Is the World a Hologram?
Person 1: The world is a hologram
Person 2: So what?
Person 1: So, we aren't living in a real world!
Sound familiar?
This may look like some super modern discussion between people in 2024, but it’s actually a pretty classic conversation between a “materialist” and an “idealist”, just in more modern lingo.
This is what the conversation would have looked like in 19th century Germany:
Hmmm…
So, I couldn't find any footage from 19th century Germany of two people discussing materialism and idealism anywhere online, and that made me wonder “why not?”
Since I’m being paid now to promote TGC’s AI products, I decided to buy a ticket to Germany to find out.
When I landed in Berlin I paid for my luggage to be dropped off at the local Trump Hotel and took a helicopter from BER to the roof of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, to look for original texts that documented discussions between materialist and idealist philosophers. What I found was SHOCKING.
It turns out that not only were philosophers not engaging in materialist and idealist debates in 19th century Germany, but that philosophers from that era, from Marx to Hegel and everyone in between, were writing exclusively on topics such as "how to make a million deutch marks by the time you turn 30" and "Zehn signs you're talking too much, and fümf things you can do to improve your listening skills". I even found one article titled “why venting may make negative emotions worse, and what you should do instead”.
It was difficult to accept what I was experiencing - a massive upheaval of how I once viewed German philosophy (as a precious fount of wisdom and timeless insight into the human condition) and thus a transformation into something more prosaic.
But, oddly enough, once I consciously decided to accept it as true, my mind just sort of relaxed and adapted, absorbing everything as though my old thoughts had never really mattered. It was an astonishing, almost tragic internal process.
As I integrated this new truth about German intellectual history into the larger truth of my core belief system, I found myself hunkering down to read the entirety of Arthur Schopenhauer's 2400 page tome "Why We Strive: A Practical Guide for the (Not-So) Secretly Ambitious".
Not only did I learn that I have been suppressing a desire to make as much money as I can in my lifetime, but that I had never understood that the value of money isn't in its ability to buy me cars and boats and VR headsets, smart trash cans and organic kitty litter, but in its ability to broadcast through space and time that I really matter, and that no one can deny that or take that away from me, even the IRS.
Finally, I returned to America feeling refreshed and ready to pursue my dreams only to return to what can only be described as an apocalyptic landscape.
The streets of New York were torn up, littered with trash, with corpses, with feces, with empty Stouffer’s Mac&Cheese microwaveable dinner boxes. Boston Markets were closed. Just Salads shuttered. Duane Reade’s cleaned out and left for dead. It was devastating.
But somehow, everyone passing me by on the sidewalk where I stood acted as though nothing were any different than how the world had been before I left for Germany just a day ago. When I shouted at people to explain to me what was happening, they looked at me like I'd lost my mind.
After 30 minutes or so of me trying desperately to get someone to see, or admit to seeing since at that point I was suspecting people were for some reason concealing the truth from me, a guy called 911. The next thing I knew I was strapped down in a bed at Bellevue hospital wondering where the hell my shoes had gone.
I spent the next six weeks trying to convince the psychiatrist, Dr. Nintendo, to let me out and, when he finally did, (because the hospital needed to airbnb out the psych ward), I walked out and everything in the world was exactly how it was before I left for Germany.
Now I'm no sports psychologist but what I believe I experienced was an awakening of sorts, where the knowledge that I gained from those 19th century German self-help guides helped me see reality for what it really was.
I expected that once the abilify wore off and I regained my sense of self, I would see the same apocalyptic hellscape I saw when I got back from Germany. But that's not what happened at all.
What I saw was far stranger, far weirder, far scarier than you can imagine. I'll tell you about what I saw, on the next...