Think

I've been reading a very enlightening book.  'Think,' written by Philosopher Simon Blackburn.  I need to write the opening paragraph of chapter one to explain what it is I'm trying to understand...

Perhaps the most unsettling thought many of us have, often quite early on in childhood, is that the whole world might be a dream; that the ordinary scenes and objects of everyday life might be fantasies.  The reality we live in may be a virtual reality, spun out of our own minds, or perhaps injected into our minds by some sinister Other.  Of course, such thoughts come, and then go.  Most of us shake them off.  But why are we right to do so?  How can we know that the world as we take it to be, is the world as it is?  How do we begin to think about the relation between appearance and reality: things as we take them to be, as opposed to things as they are? 

Of course this poses way more questions than answers!  

My line of questioning in my studies begins with the narrative. How do we perceive the story and does it distort over time?  We, as human beings who can process by logical thought, are the decision makers of how the narrative evolves.  So after reading this book I have to ask, was the story real at its conception? Was it a dream...conjured up by an exhausted house wife whose everyday life was so sad and tedious that she decided the person in the photo was her father who was of royal blood. Somehow, through fate, she was poor, married to a fisherman and had 7 children.  As the story of the photo gets told and retold by her children and grandchildren, I wonder, does the man in the photo become God who is going to save them all?  The narrative in this instance gives 'hope.'  

Cripes!  Back to reality!  Maybe it's just the sinister Other getting into my thoughts that's making me think such things.  I enjoy thinking and dreaming.  It's part of my artistic personality and is quite often the seed that germinates into something extraordinary.  It's great to question what we see and wonder.  Who's to say it's wrong?  I believe if we humans didn't imagine and create wonderful fantastical stories sometimes our life would be a sad place.  What's that saying....I think therefore I am.  I'm thinking so I must be alive and that's got to be good!