's needs, which is not the basis of a good relationship. There are always genuine reasons behind someone's behaviour and in 99% of cases it's not pathological or a mental health issue. This is a decent video on the subject of non-violent communication:

No. This makes perfect sense. But the conclusion is not necessarily true. People are suprisingly bad at predicting the future. My prediction is that we will switch energy sources to fusion and that will ramp up. But it will come too late (it probably already is), and climate change will force huge upheavals in how we live. But what those will be is entirely unknown. The video is totally correct in saying that everything is dependent on energy and that currently comes from oil. The industrial revolution has produced two things in abundance: CO2 and plastic, and both things are choking the planet.

No. There's a wide spectrum of good relationships out there for you. You shouldn't. It would seem either like emotional dysregulation, or unconscious power play manipulation. I wouldn't advocate tit-for-tat, but I would advocate confronting the bad behaviour. Either, therapy is needed for emotional dyregulation, or the behaviour needs to be directly challenged every time it happens. This gives the signal that its unacceptable to you. You can do this by asking cool and level headed questions about what they are feeling and thinking and their reasons for it. And what they would like you to do about it. Just listen. However, it is acceptable if you yourself have behaved badly, so the first thing to do is ask yourself: did I do wrong, and is their reaction justified? If so, then you will need to change your behaviour first.

Doesn't the knower know it exists?

Yes but that is a different sort of existence. You can't eat the theory relativity. Logic will not bring an apple into existence. Logic has to be converted into direct perception by doing. In fact, logic is grounded in sensory perception, that's where it comes from, that's where the intelligence is.

There are different types of existence. There is the existence of the inside of your room, the stuff you can directly perceive. Call it direct existence. You know that if you look outside your room, something will exist there. There is never non-existence. But until you look you can't know exactly what will be there. Call this unknown existence. You can build a model in your head about what might be there and trust that model, but whatever, it is not direct existence. If you hear a noise from outside your room, then that is direct existence, but it's not the full experience of the outside of the room. There is a sliding scale between unknown existence and direct experience.

I'm going to be annoying. When doesn't water boil at 100C? I think all objectivity is a slippery thing, there's always exceptions. I wonder if there is any objective thing that doesn't have exceptions? All objectivity is based on a finite number of prior examples, but something truly objective would require 100% certainty. Most objective stuff is constructed in the mind from repeated patterns we directly perceive in subjective awareness.

@Someone here direct experience is not arbitrary. If it was it would be complete unknowable chaos. It has a coherence, a structure, rules, ways of being, intelligence, unity. This is aside from any constructed entitities we hold in our mind's eye. And all our constructions fundamentally originate from direct experience, even if they're shared by others.

This is entirely correct. Our direct experience is the final arbiter of truth. But, our interpretation of that direct experience can still mislead us. And our interpretation depends on what we already know.

This aligns with 17. There is only ever rendering and nothing else. You can infer a real solid apple from the rendering, but that inference is a construct. Ultimately because there is a difference between the two, a difference in quality. If both renderings were extremely similar, you would confuse imagination for reality. Imagination are those renderings which are different in quality from reality. The system is self-sorting. Any renderings which don't conform to the usual rules are labelled as "imagination". This is just a rendering confirming another rendering. Take the analogy of a movie. All the characters agree on what's going on and behave as such. However you really know that a director set things up to make things look this way and so that everything aligned smoothly. The agreement on reality was contrived. Now I wouldn't say there's a director behind the scenes of reality. It could just be sheer dumb luck. Imagine rolling sixes a million times in a row. It doesn't seem possible, but it is not impossible. Renderings are correlated to each other through sheer dumb luck. I look at a green apple (rendering) and my friend (rendering) reports (rendering) a green apple. Three renderings align perfectly, like rolling sixes. What are the chances that your whole life all these renderings have magically correlated with each other? Non zero. The other way to look at the uncanny correlations between renderings is to imagine a pie. If you cut the pie with a knife, you're not suddenly surprised that the pieces fit together perfectly, it is obvious. And it's the same with renderings, you're just not aware of how the knife cut the pie, or where the cuts are exactly.

I'd just verify it from first principles. Here would be my example thinking on it (this is not necessarily my view don't argue with me over it): 1. If Solipsism is true, then it should hold all the time and all circumstances. 2. It shouldn't matter if I'm high on drugs or sober, it should still hold. 3. I'm aware that there is existence. 4. Is there anything I'm aware of that doesn't exist (in the broadest sense)? No. 5. Then everything I'm aware of exists. Does the converse hold? 6. Yes, because I can only truly know something exists if I'm aware of it. Anything else is conjecture and construction. 7. What do I mean by aware? That I'm having a direct sensation of it in the moment, right now. 8. Does a thing exist when I stop having a direct awareness of it? Yes, but only as a construction in the mind. 9. Do other people have awareness of existence? 10. Do other people exist? Yes. 11. Am I directly aware of their awareness? No I don't think so. I only seem to have awareness from "my" viewpoint. It's possible my idea of other people having awareness is a pure construction in my mind. 12. Aren't other people the same as me? I have arms and legs and need to eat and sleep just like them. If I'm aware, surely they're aware too. Can I prove it? No. Because I only have their body language and what they tell me to go on, and that is second hand knowledge, and possibly unreliable or untrue. Secondly second hand knowledge is in no way the same thing as direct awareness, the map is not the territory. 13. What is fundamentally stopping my awareness being "transferred" to someone else? Is it a fundamental limitation? 14. Many options for solving 13 are apparent. Perhaps, "my" awareness is completly incompatible with "their" awareness, so I can't "see" theirs. Maybe there is only one awareness and it is split into many disconnected compartments. Maybe there is only one awareness full stop. Maybe my awareness is a patchwork of very many different awarenesses, that fight for attention, and we all share them. But we each have a different makeup of awarenesses. 15. Is awareness here more fundamental than the stuff in awareness? Yes, because for existence to be true only awareness can confirm it, it doesn't matter what is being made aware of. 16. Ah, so awareness is more fundamental than materiality (content of awareness)? Yes. So materiality comes from awareness, not the other way round. 17. If everything must come through awareness, then everything is awareness and there is nothing outside of it. Then everything that exists is in awareness: yes. If it isn't in awareness it doesn't exist: yes. 18. When I say awareness do I also mean consciousness? Absolutely, I'd use the two words interchangeably in this context. 19. But surely in 17, stuff doesn't just pop out of existence and back again that's ridiculous. Yes, but what is my direct experience telling me? Exactly that. But then, where does stuff go when it is not in awareness? Nowhere, it is out of awareness, it doesn't exist. How does it come back then? There is a difference between awareness itself and the content of awareness. There's absolutely nothing stopping the content doing what it likes. 20. Surely materiality must be true, because the same stuff comes in and out of awareness all the time? Yes, it's true in that sense, because it explains the content of awareness well, but materiality doesn't explain awareness itself. 21. Isn't the content of awareness the same as awareness itself? Yes you could argue that. I have no answer to that way of seeing things. But if it's true then every single thing in existence has the quality of awareness attached to it. The question is, are each of those awarenesses the same? No because if the content is awareness, then each bit of content is different. But isn't there an overarching awareness? Yes and no, you could argue both ways. 22. Surely Solipsism requires an "I" to be aware off stuff. Yes, yes it does. 23. Do "I" exist? Yes I am aware of myself. Am I a construct or do I exist absolutely? That is the crux of Solipsism. If I am a construct then Solipsism is hogwash. If not, and I can disprove the existence of other awarenesses, then Solipsism is absolute and True (but see 12).

Make it simple. Make a promise to yourself not to stay in your hostel room, except for sleeping, that's it.

I thought I would talk about emotional pain. I feel lucky to have only experienced long and lasting emotional pain a handful of times in my life. That may seem like schadenfreude, but I've got eyes and ears enough to know that people have experienced immense and intense pains in their lives, and that mine are insignificant in comparison. I'm talking about the sort of pain that never really leaves you, despite the constant erosion of it by time and by reason and by experience. All my pains are about separation from people I loved and who I felt safe with and supported by, and who at the time didn't think they would let me be separated from them. The strongest pains linger from childhood. But I've written about all of them in one form or another in this journal, so I'll keep it brief-ish. Really I'm writing this so I stop hiding from the pain and stop pretending it doesn't hurt me. And, to remind myself to keep myself honest. My father leaving my mother all those decades ago has created a strong sense of being untethered deep in my soul. I see families and wished that that was me, and yet I'm unable to form my own new family and bring myself closure. Whatever was damaged then, is still haunting me now. When I had various therapies, it was worked out that I felt unlovable. I think all that bad stuff that other people heaped on me over time convinced me of this, but not consciously. And, even though I now know it consciously, and I know I'm loved through reason, my heart is still unloved. I was betrayed by my parents, both of them selfish in their own particular ways. I've written about my first girlfriend on here, and how painful that split was. We were 17 and 16, so young. I was effectively adopted by her family of two sisters and a brother. And, for a while I had a family I would spend more time with than my own. Even after the split her dad took me out for my first drink in a pub at 18. John made a better father than my own did. He gave me a job and I earned good money. They fed me and let me sleep there, when they could have easily said: go home. But, I never did see E much from then on. I went to university and saw her one more time, but not since. I've met her brother, nearly once every ten years since, but he isn't in contact with her. Even now I dream of her and her family still. Their kindness and down-to-earth approach to life is still deep in my psyche. When university ended I felt cast adrift again. I had all the trappings of adulthood, a girlfriend, a decent job, and a degree. But university was the first place where I really felt I belonged. I was and am still an intellectual type and I was surrounded by people that were as smart if not smarter, and definitely harder working than me. At first it was hard to face not being the smartest guy around, but I soon learned to love being with people who were also smart. I really felt I belonged for the first time in my life, and didn't feel out of place or disconnected. And it was just so much goddam fun and freeing. I felt loved. But, I knew it would come to an end, and it would come soon enough. At first I just felt relieved at not having to study bloody engineering any more, but as time passed I felt that wrench. I knew that something truly special had finished and would never return. I still feel that pain of having had something I loved and having to let it pass out of my hands. My most recent pain I've written a post: What was the hardest choice in your life? At least this choice was in my hands. But I knew even before I had even uttered the words "I don't love you", that this was a major shift about to happen. I didn't know what it was, but I knew that it would be hard. I tried to hold on to my friends and my life as I had it. In fact that girlfriend was the one I had throughout university. Over the course of more than ten years, we'd built everything up together, and I knew deep down that holding it together after us breaking up wasn't going to be possible. I had another girlfriend and another three years, but the writing was on the wall, and when I split from her, I realised my friends hadn't been there for me all that time and they weren't there for me then either. They were fairweather friends. But I still feel the pain of separation from that life I built up and from them.

The hardest decision I made was to be honest about a long term relationship I was in. My whole life was set up around being with this person and for the longest time I resisted facing up to the fact I no longer loved her. And then one day it happened, she asked me, and I said the words. She found a new partner, I found a new partner, but my boat had sailed, and I had to go and reinvent myself, find new friends and a new life, whilst she stayed ashore.