I want to love someone that would love me back but I can’t do that with solipsism. I can’t make friends with solipsism. Even therapy didn’t work because we can’t really shake it.

The one thing I can think of is if he did prove it on Quora, why post it on a forum or thread answering a question? It doesn’t make sense because if you do prove it there’s no one to prove it too. But posting it means you want others to see it so you’d be invalidating it if you shared it right?

I…didn’t understand a word of it.

I can’t do that and I tried counseling but it didn’t work at all.

I can’t treat it like a dream or a lucid dream. That would just make it worse. Nothing could be worse knowing you’re alone and everyone around you is hollow.

it is entirely solipsism. Especially that post on that day that “proved it true”.

I could let it go as a maybe yes or no if not for that post. But I can’t remember it or find it.

No. It’s followed me every day. Something just felt unreal ever since I read about it. I’ve turned to so much but nothing has been working.

That’s why I’m seriously hinging on it being unprovable because then I can let go of what that poster said.

I don’t want to keep “playing pretend” with everything and everyone around me. It’s too mentally taxing. I play video games but I can’t keep escaping into them all the time.

What is it about solipsism that affects you? — Tom Storm

Being cosmically alone (potentially). That all I love and care for isn’t real because they’re just mental projections. It’s scary. I can imagine hugging my dogs or future husband tightly and begging and pleasing inside my head for them to be real. It’s that horrible for me.

It’s why I ask if it’s unprovable because that at least makes it better, a little. It just become a matter of belief.

Until one day I was on Quora and thought someone ended up proving solipsism true. But I can’t remember what they said or if it was true but in the moment (I think so at least) it felt like a death blow to me. I’ve been carrying this all this time. But if solipsism is truly inherently unprovable then he is wrong and no one can. But I haven’t been able to shake that day and I’m not going to plumb solipsism stuff on Quora because I’ll get triggered again.

It’s devastated my ability to interact with people as I’m always holding back from caring all the way. I can’t just let go and feel, there’s always this wall between me an life and I desperately want to break through. But it just feels like a fight I’m losing.

There aren’t enough “really”s I can fit into a sentence to express how much I want to be rid of this, it’s truly heartbreaking

I would actually be way more comfortable with universal mind than being the only one around.

There aren’t physical values, nothing has innate value.

Something is precious or valuable when everyone needs it - water, oxygen, food (these are linked to innate physical values in science).

Something is also precious/valuable when everyone (or the majority at least) wants it - money, fame, authority, knowledge etc.

Something is worthless when it has no use to us, or nobody wants it, or both. — Benj96

No, this is simply not true. Something isn’t precious just because everyone wants it or needs it.

hence why he is wrong. Also I don’t think there are such things as learned desires.

Biology is the measure and meaning of all things and what is valued is what is either needed or desired by said biology to satisfy needs or desires. The satisfaction of need is life sustaining, that of desire is also life sustaining; in the sense of bringing the organism pleasure which is opposite of pain. So, things of value are life sustaining things. — boagie

Wrong.

And that's it? So the quote is wrong?

If one harbors no preconceptions of 'ultimate reality' or 'absolute truth' (themselves value systems), I don't find any concerns — Tom Storm

What do you mean?

Shows me you don't understand that equation.

I think you're the one who needs to if you think it's all energy.

That's so wrong I don't even know where to start. Let me guess, you got to the level of "Fields" and just assumed energy. Classic mistake.

atoms, duh.

I am simply stating that the apparent reality that you perceive, your everyday reality, is energy and not a world of objects. All objects are in fact energy forms, they are only objects to biological consciousness which is only another energy form. Others in your world are energy forms as well, and their expressed emotions are energy expressions of negative or positive emotions. If these are directed at you, you sense them as life-supporting or life-negating, the same as you experience all other energy forms that you sense as objects in this way. Apparent reality is truer to your experience than it is to actual energetic reality. — boagie

False, 100%. Reality is not energy and has been proven so.

Also not relevant in the slightest.

Again I’m referring to the link about the social nature of emotions and how it’s talking about the being intrinsically social.

this has nothing to do with the subject

What? You're not gonna deny it?

On the contrary: it seems to be reiterating, in less picturesque and more rigorous language, that humans are social animals, interacting in complex ways with one another, their immediate environment and larger society. Nowhere have I ever said that each emotion is isolated or uncaused. — Vera Mont

No I meant that its society brainwashing, proving you wrong that you said it isn't so.

actually I have to take that back, this proved you wrong:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00896/full

I guess we do genuinely feel things. I'm also not really sure how society makes us feel things, if it did then why doesn't it work for everyone.

What I read her saying is not that you deliberately fake some emotions - which we already knew with no help from meditation - but that all the ones you actually do feel are fake; manufactured and implanted by a nebulous external entity called "society". — Vera Mont

But that can't be true because then where did society get that from?

Of course there is, and we all recognize the difference, even while we also go through the courteous motions, for the sake of social harmony. Even if one doesn't much care about a stranger's achievement, to refrain from congratulating them would be an insult and cause ill-feeling. — Vera Mont

I would think faking it would hurt more. Nothing stings more than someone who is "just being nice".

I think we all have a sense that person X congratulated us on gradutating or having a kid and it felt like someone going through the motions or performing a norm and someone who was genuinely happy. Or someone who managed to express something against the norm in those situations. Perhaps they thought we had a child too young or with the wrong person and even though you're not supposed to be honest, they were.

I think there is a meaningful distinction here around genuine feelings and not so geniune responses. And not, the feelings are probably real, even in people who try to suppress any 'wrong' reaction and present themselves 'correctly'. They have whatever they are feeling as feelings - though they may not want to notice what those feelings are if they don't fit. So, they may think they are happy you are happy with your new partner when really they are jealous. But their responses, the whole mess of it, is genuine, it just may not match their official position on what they are feeling. — Bylaw

I think there is a difference between someone faking it and someone who means it. Like people who congratulate you on something, because that's what you're supposed to do. But there's saying that and meaning it, which I think is what she might be alluding to but misses the point. Society dictates one should be happy about such events, but obviously that doesn't happen. We go through the motions. Whether you feel happy or not depends on your connection with the other person. If it's someone close then yes you'll be happy for them, but if not then you phone it in.

Also if she was right there wouldn't be so many therapists with clients who feel things they aren't supposed to. Reminds me of the time I told my therapist I stopped loving my mom and felt bad because it seemed like I was supposed to do that, then he said it's ok. IT was a relief.

But to state, in our convo we had two definitions of what genuine meant. She meant it as some uncaused cause, I meant it as how you actually feel in response to something. Like if you get a gift are you actually happy about it or just putting on a show for their benefit.

"she" is the person who made the quote originally.

What are you getting at? What she meant by genuine and what I meant are two different things. She meant it like uncaused cause, and I said how you fee in response to something that happens to us. We found out we were talking past each other.

Then by that dictionary definition we do genuinely feel things.

Yest, I got that and your viewpoint in the first place by reading your description of the topic.
I just viewed the question "Do we genuinely feel things?" from a simpler aspect. In its essence. Indepedently of what external factors cause feelings. There can be millions of them. And why society in particular? Your wife or husband or family or a a friend may make you feel a certain way. On purpose or not. Even ourselves --out subconscious-- make us feel things that are not natural; for no apparent or real reason.
In every case, i.e. independenty of the cause, the fact is that we feel them. And what we feel is genuine.
Maybe the title of the topic is misleading then ... — Alkis Piskas

But it's caused by something so it's not genuine. How our family makes you feel is based on how society says you ought to feel about it.

Also, I know, by experience on the subject of emotions, that what society makes us feel is of much less importance and has much less consequences for us than what people around us, and esp. close ones, cause us. On purpose or not. Almost all traumas in our lives are created by people, esp. family, since the time we are born. — Alkis Piskas

Which again is impacted based on how society says we ought to feel about certain things.

It's something I can't get over because to deny it would be living a lie and telling yourself what you feel is genuine.

IT's not missing anything. It's sort of like saying that society makes you feel ways about certain things. If you took someone not raised in the world we live in today they wouldn't care about any of the stuff in it or what's going on, why? Because society makes us care about things that we normally wouldn't.

You spend enough time in meditation, you will realize that you never genuinely feel feelings in the first place
it is all just cause and effect response
and a lot of the time the specificity of that response is ascribed to how societal expectations dictate one should be effected by a particular cause
loss-->sadness
gain-->joy

also she’s not suicidal not sure where you got that

I, you, and every other entity is an experiencer, whether they meditate or not, whether they will it or not, whether they know it or not. — Vera Mont

Well in meditation if you do it there is a state they say where you are watching the experience as if from afar. So in a sense you become the watcher and not the experiencer which casts doubt on the claim that they are an experiencer.

Like our emails? Where did "it" get an independent mind and will of its own, and the aspiration to order and control its progenitors? — Vera Mont

Well that’s just what society does

You have not established that 'genuine feelings' - which nobody living in a society has or can have - are the purpose of human life — Vera Mont

But they are what everyone places value one. Talking about what they really want to do instead of what society says they should and the conflict between. Or whether you really love someone or are just pretending.

Genuine being uncaused or affected by anything else.

Feeling is feeling, the response you get.

You is you, the subject. Though with meditation it could be the watcher or the experiencer.

Society is where we live.

Society originates from us. It influences your emotions to establish control and order.

Your genuine emotions would be yours and not what society says you ought to feel over this.

If feelings are all fake then there is no reason to live since you’re just a puppet of the world and not really living.

I live because suicide is painful.

The rest can be explained by the original quote, essentially meditation shows nothing you feel is genuine it’s causes and effect and the specificity of that response is based on what society says you ought to feel towards it. She said so so that’s the truth.

Can you prove any of that? Some people grow up in societies when that sort of sweet thing doesn’t cause a happy reaction and some people just don’t get happy by it at all.

We don’t develop behaviors in solitude either as evidenced by feral children they find in the wild.

It’s not oversimplifying you just don’t see the reach society has on you. Everything you felt was manufactured, none of it was you, none of it was real. You’re more or less a robot following social programming.

And like she said about meditation you will find yourself watching these feelings and how you don’t control them. Then you begin to question if these really are your feelings if you can’t control them, and soon you create distance from your feelings enough to see that you’re essentially hostage to “someone else”.

it’s not.

How can you genuinely feel anything. You are taught how to feel about certain things, how certain values are good and what one ought to value. Nothing you feel is genuine because it’s all just manufactured by society. You can trust anything you feel because it’s just a nonstop spiral of manufactured emotions.

It's the best, truest, most compelling and most genuine reason. — Vera Mont

It’s actually not the most genuine, compelling, truest reason especially if society is making you want it, so that’s just wrong. Not even close there.

what’s there to support it’s simply a fact of life so you haven’t really given a counter to that point.

Because your feeling is wrong. So far there isn’t evidence to suggest any sort of god or anything else beyond the here and now. You just sound delusional more than anything else. You’re believe it’s just that, faith and little else.

Asking what’s the point isn’t really looking beyond survival but more the question of why one survives. Animals and plants just do it without questioning. Humans was why do all this? Is there a point? Some are ok with there being no point.

What I want to know is why you made a new account just to horn in on this discussion with something utterly irrelevant. Seems iffy to me.

God is just one of those things you grow out of into something better.

but you haven’t proven it so. That desire to live is because society pushes it all the time. Most people don’t question whether their feelings are genuine or not.


So again IF they’re not then why bother living? Just because we have that desire isn’t a reason. I thought this was a philosophy forum.

I already did answer that. If we don’t genuinely feel things what’s the point in living. You haven’t really answered why anyone should.