‘Ceteris
Paribus’ – means ‘everything else
unchanged’, a term often used to understand many otherwise inexplicable,
inconsistent concepts. But in reality, one cannot assume every other factor to
be a constant to understand the performance of a concept in isolation. In the
ancient world, it was imperative for the human mind that was in its formative
years, to build hypothesis and come out with theoretical explanations of both
physical and cosmological processes to begin with, particularly to make way for
‘rationality’
against merely labeling everything as an ‘act of god’. But now, having moved
far ahead in time, it is crucial for us to develop contemporary philosophies, based
on the principle of relativity. Theories that do not provide factual
information or guarantee the truth, but that are built up empirically on
correct premises - based on scenarios and ever changing variables.
In
the metaphysical world, ‘existence’ is a matter of fact, one of the perennial
topics of the subject. ‘To be’ is to exist – simple. But ‘to be’ where? To be
walking on the earth, or to be lying down, to be in the womb, in the sperm? Or ‘to
be’ in a more abstract form - in thoughts, in mind or dreams? I’d like to
believe that existence cannot be as lame as something that you can touch and that
a human mind is capable of imagining anything, even something as complicated as
a ‘feeling of touch’.
Continuing
to think on the same lines, it could be possible that everyone and everything
around one is nothing but a figment of one’s own imagination - the creative
play of one’s mind.
For
example, the loving family and friends, personal space and home - created to
comfort and provide the feeling of belongingness. The positive and
inspirational characters like teachers, books of knowledge – created to define
all source of existing super awareness of the mind, only appearing to be
arising from them. The wealthy and the powerful characters crafted for one to
see the way up and decide which way to go. The poor and needy created to keep the
feet grounded. The strength of the mind determines how one leads a life. The
dreams and the hallucinations, nothing but the incomplete figments.
The
ever changing technology, nothing but one’s own intellect – taking its form as
soon as it reaches hands. The news – constructive or destructive, all
fabricated according to the positive or negative state of mind. Pain, only a
wake up factor, or a desire to remove boredom, and joy a means to remain in the
moment.
If
somebody else dies, the supposed being who has supposedly "died" is
only a phantom of one’s imagination, or more plausibly – redundancy of a
character. Death of a mind could just be a belief that ultimately one will
break away from the otherwise infinitely long existence – which, according to
me is a much scary possibility.
To
sum up, the world as we see is one’s own universe.
I
read about this online to see if there’s someone else who thinks like me and
bumped into a concept called “Solipsism”, which is the philosophical
idea that only one's own mind is sure to exist. Solipsism holds that knowledge
of anything outside one's own mind is unsure. The external world and other
minds cannot be known, and might not exist outside the mind.
As
a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the
world and other minds do not exist. As such it is the only epistemological
position that, by its own postulate, is both irrefutable and yet indefensible
in the same manner.
There
will be questions that the concept of Solipsism might not seem to resolve, but
then even metaphysics has failed to resolve innumerable doubts on the concept
of existence. However, my only question that remains unanswered is that if
people and things around are a figment
of my imagination, is it possible that my own existence is someone else’s
imagination?
To
read more on Solipsism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
