Time, Consequence and Solipsism

If the indescribable totality of the macrocosm were encapsulated by a fiction of your mind, as opposed to a concrete and material existence, how might you discern so? A cursory approach might abnegate the eventuality entirely, on account of its seemingly impractical nature. There's no measurable utility in presupposing inexistence in everything one has ever known. Whilst distant stars and celestial mammoths may be markedly meaningless and subject to this presupposition, the practicality of one's life, drudgeries and joys alike, means that it entails a vast series of affirmations that are antithetical to this idea.

For each one of life's fleeting impulses, however, there's a subliminal faith that's entrenched in, and responsible for acting it out. One doesn't act out of consequence. One acts out of belief in consequence. Any decision, irrespective of its underlying intentions, is necessarily grounded in a canonical idea of consequence: one that evolves in a manner intertwined with causality. When integrated across a lifetime, singular acts of faith are what constitute the outcomes and results of one's life. It is precisely for this reason that hedonistic and transient exercises, that carry no permanence and fulfill no objective or aspiration, are degenerative. They aren't contributory, and detract from the actualization of one's highest ideals. In essence, they're bereft of a belief in lasting consequence.

Naturally, this subliminal faith (or lack thereof) that motivates one's acts is easily conflated with reason - and why shouldn't it be? The demarcation between the two (consequence and its self-belief) is not as easily drawn as one might imagine. Pragmatically, it would seem terribly obvious that belief in consequence is tantamount to consequence itself, since the two are inextricable from one another. It is one's belief in an idea that motivates a derivative act with respect to the idea. Sans this belief, isn't the idea worthless in and of itself? Under the circumstances of everyday life, certainly.

One, however, bears an epistemic obligation to recognize that consequence is capable of existing in independence, should its self-belief be dissociated from it.

In order to facilitate this dissociation, one must first trace the origins of the passivity of the faith. It may be the case that it is underpinned by an inability to ascertain or verify any truth transcendent to the mind, alternatively labeled a proclivity to Solipsism. If one were to act solely with regards to this proclivity, hedonism would predominate. It doesn't, given that the faith itself is subliminal and subject to a vehement conscious refutation of the idea. If one were indeed to be enslaved by the constraints of the mind, living a transcendental life would be an unreachable prospect.

If one ceases to eradicate this faith, they'd be unable to dissociate consequence from its self-belief, and consequently, unable to live out a conscious line of thought defiant of the constraints of their own mind. For all intents and purposes, that isn't at all a palatable prospect.

Then again, construing the world as an imaginative fiction possesses its own aesthetics. Psychologically, one's self-identity will then no longer remain attached to the consequences they'd see unravel in their own life, but instead, in how they choose to perceive those consequences. Kant's Transcendental Idealism may in fact be a proxy to this idea; one's ability to mediate his or her modes of experience may be equivalent to transforming experience into a fiction of their mind.

Ultimately, the dichotomy is indeterminate, and likely to remain so. It appears that it is solely that the circumstances of one's life that are worthy of eliciting either perspective.