Reality and the Power of the Mind

I just read the book, 1984, and I can't stop thinking about one of the ideas presented in the book.

Imagine, if you will, that babies were taken from their mothers at birth and raised inside a secluded room. They were told that humans could fly and nothing about the laws of gravity. Then, an adult comes in and flys (using some type of special effect to trick them) so that they believe it's really true. Then, a child believes he can fly and someone else believes he can fly and they're put in a secluded room.

If the child A believes he's flying and child B believes child A is flying then child A is flying. Now if we could make a society of people that believed all this then we could change reality and break all the laws of everything and that society could do whatever they wanted.

I know this idea's really abstract. But reality is all in the mind, if the mind believes something is happening, then it's happening. If someone else enters this person reality, then we've created a new reality which can do anything the two people believe they can do and believe can be done.

Just looking for some stimulating thoughts, let me know if you think this is even remotely possible.

"If the child A believes he's flying and child B believes child A is flying then child A is flying."

This is the part I disagree with. If child A believes he's flying, and child B believes child A is flying, but child A is not flying, then both children are incorrect. That's how I see it. The "reality" created by the brainwashing is no reality at all, or the brainwashing wouldn't have been necessary.

Excellent book though, I must go back and read that.

It depends on how they define reality.

How we define reality depends on our experience with the world around us. Having been exposed to the world, and *not* having been reaised in a secluded room, we have a certain view of reality.

However, if these boys were raised without notions of gravity and boy A could fly whenever he so chose in that special secluded room, what reason would they have to believe that a world even exists outside that room, or that there are other people in existence besides the ones they have seen?

For all intents and purposes, the reality is that people can fly. It's just that the sample set on which these notions are based, are small to US.

At 10/15/2009 4:07:23 PM, crackofdawn_Jr wrote:
I just read the book, 1984, and I can't stop thinking about one of the ideas presented in the book.

Imagine, if you will, that babies were taken from their mothers at birth and raised inside a secluded room. They were told that humans could fly and nothing about the laws of gravity. Then, an adult comes in and flys (using some type of special effect to trick them) so that they believe it's really true. Then, a child believes he can fly and someone else believes he can fly and they're put in a secluded room.

If the child A believes he's flying and child B believes child A is flying then child A is flying. Now if we could make a society of people that believed all this then we could change reality and break all the laws of everything and that society could do whatever they wanted.

I know this idea's really abstract. But reality is all in the mind, if the mind believes something is happening, then it's happening. If someone else enters this person reality, then we've created a new reality which can do anything the two people believe they can do and believe can be done.

Just looking for some stimulating thoughts, let me know if you think this is even remotely possible.

If you teach a child to call walking, "Flying", youll get the same result. But whats the point, we already have a word for walking.

At 10/16/2009 7:37:26 AM, tkubok wrote:

At 10/15/2009 4:07:23 PM, crackofdawn_Jr wrote:
I just read the book, 1984, and I can't stop thinking about one of the ideas presented in the book.

Imagine, if you will, that babies were taken from their mothers at birth and raised inside a secluded room. They were told that humans could fly and nothing about the laws of gravity. Then, an adult comes in and flys (using some type of special effect to trick them) so that they believe it's really true. Then, a child believes he can fly and someone else believes he can fly and they're put in a secluded room.

If the child A believes he's flying and child B believes child A is flying then child A is flying. Now if we could make a society of people that believed all this then we could change reality and break all the laws of everything and that society could do whatever they wanted.

I know this idea's really abstract. But reality is all in the mind, if the mind believes something is happening, then it's happening. If someone else enters this person reality, then we've created a new reality which can do anything the two people believe they can do and believe can be done.

Just looking for some stimulating thoughts, let me know if you think this is even remotely possible.

If you teach a child to call walking, "Flying", youll get the same result. But whats the point, we already have a word for walking.

No, the point is that "we can't" fly because we are raised to believe so. If someone thinks he's flying, but someone else can clearly see he isn't, then he isn't flying. However, if someone believes he's flying and someone else believes he's flying then he IS flying. It would take someone to come in and know they're not flying for their reality not to be correct.

Crack, you're wrong. I'll explain once I finish writing a few debates (I'm doing like 8 atm lol).

He isn't wrong, in a way. If the shared perception is that the individual is "flying," then that is what is going on. The idea that they're not flying is tied down to whether or not the subjective meaning behind words is tied down to the objective reality outside of our minds - and it isn't, because words are subjective and relative only to the individual's perception of those words.

So it is entirely possible for them to be flying - they just have a different idea of what flying is, compared to most other individuals. They subjectively define the word "flying" to mean whatever it is they're perceiving - it could be walking, for all we know. That doesn't make it any more or less correct, except in the face of what others perceive flying to be.

At 10/15/2009 4:07:23 PM, crackofdawn_Jr wrote:
But reality is all in the mind

No it isn't. Reality is what is outside your mind.

Just looking for some stimulating thoughts, let me know if you think this is even remotely possible.

Answer: No.

At 10/16/2009 3:14:11 PM, Volkov wrote:
He isn't wrong, in a way. If the shared perception is that the individual is "flying," then that is what is going on.

If you define flying as "people believing that you are flying", yes. But flying is usually defined not as the perception being airborne but the actuality of being airborne.

That doesn't mean society doesn't have a sort of "communal hallucination", that is that society in general believe X when X is in fact false. That is pretty common. But that communal hallucination does not change reality. Communism is one of these communal hallucinations, and that communal hallucination has every time lead to disaster and poverty, because reality doesn't budge. You can hallucinate that communism works, you can hallucinate that all the problems is because of anti-communists, you can hallucinate that its' a great idea to socialize farming, etc, but in the end reality will not budge, and communism will fail.

Just as an example.

At 10/18/2009 3:50:05 AM, regebro wrote:

At 10/16/2009 3:14:11 PM, Volkov wrote:
He isn't wrong, in a way. If the shared perception is that the individual is "flying," then that is what is going on.

If you define flying as "people believing that you are flying", yes. But flying is usually defined not as the perception being airborne but the actuality of being airborne.

The point is that it depends on whatever "flying" is to the two subjects. What they perceive "flying" to be, is what flying is, and what "flying" is to them, is "walking" to us.

I'm not arguing that it is a shared hallucination - I'm arguing that it is a shared perception of what is occurring. Until someone comes in that does not agree with what that perception is, then one of the subjects using their two feet to move on the ground is "flying."