Can You Feel It Now, Mr. Krabs? The Overwhelming Power of Belief - Trollface Socrates (H-01)

(Mr. Krabs doesn't look too happy about what's coming up. He shouldn't be, because I certainly wasn't prepared for the mind**** that was coming my way. TIME TO PICK SIDES KRABBY!!! btw, Spongebob seems to be a good source of inspiration this week)

The human mind, in an of itself, is a powerful, influential, and destructive tool that literally surpasses the outer reaches of our imagination in terms of attributes and capabilites. We've heard stories of monks that can regulate their body temperature by just thinking about it, snipers that regulate their breathing and heartbeat by willing it to be, and people using sheer willpower to suppress the excruciating pain of having to cut off their own arm. Clearly, we have the power to affect how we interact with ourselves and our natural world? So, does that mean that we have the power to alter our own personal reality as well?

Georges Berkeley argued that if something wasn't being perceived, then that something would cease to exist. Furthermore, he argued that even if we did perceive something happening in our universe, it would only be an idea that could never be proven. While the entire group found this idea to be antiquated, we tried to apply the ideas spoken here to our own philosophy, with mixed results. Usually, when I write these posts, I write from a single, developed idea usually hammered out through consensus. But this post will be different, as two opposing viewpoints eventually made themselves known which I will roughly dub The Strong Personal Reality and The Weak Personal Reality

1. The Strong Personal Reality Argument

I'm going to refer to the person who believes in the strong personal reality as the believer. The believer is the type of person who truly values the power of thought and the potential of the human mind. The essential argument is this: We give our universe meaning because we believe. That car is only a car because we believe it is. The sun is only bright because we believe it'ts bright (psh - whatever bright means. :P). The chair that I'm sitting in only exists because I believe it does. 

Now before you punch a giant hole into this argument, I can't just say "I BELIEVE IN THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER RAWR" and have him just magically appear right now. That's not how this works. The beliefs that we have about our world come from very internal, subconsicous, deep-rooted beliefs about the things that exist in our world. Because we're taught that (logically speaking) it takes four walls to hold up a building, we believe in the existence of walls. Because we're taught that these metal death traps on four wheels are cars, we believe in the existence of cars. Cognitively speaking, the things in our world exist because the collective "we" (the human race, an any other self-aware species on Earth I'm not aware of) believe it does. 

This is a very, very complex philosophical idea, and I'm not entirely confident that I can explain this the way it should be explained, so I'll give a better example of the effects of beleif: The Placebo Effect. For those not familiar with this psychological phenomenon, it's basically when you believe something has an effect on you or your surroundings when it actually doesn't.  For example, if you give someone a glass of apple cider, tell them there's alcohol inside when there really isn't, and they start to act drunk, you have not only trolled them for a night of assured lulz, you have also successfully demonstrated the Placebo Effect. They believe that there's alcohol in the drink, so they believe they're getting drunk when they really aren't.   

Let's take this a step further. Let's go back to the pain example and say, you just broke your leg in a bad cycling accident. A believer would say it's entirely possible to believe your leg really isn't broken and the pain isn't there, and to completely rid themselves of the pain by genuinely convincing themselves that there's no pain there in the first place. 

(The Believer Krabs wouldn't be. We'll get to the other side in a second). 

This clearly takes mastery of your bodily functions, as well as outstanding control of your brain to accomplish. But a believer will believe that this is possible. Which brings us to our next argument:

2. The Weak Personal Reality Argument

For ease of quotation, I'm also going to change the name of the person who believes in the weak personal reality to the realist (even though I know this term probably grossly inaccurate). The realist is pretty much the opposite of the believer. The realist believes that while we can all interpret reality in different ways that will vary from person to person, there is a set version of reality that is set in stone, and can't be changed by any person. A realist will believe that we, as cognitive, self-aware beings lack the mental capacity to shape and change our personal reality. 

For example, I'll return to the wall argument. The realist may say that even though I can believe that that wall in front of me doesn't exist, or is just a collective idea, it's still going to retain the attributes assigned to it as a wall. Someone in our group brought up the example of throwing a baby, a human that lacks the cognitive ability to prove or disprove anything in our collective existence, at the wall. Assuming the baby hits it and then hits the ground, a realist would use that as proof that the wall, no matter what we think of it, will have to exist. (The realist counter-argument would be that we as humans instilled [by many conceivable methods]  the idea of the wall into the baby, causing it to subconsciously believe it as well, thus causing it to hit the wall).  

For the placebo argument, the same holds true. We can believe that we're getting drunk at the party we went to, but the realist would assert the fact that in actuality, we're not really drunk. Taking this to our hypothetical extension, he would also say that there isn't any amount of willpower (and natural sedatives) that could stop us from experiencing the sensation of pain, or a certain section of it, at least. The realist may acquiesce that human mind is powerful, but not powerful enough to overcome basic natural processes and the "reality" of our universe. 

In Summary, these two camps are both ones that have varying beliefs on the true power of the human mind and the ways it can affect our world. It's accepted among everyone that the way you think about the world and yourself can have adverse effects on the way you live your life (like not believing you're good enough for something will lead you to actually not being good enough for something), but the true split comes from how far-reaching your beliefs actually affect the world around you. 

So, can you really feel it, Mr. Krabs?

Freebies of the Day:

(NOPE. And this is an actual picture and quotation from a Spongebob episode, by the way).

If you guys were expecting something here, I'm sorry to disappoint. Posts like these are the reason it takes me three days to will myself to write these things, as interesting and thought-provking as they may be. Writing it was exhausting enough (and I'm sure you guys have plenty to talk about), so I'll leave today's post at this. :)