We are choosing to be here in....

[ry.]

This line here may not sum up the song but it brings up some questions.

I have read a theory that says we choose to live in a particular instant in time, although it consatantly changes, we are still choosing to be here (right now.......).


I guess my question come with death in relation to this theory:

According to this theory, we could already be "dead", our bodies lying 6 feet under in whoknowsville, USA.That in fact all we are IS a dream.Also, we would be "replaying" our lives forever, although we are oblivious to it.

How do we know that this is indeed 2002 (almost 2003)?

And last but not least,
Scientifically speaking, what source of energy does our brain function to "relive" our lives (so to speak) when our bodies are dead?


Just something to think about
-Ry

[4nick8]

Originally posted by ry.
According to this theory, we could already be "dead", our bodies lying 6 feet under in whoknowsville, USA.That in fact all we are IS a dream.Also, we would be "replaying" our lives forever, although we are oblivious to it.

And last but not least,
Scientifically speaking, what source of energy does our brain function to "relive" our lives (so to speak) when our bodies are dead?


First off, while that theory is interesting, whoever came up with it is obviously suffering from a severe mental condition. I'll bite my tongue on the rest of this line of thought..

Second: The brain does not "relive", rather I'd think that the soul is what "relives" perpetually. The brain, as with the rest of your flesh, will decompose and return from whence it came. (The earth, I mean. No, I don't mean to insinuate that your dead cells will slink over to your mother's womb).

I feel like my IQ just dropped 10 points. I should never have posted.

[tiki_god7]

this one is kinda hard. I think Decartes' 'Meditations' is all about this when he said 'I think therefore I am.' It said something like he couldn't trust any of his instincts or perceptions and wasn't sure if he really existed(kinda like you were saying) and the only proof he could supply to his existance is his thinking, he thinks therefore he must exist. But proving that this reality we all perceive ourselves living in is a little different I guess, there are too many questions that could be spun of from this one.....

[Ahnijson_films]

I think we are seriously on a good path here. I just posted how I think this all goes along with Buddhism, and you guys are really following along those lines. Not that our dead bodies are producing dreams of our reality and that we are possibly dead and just reliving our dreams... that isn't possible in the physics sense. However, if this subject really interests you guys, you should definitely look into that website I put with my post. The concept that we are all just in a dream state because there is no way to trust what we see, taste, hear, et cetera, is a widely held belief in a lot of cultures. A good example is the mentally handicapped. A delusional schizophrenic does not necessarily know they are a schizophrenic. They truly "hear" things. Now, us 'normal' folks would say that the things they hear aren't real because they weren't produced by a tangible thing. They weren't produced by sound waves floating through the air and being picked up by our ear drums and passed to the cochlia and turned into electric impulses interpreted by our brain. But to them, they hear these things exactly as you or I would hear raindrops or music. They have those same little electric impulses being interpreted by their brain, or rather, misinterpreted by our definitions. So who is to say who is correct? This is all leading to the "how can we trust ourselves" theory. We can't.
I don't know where I'm going with this.
And no, I'm not a Buddhist, but their principles make more sense than anything else I've ever heard. And follow these similar lines.

[tiki_god7]

I think I ran into the same problem you did, this leaves you with so many questions and no direction to go with them. I'm not trying to contradict the theory or anything just wondering what they believe or think our reality really is then, if they think we're just in a dream like state right now, what is real?
also I'm interested in reading that link you mentioned but haven't been able to find it, can you repost it?

[Ahnijson_films]

That is really the big problem with the Buddhism stuff, it's all VERY contradictory. There are things called Koans, they are little anecdotes (sort of) that are metaphors to help you understand things, they should have some good ones listed on this site: http://www.zenguide.com/

It's like, there is no reality. Try not to think in the terms we are given on earth, that space is endless and that you cannot create or destroy matter, et cetera. You have to ignore all of the laws of physics we have been given all our lives and try to imagine (which is basically impossible) a nothingness. That all of our rules of physics are all a part of this dream, this falsehood, and are therefore false. So it is then possible that there is no "reality"... woah, okay, I'm confusing myself now. Ha. I really cannot do justice explaining it because I have not researched it enough myself. I'm glad you're interested in it as well... I'm not sure if I believe in all of it entirely, but it's certainly a cool and different way to look at things.

[Fruitbar11]

When I frist hard this theory it actually freaked me out. Because lately i have been feeling deja vu. Not ohh i did this last week but when deja vu. But I've seen this before, but I've never seen it before deja vu. Which somewhat ties into your meaning which is quite weird (not the meaning but the way it feels to think about this). Hey maybe I'm crazy, but something tells me that im not...

[numb...]

hmm, now where dose the song parabola come into this forum???

[hard2handle]

i think we are all just trying a universal truth that simply does not exist. we dont know what truth is...like the dude was saying about schizophrenic delusions. whos to say they dont really hear voices... i know this is a long shot and im gonna get shit for this but maybe their brains are tuned to pick up on things we are unaware of...kinda like how dogs are able to pick up on people with evil intentions. what the fuck was i getting at... oh yeah. point is, this converstion could go on forever. and its a great topic but we are searching for a universal idea of what is real... but its all an illusion, just like our own feelings of pain are an illsion..

[ry.]

this kinda fits into the parabola form because one day listening to it, i really thought about the lyrics in a different way, inspiring some research.
Oh, and i dont like how EVERYTHING is in the socialize forum

Anyways, its an incredible thought and Ahnijson_films was on the right idea trying to explain it.Its just like there is no reallity, just nothing. Think of life as a big imagination. This fourm........not real. Tool (gasps)...........not real. Tool fans.......... not real. Just think that all of these ideas are just one complex imagination. Nothing is "real", eveything is imagined as being true. Think that everything, (yes everything) is created by your imagination, even people (hell think of people like that "sims" game) where they have a "pre-programed" response.

p.s. the negative response i may get from this post.............................................. .....not real.

[Phlame]

we choose to be alive so we can choose death (suicide)
we can drive ourselves insane
everything we do
weer choosin to b in this forum etc...

[Raw_Beef]

I think we have touched upon the most plausible meaning of this song, the idea that we are choosing to be here simply by continuing our existance. This current moment is truely the only moment that can ever exist for us. We may chose to end at any time, and we barely remeber what came before. "barley remember? why no i remember things just fine!" you say? How often throughout your day are you actualy conciously keeping the majority of your past in mind? Do you really remember as well as you think you do? Is that only becuse now you are concentrating on that single moment which is important enough to warrant the attention?
As for the whole "we are eternal" jive, i havent really figured out how that fits yet, possibly in the meaning that since this time is all time, this time is forever, which is just a defintional meaning since certainly we are aware of our temporary state.
All of this is completley open for discussion i would like to have the holes in my idea shown to me, so bring it on and lets improve our understanding.

[ry.]

that line goes with my idea, that when we die, we "replay" our lives over and over again. and we have no perception of whether we are alive right now or not.

[Raw_Beef]

While that certainly is as possible as anything else in the 'afterlife', i feel its pointless to hypothisize about what is after death because we have no way of ever verifying it one way or another. Neizche said The reasons for which "this world has been characterized as "apparent" are the very reasons which indicate its reality; another kind of reality is absolutely indemonstrable.

What you can see may very well be all there is.

[Convoy_X]

Originally posted by ry.
...According to this theory, we could already be "dead", our bodies lying 6 feet under in whoknowsville, USA.That in fact all we are IS a dream.Also, we would be "replaying" our lives forever, although we are oblivious to it.

How do we know that this is indeed 2002 (almost 2003)?

And last but not least,
Scientifically speaking, what source of energy does our brain function to "relive" our lives (so to speak) when our bodies are dead?


Just something to think about
-Ry

like "The Matrex" but with out the machines? thats just too much for me. I like to think that life is reality and in death there is an after life but i dont thin we should go there...

[msemple]

Originally posted by hard2handle
like the dude was saying about schizophrenic delusions. whos to say they dont really hear voices.

Schizophrenics actually do hear the voices because during the time of the hallucination the part of the brain that functions for hearing is active.

Sorry, just had to say something about that.

[Infante]

Originally posted by msemple
Schizophrenics actually do hear the voices because during the time of the hallucination the part of the brain that functions for hearing is active.

Sorry, just had to say something about that.

The key is that the neurological events in the brain that correspond to those voices are not caused by actual sound waves entering the ear. So, you're right that their misinterpretation of sensations is still entirely physical which limits the plausibility that everything is merely part of a dream. However, if the mind is distinct from the brain, and the hallucination is a mental event and not a physical one, the hallucination could cause the neurological activity and not vice versa. What this means is that it's still possible that even the physical world is an illusion inside our mind. But like I said, it is merely possible. It is definitely not certain. Sorry if this sounds confusing. I don't think I can make this point any clearer than this.

[Smokin joe]

Sorry if something like this was mentioned earlier, I have absolutely no patience to read all of the posts but...

I think that line can be simplified to:

I think, therefore I am

Life isn't that mysterious I would think. We aren't just floating around not sure if we're alive or dead, we're floating around on this planet orbitting our sun, orbitting the center of our galaxy, and then we're like one galaxy out of about 100 billion.

I just think that this song is about how lucky we are to actually 'be.' Like, we're able to actually analyze things, whatever they may be. We're all lucky enough to be created with just the right things, with all the proper initial conditions to be able to think for ourselves.

Then it got me thinking, not only are we lucky to be on this jewel of a planet, but we can think. I mean, look, we haven't even found like, microbes on another planet, so who's to say that life is that abundant? And then, who's to say INTELLIGENT life is that abundant? It's almost to say that us, as humans, are somewhat chosen people.

And you might as well celebrate this chance to be

joe

[Nucleus]

Originally posted by ry.
This line here may not sum up the song but it brings up some questions.

I have read a theory that says we choose to live in a particular instant in time, although it consatantly changes, we are still choosing to be here (right now.......).


I guess my question come with death in relation to this theory:

According to this theory, we could already be "dead", our bodies lying 6 feet under in whoknowsville, USA.That in fact all we are IS a dream.Also, we would be "replaying" our lives forever, although we are oblivious to it.

How do we know that this is indeed 2002 (almost 2003)?

And last but not least,
Scientifically speaking, what source of energy does our brain function to "relive" our lives (so to speak) when our bodies are dead?


Just something to think about
-Ry

You gave nothing for anyone to think about at all, except maybe that your certifiable.

[ÆNIMA69]

damn you ppl i have read this all and none of it is about parabola...

the name of the song is parabola, wich i have recently learned in algebra to be a mathematical equation of y=xsquared (or somthing like that) and when you graph it, it makes the shape of a U, witch may be upside down dependeng on the variables used in place of x, if you try this equation you should use - and + numbers like -2 -1 0 1 2 and insearth these in the place of x...
yep i just checked the equation and it works...but im not sure wut it has to do with the meaning of the song...hmm interesting i think

[Brad Barker]

Originally posted by ÆNIMA69
damn you ppl i have read this all and none of it is about parabola...

the name of the song is parabola, wich i have recently learned in algebra to be a mathematical equation of y=xsquared (or somthing like that) and when you graph it, it makes the shape of a U, witch may be upside down dependeng on the variables used in place of x, if you try this equation you should use - and + numbers like -2 -1 0 1 2 and insearth these in the place of x...
yep i just checked the equation and it works...but im not sure wut it has to do with the meaning of the song...hmm interesting i think

Read another thread in this very section of the forum; a few of us, including myself, related the math with the abstract concept. (The thread: Jung and parabola, afaik.)

anyway...

A parabola is the graph to a quadratic equation (as in "x squared" as in "a square has FOUR sides").

y=a(x-b)^2+c

where "a" is the coefficient, controlling reflections about the x-axis and vertical stretching and shrinking.

"b" controls the horizontal shifting.

"c" controls vertical shifting.

Now, assign "time" to the x-axis and... something... to the y-axis, and we've got ourselves a graph of life!

adjust stretching/shrinking and vertical shifting to your liking.

So there ya go.

[Brad Barker]

Of course, if you believe in reincarnation, then your soul's graph would be denoted by a sine wave.

;)