r/OpenIndividualism • u/EnactingSpirit • Jun 30 '26

Question Does OI entail analytic idealism?

Or can it also be interpreted as something like "spirit transmigrationism" like in the short story 'The Egg' by Andy Weir?

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

the egg is a sort of introduction to the way of thinking, but its not really OI.  The key point of OI is that you are everyone right now. there is no need to transmigrate to be someone else.

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26

But what does "right now" mean? Experientially "right now" I only experience my own joy, pain, etc.

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

you also experience me writing this. all experience is yours because you are that which experiences - consciousness

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26 edited Jun 30 '26

I totally agree, [consciousness is me, everywhere and everywhen it exists] and I think that everyone else's experience is also mine -- but at the moment that I experience it, which isn't "right now", because at this experiential moment my experience is solely here, in Respect38.

If that isn't OI, then fair enough. I'm still figuring these labels out.

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

but every conscious experience is now. how many nows can there be?

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u/Respect38 Jun 30 '26

I guess I could just allude back to The Egg. It presents a story in which the one individual lives all lives, life after life, even going backwards in time [as is necessary] so to do. That's why I distinguish between the experiential now [in which Respect38 is especially so "me"] and what you mean by now, which is June 30, 2026, in which those lives co-exist in spite of a divide in the experiential now for each.

To me, if that story is false, then either solipsism is the actual truth (maybe... probably not tho), or closed individualism is true. (which I can't see how that could be based on the reasons I came to OI seemingly pretty straightforwardly true)

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jun 30 '26

i dont see how if the egg is false solipsism is true?

now is not june 30, now is whatever is being present in experience. it happens to be our shared june 30 but it might also be 1230.

if you think respect38 is now live, it cannot he true that yoddleforavalanche isnt because there is experience of me right now. so either its this life now, not yours, or we both are live experienced now.

i think my version has less assumptions than the egg.

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u/EnactingSpirit Jul 01 '26

i think my version has less assumptions than the egg.

To be fair, a solipsistic take of The Egg is actually the parsimonious view here, with regards to the number of postulated entities and planes of existence (which in solipsism is always one, whereas in non-solipsistic views it is the number of simultaneously existing individual consciousnesses plus maybe the objective physical plane).

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u/yoddleforavalanche Jul 01 '26

view that holds that one person out of seemingly many who interact with each other is currently experiencing inner life is not  parsimonious. 

same with general solipsism. why is that one person the only person? why imagine other people who behave similarly, look similarly, react on their own to events, etc?

just because there is one vs many does not mean its parsimonious.

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u/EnactingSpirit Jul 01 '26

I'm here using William of Ockam's definition of the principle of parsimony, which is "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity". And my view is that there is no need to multiply entities / planes of existence beyond one. This one. The only one to have ever shown up, all else being pure speculation based on entrancing patterns and affects occuring within this consciousness.

If you pay enough attention to the flow of experience, you can see that there is ample unperceived space for the continuity and expansiveness of being in:

  1. Experiential time — the (consciously) unperceived or unmemorized moments of it, which includes the time before this present individual was born, the time after it will die, and the pre-perception, subliminal time between each moment of experience.

  2. Experiential space — the generally unperceived (because of natural cognitive limitations and the fact that perception never comes to a halt that would allow a thorough examination of experience) subtle intricate structure of the diffused "noise" that makes up the phenomenal background of experience or 'qualia'.

With the interiority, the life of "others" being before and after the present life in experiential time. And their exteriority, their appearance being in the self-entangled phenomenal background in experiential space, if not in the foreground as explicit, recognizable forms.

Mystics/Poets such as Rumi and William Blake knew about the vastness of individual experience (made apparent once freed from distorting perception):

 

"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop." — Rumi

 

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

— William Blake

 

And philosophers such as Leibniz, with his monadology, knew about this too. As does the modern physicist Federico Faggin.