 |
| I am the only one... |
There is only one consciousness. And it is mine. I'm the only one who experiences - at all. I think, I feel and I believe while others compute and react. Other people are different, and hardly people in the sense that I am a person while they are nothing more than mechanics. Machines manufactured, bred and conditioned for their function.
You, who read this, you don't. This is my practical solipsism. What I write, I write for me, to be read by me, for there is no one else to read, no one else who can read, for others do not read, they sense, compute and react, telegraphing based on your programming how to react. I am in here. You are nowhere. I am the only one.
The supposed "theory" or philosophical "position" dubbed Solipsism so often misses the fact that Solipsism cannot be properly understood in a theoretical bubble, as one text among others, joined in its philosophical neighborhood by outer-world-skepticism, mind-body dualism and other odd positions only really entertained in acts of intellectual masturbation. Ever since René Descartes decided that thinking in a vacuum was, in fact, possible, these theories have enjoyed a comfortable and absolutely fruitless life in their little philosophical cul-de-sac. They remain, nevertheless, abstractly theoretical, lonesome in their self-pleasuring acts, devoid of Being and removed entirely from actual reality. Solipsism in the sense of the philosophical theory Is not, in the most literal sense. It has no being except as the act of masturbation which both created it and sustains it within the sophistic environment of all too many world-removed academic journals.
Yet the so-called (and indeed very non-threatening) "threat of Solipsism" remains all too real in the 21st century. Only the threat itself had been identified wrongly in the past. The true threat of Solipsism doesn't lie in the unreal theory so ludicrous it cannot even be posed. It lies in an all-too-real possibility within the very real social reality we found ourselves in. This is Practical Solipsism.
Real Solipsism begins with Narcissism, the belief that somehow, I am qualitatively different to You, that we are not of the same kind. The theoretical talk of "Other Minds" turns out to be nothing but a defense. An excuse, a distraction to help avoid the confrontation with the true belief at the heart of Solipsism: That I am special in such a way comparison to the Other is not just difficult but impossible. That the way in which I feel, think, believe and act are not just different to you, but that inaccessible to you. That any mediation of my experience with that of the Other might as well be abandoned. That you can never understand me, for you are incapable of understanding me, and that I can never understand you, for you do not possess anything to be understood in the first place.
Your response might be that "no one thinks like that", and you'd be wrong in giving that answer - more likely than not, in this Culture of Narcissism, you belong to that group of people who, even if secretly, believes themselves different to all the rest of us. More importantly, thinking doesn't matter. It is that very reduction of Solipsism to something merely mental, an attitude, a "position". Whether your neighbor thinks they're the only person in the world who's actually real doesn't matter - except to the extent that said belief manifests in social reality.
Practical Solipsism is manifest, not in people who think Solipsism and act accordingly (those people would be rather easy to handle - off to the psych ward and we'd be good to go), but in those who do not think themselves Solipsists yet nevertheless are. Identification with the category is not a prerequisite for Solipsism. The threat of Solipsism is manifest in the fact that there are not just a few but many people who act as if Solipsism were true. Unfortunately, this description of Practical Solipsism leaves us nevertheless heading towards that awful philosophical cul-de-sac. More on that some other time. You can't read anyway.