<p>When you think about High School, what do you see? In your mind's eye, you see a large building, a flagpole, and the masses of children. Look closer.
You see faces, correct? The preppy blonde who is talking to the attractive jock, the Brony who is talking with his pack of other Bronies, and the average kid striving to become a better person than s/he thinks is possible. If we look into the minds of these children we are viewing an entirely new world. Inside this world we see hopes, desires, faults, fears, a multitude of complex feelings that anyone else, besides the human we are looking at, could never figure out. If we looked even deeper we could distinguish what the hopes and dreams are of the preppy blonde, the fears of the Bronies, and every fault of the jock.
If we step back from this subject enough to look at the person as a whole, what do we see now? Now that there is an insight into these people's psyches, do they appear to be the same person? Now that we know the greatest fear of the blonde is to be alone for the rest of her life, that the jock wants to come out to his parents, that the Brony doesn't actually enjoy My Little Pony or that the average student doesn't want to be stuck in the mediocrity of his life, but doesn't know if he can be any better than how he is now.
Have you ever thought this person has dealt with these kinds of issues? That they only existed for you to judge, for you to enjoy, for you to ridicule. Did you ever think that perhaps the other person has it worse than you? The fa</p>
<p>When I think about high school, I see both hopes and worries.</p>
<p>Do we really fear discovery? Do we dread prescience? Do we feel naked when our psyche, our inner working, our motivation, is exposed? The real question is: has anyone looked far enough? Long enough? Hard enough? </p>
<p>Has anyone genuinely attempted to plumb someone’s depths? Or are we guiled by Facebook and Twitter? How can one reduce his life into a few dozen boxes of text? How fully can one convey herself with a dearth of both characters and attention spans? There is so much more that molds who we are than a fanciful list of events. Multiply these by a thousand. A thousand boxes of meaningless autobiography. A thousand boxes of status updates. A thousand lists of events. Divide your attention by a thousand. Utterly inundated, we do not form ich du relationships but rather ich es “relationships.” Superficial. Fake. Meaningless. How many peoples’ birthdays do we remember? Oh, that’s right, we don’t have to remember any; we’ll be reminded to leave a perfunctory note, a few exclamation marks, and the obligatory colon and parentheses on the right days. To transcend this, in my opinion, is to show that you genuinely care about or like the person (:. </p>
<p>I digress. Enough innuendo about my personal exploits. Again, we cannot define ourselves; instead, we are defined by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Circumscribed. Reduced. We are not a mere bundle of fancifully chosen events; instead, we are the sum of all our experiences. </p>
<p>The question ultimately is: do we purposely don this mask? Or is this mask a mere haze, a distortion, that disappears as does a mirage when one approaches? I agree with your point that we are not always who we seem to be. But that is because we should not judge a book by its cover.</p>
<p>My dad does not look like a mouse.</p>
<p>So what did you guys get on your AP Psychology exam?</p>
<p>^ obviously 5s lol</p>
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<p>I never took AP Psych. Nor do I plan to take AP Psych.</p>
<p>I think that one both chooses to don the mask and that who one is is distorted by perspective. It’s a combination. No one wants to fully lay themselves bare, because it makes them vulnerable. At the same time, what the person does reveal about himself or herself is distorted by the perspective of the watcher, because the watcher defines others (and mostly everything experienced) in terms of his or her own life.</p>
<p>Perhaps we are afraid to present ourselves fully to everyone. But by far the bigger problem is the lack of receptive audiences. Divulging one’s psyche or inner secrets, as referred to on another thread, requires considerable investment of both attention and emotion. The magnitude and span of attention must both be great. Emotion, too, because one must genuinely care about the other party, to even invest the amount the attention required. Today, however, we sacrifice quality for quantity - depth for breadth - and instead of having a few close friends, we have numerous acquaintances whom we (mis)categorize as friends.</p>
<p>I do not think that one can be so unequivocal about vulnerability. Most likely have little problem laying themselves bare to intimates, even if doing so makes them vulnerable. Trust is antecedent to vulnerability. To make oneself vulnerable conveys a level of trust in the other party. By conveying this trust, one can advance the relationship. </p>
<p>I’ll concede that not everyone can be trusted. So, understandably, not everyone wants to make themselves vulnerable. Key, however, is that there often is that “one-in-a-million” who can be trusted. In these situations, one may be more than willing to lay himself bare, as to indirectly convey trust, and thereby advance the relationship.</p>
<p>Unless one is a solipsist…then everything is your inner psyche and thus everything becomes vulnerable for your analysis</p>
<p>Solipsists hold that only one’s mind exists. If one is a solipsist, there can be no analysis of others’ psyches - their very existence is doubtful. I’m not sure what you mean by “everything is your inner psyche and thus everything becomes vulnerable for your analysis.”</p>
<p>What I meant was that if you’re a solipsist, then since your consciousness/mind is the only thing which exists, then everything is just a fabrication of your own mind. If everything is a fabrication of your own mind, other people are just a fabrication, you are them, you know what they know, “their” pysches are just different manifestations of yours. There is no need for others to be vulnerable in order for you to understand them because it’s all a part of your own consciousness anyways. I don’t know, it’s 2 am and I’m not very lucid.</p>
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<p>Chortle. Heh heh.</p>
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<p>This is all wrong. It isn’t scary to present yourself fully to anyone, unless you’re not proud of who you are (which I suppose is possible). </p>
<p>The problem is that not everything you’ve ever done or thought is interesting. </p>
<p>I’d be bored during the full telling of my life, beginning to end. I don’t expect a receptive audience for something in which even I am not interested. I have more important things to say.</p>
<p>I refuted that position in the following sentence, lol :p. </p>
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<p>Only my mind exists. My body does not necessarily exist. Neither do other people. They are perhaps all just fabrications of my mind. Then shouldn’t I be completely aware of others’ secrets if I created them? </p>
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<p>I find the solipsist’s angle interesting because it holds that we can only be sure of the existence of our own minds; everything else could just be a fabrication. </p>
<p>But if that were true, why then, do we create these fabrications? Why did I create her, and he, and you? Why did I make her so mean as to reject me? Why did I create him so successful as to dwarf my accomplishments? Why did I create you to read my disjointed prose? Because we have to keep ourselves entertained. Boredom is the greatest malady. We desperately feed ourselves with things to do, things to worry about, and things to think about in our limited spans of existence on this planet. I created her as to keep things interesting. If everything were too easy, we’d be bored. I created him so I’d be motivated to pursue higher goals and causes; so I’d be motivated to keep on fighting for the greater thing. I created you so I wouldn’t feel lonely, with all these thoughts bottled up. I created you as a cathartic pressure release valve; these thoughts are suffocating, but fortunately, I have you.</p>
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<p>The sentences are not contradictory. They’re tied quite directly together. It reads: “This is a problem. However, this other thing is a bigger problem.” I disagree with the existence of the first problem. Incidentally, I agree with the factual statement that predicates the second problem, but I don’t think it’s problematic: if you are too scared to share yourself fully (or too wise), or if you are not at all scared to share yourself fully, the receptive audience problem is a non-issue. There still exists no compulsion to share, and there do exist reasons not to, and there do exist better things to do with one’s time. </p>
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<p>I wish people good luck having a mind without a heart-powered brain. Personally, I find it quite difficult. </p>
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<p>I’ve always wondered.</p>
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<p>Why, then, would you not create more people to interact directly with you? Have there been no times when you were bored?</p>
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<p>That’s just silly. Why would pseudoaccomplishment in your own dreamscape be, in any way, a “higher” goal or cause or purpose. You’re making it all up. None of the science you learn or the awards you win are real. Perhaps they are a part of this solipsistic nightmare you seem to be having, but don’t delude yourself into thinking there’s anything important about them. It is only in a pragmatic, realistic philosophy that any worldly accomplishments may be imbued with higher meaning. If everything is fake, then so is your satisfaction, your purpose, your goals. </p>
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<p>How flattering. Thanks bunches. I wouldn’t want to be anything but your cathartic pressure release valve. </p>
<p>It seems like you have a very complete and non-objectifying view of the people with whom you interact.</p>
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You took his/her argument too literally. Not to mention that the concept of a brain needing to be powered by a heart is one that is grounded in this “reality” (the solipsistic illusion), but need not exist in a “true” “reality.”</p>
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Sarcastic remarks might be fun to write, and might add a nice, useless rhetorical flourish to one’s writing, but they don’t really add anything to any sort of discussion</p>
<p>I, however, seriously dislike the “everyone is a manifestation of my own mind” line of reasoning, and instead prefer the brain-in-a-vat line of reasoning (like the Matrix), in which we only experience “other people” through sensations delivered to our brain by electrical impulse.
<a href=“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat[/url]”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat</a></p>
<p>However, even though the solipsistic line of thought makes for an interesting reading, it is ultimately a line of thought utterly devoid of any utility.
Reality might be “reality,” it might not. But if it is not, how are we to logically confirm such a concept? The solipsistic line of thought is flawed because it attempts to answer the unanswerable; you are trying to conjure up answers to questions with no discoverable answers - no matter how “deep” the answers might sound, you have no way of confirming their veracity.</p>
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<p>Oh, that sucks… I get to have all this fun, and you’re stuck being the grumpy conversation moderator. I can see why you’d be upset. Live a little, throw in a few sarcastic remarks — I won’t mind. </p>
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<p>Clearly the simplest explanation. I am confused, however. Do people have brains, or don’t they? </p>
<p>Also, of what utility is it to place a bunch of brains in vats? I can think of much more useful and interesting things to do with my time, and I’m not even a computational demigod!</p>
<p>lol wow.</p>
<p>I want my brain vat to to be filled with cherry soda, cerebral fluid, ample oxygen, and yeah, whatever other minutiae a brain requires.</p>