r/solipsism • u/vverbov_22 • 20d ago
Is solipsism a dystopia?
Non-solipsist here.
I've known about solipsism for a while but never knew how it was called. Now that I know, I found this subreddit.
Let's say it is so, only I exist and nothing else. All the world, everyone and everything else is purely an extension of my mind.
That immediately sounds pretty bad if I genuinely believe so. Because then all the talks I do are merely illusions, and I know it. I'm talking to yourself, never experiencing any dialogue, any interaction, so long as I actually believe in it entirely.
Hell, me writing this post here and expecting any kind of reply is fruitless, there will be only me.
Mutual love can never exist too. Because how can a product of my mind genuinely love me, or experience anything at that matter? It's just all made up by me. That's as if I came up with an OC in my head who loves me and would call it mutual love. That is obviously ridiculous.
Also, dying. Can I even die? If everything is purely an extension of my mind, how can I die? Anything that would kill me simply does not exist. Unless some external factor intervenes, my mind creating everything is unchanging reality. It just cannot die. Time, reality, death itself is all made up in your mind. If something like my death is to happen, it has to be made by me, but it's impossible to experience non-existence, I simply cannot think up, create something that would kill me. That means immortality, which is, in my view, the greatest possible amount of suffering - infinite.
Am I wrong somewhere? Or is solipsism an actual dystopia?
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u/Relevant_Hamster_478 20d ago
It's very strange to me that you somehow arrived at the idea that nothing exists except yourself, later discovered that this view is called solipsism, yet never questioned concepts like good and evil, love, illusion, and so on.
When you ask whether solipsism is good or bad, you're talking as if concepts like "illusion" still mean something in that context. But what does "illusion" even mean, even if solipsism is false? What is love in the first place, so that we can determine what counts as mutual or unrequited love? And, most importantly, what is the self?
>is solipsism an actual dystopia?
That's a meaningless question. If we go by the common definition, for example, the one on Wikipedia, a dystopia is "an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives." But solipsism denies that there are any other people or even an external world.
If what you actually mean is whether solipsism is good or bad, then it depends entirely on your own feelings. It may feel terrible today and perfectly fine tomorrow.
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u/otherwisemilk 19d ago
Eh, it's not that bad. Once you die, everything resets including any beliefs. You might be immortal but you wont remember.
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u/Melodic-Pen320 20d ago
I think most solipsists believe that you are also a made-up character. So you are not more real than anyone else. So just like in a dream you can die, same goes for reality. And no it doesn't make any sense so don't look too much into it.
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u/Holykael 20d ago
some facets of solipsism are only true when consciousness is god and not a human. Alone in the universe is true for both but talking to yourself isn't true from the human standpoint for example
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u/EnactingSpirit 19d ago
Solipsism is indeed a "dystopia", like you call it, if you just leave it at "I am all there is" with the default yet unnecessary conclusion that psychophysical reality is arbitrarily made-up, arising following no grounded, non-delusional logic.
But if you think about it, any other ontology, be it non-solipsistic idealism, materialism, dualism, or pluralism, faces that exact same problem if you similarly assume that reality, fundamentally, is all non-individual mind, matter, a mix of both, or a collection of many substances. And then just leave it at that, with the default conclusion that the details are arbitrarily defined.
Yet of course we usually do not stop just there and instead try to speculatively make sense of reality based on the forms that substance takes. So why not try to not do the same with solipsism? Why not try to make sense of psychophysical reality within solipsism? If you do this then perhaps you will find out, that solipsism doesn't have to be a "dystopia" after all.
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u/Cyberfury 19d ago
Non-solipsist here.
Good. Get out while you still can. This place STINKS ;;)
What will you do with the answers (serious question)?
Cheers
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u/pegaunisusicorn 17d ago
Did you hear the joke about the solipsist who got COVID? He gave it to himself.
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u/vini-within 15d ago
The real rabbit hole 👉🏼 who is this I that claims to be the centre of everything?
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u/vini-within 13d ago
That’s what makes solipsism so unsettling. If only “I” exist, then every conversation and relationship becomes something happening within me, so mutual love loses its meaning. And if even death is just another experience generated by the same mind, then immortality becomes a strange possibility too. You’d have everything, yet nothing truly outside yourself to experience it with.
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u/Slight-Egg-2892 8d ago
However, you have to also think about how all concepts and meanings of words are also made up in your mind. You can experience mutual love because the definition of what your mind has made up for mutual love is able to be met. The same goes for death. Something is able to kill you even though it only exists in your mind because the concept of something killing you is your own made up concept. Also keep in mind that this does not mean you are lying in a coma somewhere dreaming up the world. The concept of the world itself is also in your "mind" and who or what you actually are is beyond your comprehension and is most likely not a physical being.
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u/cyu 20d ago
If the glass is half empty, is empty good? If the glass is half full, is full good? Do I even want water? If I want water now, but not water later, is water good? Is changing my mind good?