7 ms·

PKD was such a fascinating and tragic person. I always recommend the book VALIS if you really want to get inside his mind. Truly brilliant man, but also full of

PKD was such a fascinating and tragic person. I always recommend the book VALIS if you really want to get inside his mind. Truly brilliant man, but also full of pain, and unfortunately that pain often spilled out and hurt those around him. > If he could fake being a human so well, how did he know that everyone else wasn’t doing the same? I have this problem with friendships and relationships. I can pretend to be friends with anyone, while secretly harboring strong dislike of that person. Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. (I'm in therapy, and this is something I'm working on.)

finnh 4y ago
Good luck, in all sincerity. I think that feeling of actual connection is something recognized by both parties, and hopefully you can let that fear go.
jason-phillips 4y ago
> Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. We're all pretending; some do it blindly. It's easier to see once one is aware of that which underlies the automaton in all of us.
- spatley 4y ago
  A supplementary point of view: as we all pretend, blindly or not, what matters is how we relate to each other and treat each other. I have no way of knowing what people really think of me. But how they treat me affects me deeply.
throwanem 4y ago
"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know" - by all accounts including this one, as accurate a description of Dick as of Lord Byron. I've had lovers like that, and for all that they're immensely exciting and compelling personalities especially at first, it ends up being every bit as intense a relief to be done with them in the end, because of all the trouble they can't or won't help bringing in train. I think the only true way to know you have the respect of such a man is when you tell him he's out of your life for good, and he listens. Don't get me wrong - I do love a good Dick! The man wrote beautifully. But I'm just as glad not to have known him in person.
- sonofhans 4y ago
  FWIW I know two people who did know him, and spent a lot of time with him — Ursula LeGuin (RIP) and my old lit prof at PSU, Tony Wolk. They both reported him to be warm, humane, erratic, brilliant, fascinating and rewarding to be around.
  - pa7ch 4y ago
    Do you know where to find Ursula's accounts of this? I've always been interested in her writing and life.
    - sitkack 4y ago
      I have to say, she is a damn fine writer.
  - throwanem 4y ago
    Sure, no doubt; I'd say the same of the man I had most in mind while writing my prior comment. It's just that that's not all there is to say.
madaxe_again 4y ago
I’m working on pretty much the same thing with my therapist, who I unfortunately seem to enjoy confusing and evading with my freeform personality more than I do being therapised by them. Shit, it’s my money. VALIS and the Exegesis are a good look at his end state, but some of his non-sf work also gives a pretty clear insight into the man - “Mary and the Giant” and “Confessions of a Crap Artist” spring to mind. Actually so do “The Broken Bubble” and “In Milton Lumkey Territory”. They’re all deeply uncomfortable and utterly palpable works - there’s real pain and anguish and alienation graved into the platens, stories of closeness morphing into terror and estrangement as a natural result of intimacy. His whole thing was Baudrillardian, the real versus the consensus, perception versus reality - and his non-SF works lay it out bare, without any of the allegorical window dressing. I love the man, and feel real empathy for him, as many of the questions which plagued him are those which are also ever present in my mind. Should we ever have met, I am certain we would have hated each other, lovingly.
mpol 4y ago
Seneca said real friendship has 2 attributes. You trust someone as much as you trust yourself. And you talk with the other person the same way you talk to yourself when you are alone. Now, you could easily know if that is true for yourself. I am not sure how easy it is to know it of your friend.
- gptgpp 4y ago
  Hate to dumb down this interesting conversation, but... You guys talk to yourselves when you're alone? When I'm alone I kind of like... stop existing? It's made me come to the conclusion that our identity hugely depends on social constructs and our relationships with others. I have thoughts but they're definitely not conversational. It's like, "me hungry, want lasagna" or thinking about mathematical/programming concepts, or "I should read more about this" or "I'm sad/happy this happened." Somebody help me out here... please give me an example of how you talk to yourself when you are alone? What is that like? You have an actual dialogue with another entity that is also you? It's very hard for me to wrap my head around. edit: Nevermind found an answer... It's from "psychology today" which I know is not the best, but it seems to cite an actual study and be by an actual psychologist. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201110/not-everyone-conducts-inner-speech https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-exper... Seems the experience of inner monologues/dialogues has a huge amount of variation and isn't well understood. Neat! I guess we can include Seneca was an inner-monologue-er. So you guys think to yourselves but whenever you change your mind you experience it as some sort of conversation with yourself happening. Cool.
  - StrictDabbler 4y ago
    I strongly suspect that this is not a difference in internal experience so much as it is a difference in expectation, just as with aphantasia (the inability to imagine). Imagine a bicycle. How many sections does it have? Where do the pedals connect? Which bar supports the seat? What color is it? What shape of handles does it have? What kind of tires? Does it have lights? Does it have luggage rack? Some people look at their internal version of a bicycle and say "oh, I must have aphantasia. I think of a bicycle and a photograph of a bicycle doesn't appear in my mind." Other people are perfectly satisfied with the blurry sort-of bicycle that they imagined until you start asking about specifics. I think the inner monologue question is similar. The inner monologue is a ((set of echoes)(set of impressions)(series of words)) that move back and forth ((in time) (in your mind))(((competing for expression) (attempting to be expressed) (expressed only to you (to your internal ear))) in bits and pieces that you can ((experience)(hear)(perceive)(decide to treat) as) a coherent whole. Sometimes it feels like a book unspooling, sometimes it feels like the paragraph I just wrote. When a person compares their internal talk to the internal talk in a movie, sometimes the person feels the movie is accurate, sometimes the person feels the movie is inaccurate, but the actual internal experience is probably very similar in both cases. What differs is the person's expectations of an "internal conversation." If you expect it to sound like a voiceover you will be disappointed and you will think "everybody else must be different from me". That's not (I suspect) the case. I think we mostly just have different ideas of how to process our fictional abstractions of the concept.
x86x87 4y ago
But how do you explain what happened to Kevin's cat? There are also 2 PKD flavors: before and after Valis. Almost a completely different PKD.
escapedmoose 4y ago
Valis is good but I wouldn’t start with it. I tell people to get their feet wet with A Scanner Darkly
more_corn 4y ago
I have been thinking about friendship a lot recently. My regrets always center around not treating my friends as well as they deserve. I’ve decided something that might be of help. Simply be the friend you would want. If someone doesn’t like me I wouldn’t want them to pretend. Not in a mean way, but in a clear way. There are 7 B people in the world. No loss of two of them don’t get along. If someone does like me I’d want them to remain steadfast and reliable. I’d want them to take a moment to think of me and do little things that show it. That’s the friend I’ve decided to try to be. It has simplified and clarified my life. There’s no fear of pretending because I’m not pretending. Somehow that alleviates the fear that others are pretending. There’s no fear people won’t support me when I need it because I embrace the role of unwavering support. When I express the behavior I want to see, I feel it reflected back. Maybe because I’m the one I spend the most time with and I’m becoming better company. I become the thing I want to see in this world. And there’s comfort in that.

finnh 4y ago

Good luck, in all sincerity. I think that feeling of actual connection is something recognized by both parties, and hopefully you can let that fear go.

jason-phillips 4y ago

> Then when I finally connect with somebody I do like, I have this constant fear that they're the ones pretending, while harboring resentment towards me. We're all pretending; some do it blindly. It's easier to see once one is aware of that which underlies the automaton in all of us.

spatley 4y ago
A supplementary point of view: as we all pretend, blindly or not, what matters is how we relate to each other and treat each other. I have no way of knowing what people really think of me. But how they treat me affects me deeply.

throwanem 4y ago

"Mad, bad, and dangerous to know" - by all accounts including this one, as accurate a description of Dick as of Lord Byron. I've had lovers like that, and for all that they're immensely exciting and compelling personalities especially at first, it ends up being every bit as intense a relief to be done with them in the end, because of all the trouble they can't or won't help bringing in train. I think the only true way to know you have the respect of such a man is when you tell him he's out of your life for good, and he listens. Don't get me wrong - I do love a good Dick! The man wrote beautifully. But I'm just as glad not to have known him in person.

sonofhans 4y ago
FWIW I know two people who did know him, and spent a lot of time with him — Ursula LeGuin (RIP) and my old lit prof at PSU, Tony Wolk. They both reported him to be warm, humane, erratic, brilliant, fascinating and rewarding to be around.
- pa7ch 4y ago
  Do you know where to find Ursula's accounts of this? I've always been interested in her writing and life.
  - sitkack 4y ago
    I have to say, she is a damn fine writer.
- throwanem 4y ago
  Sure, no doubt; I'd say the same of the man I had most in mind while writing my prior comment. It's just that that's not all there is to say.

madaxe_again 4y ago

I’m working on pretty much the same thing with my therapist, who I unfortunately seem to enjoy confusing and evading with my freeform personality more than I do being therapised by them. Shit, it’s my money. VALIS and the Exegesis are a good look at his end state, but some of his non-sf work also gives a pretty clear insight into the man - “Mary and the Giant” and “Confessions of a Crap Artist” spring to mind. Actually so do “The Broken Bubble” and “In Milton Lumkey Territory”. They’re all deeply uncomfortable and utterly palpable works - there’s real pain and anguish and alienation graved into the platens, stories of closeness morphing into terror and estrangement as a natural result of intimacy. His whole thing was Baudrillardian, the real versus the consensus, perception versus reality - and his non-SF works lay it out bare, without any of the allegorical window dressing. I love the man, and feel real empathy for him, as many of the questions which plagued him are those which are also ever present in my mind. Should we ever have met, I am certain we would have hated each other, lovingly.

mpol 4y ago

Seneca said real friendship has 2 attributes. You trust someone as much as you trust yourself. And you talk with the other person the same way you talk to yourself when you are alone. Now, you could easily know if that is true for yourself. I am not sure how easy it is to know it of your friend.

gptgpp 4y ago
Hate to dumb down this interesting conversation, but... You guys talk to yourselves when you're alone? When I'm alone I kind of like... stop existing? It's made me come to the conclusion that our identity hugely depends on social constructs and our relationships with others. I have thoughts but they're definitely not conversational. It's like, "me hungry, want lasagna" or thinking about mathematical/programming concepts, or "I should read more about this" or "I'm sad/happy this happened." Somebody help me out here... please give me an example of how you talk to yourself when you are alone? What is that like? You have an actual dialogue with another entity that is also you? It's very hard for me to wrap my head around. edit: Nevermind found an answer... It's from "psychology today" which I know is not the best, but it seems to cite an actual study and be by an actual psychologist. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-experience/201110/not-everyone-conducts-inner-speech https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pristine-inner-exper... Seems the experience of inner monologues/dialogues has a huge amount of variation and isn't well understood. Neat! I guess we can include Seneca was an inner-monologue-er. So you guys think to yourselves but whenever you change your mind you experience it as some sort of conversation with yourself happening. Cool.
- StrictDabbler 4y ago
  I strongly suspect that this is not a difference in internal experience so much as it is a difference in expectation, just as with aphantasia (the inability to imagine). Imagine a bicycle. How many sections does it have? Where do the pedals connect? Which bar supports the seat? What color is it? What shape of handles does it have? What kind of tires? Does it have lights? Does it have luggage rack? Some people look at their internal version of a bicycle and say "oh, I must have aphantasia. I think of a bicycle and a photograph of a bicycle doesn't appear in my mind." Other people are perfectly satisfied with the blurry sort-of bicycle that they imagined until you start asking about specifics. I think the inner monologue question is similar. The inner monologue is a ((set of echoes)(set of impressions)(series of words)) that move back and forth ((in time) (in your mind))(((competing for expression) (attempting to be expressed) (expressed only to you (to your internal ear))) in bits and pieces that you can ((experience)(hear)(perceive)(decide to treat) as) a coherent whole. Sometimes it feels like a book unspooling, sometimes it feels like the paragraph I just wrote. When a person compares their internal talk to the internal talk in a movie, sometimes the person feels the movie is accurate, sometimes the person feels the movie is inaccurate, but the actual internal experience is probably very similar in both cases. What differs is the person's expectations of an "internal conversation." If you expect it to sound like a voiceover you will be disappointed and you will think "everybody else must be different from me". That's not (I suspect) the case. I think we mostly just have different ideas of how to process our fictional abstractions of the concept.

x86x87 4y ago

But how do you explain what happened to Kevin's cat? There are also 2 PKD flavors: before and after Valis. Almost a completely different PKD.

escapedmoose 4y ago

Valis is good but I wouldn’t start with it. I tell people to get their feet wet with A Scanner Darkly

more_corn 4y ago

I have been thinking about friendship a lot recently. My regrets always center around not treating my friends as well as they deserve. I’ve decided something that might be of help. Simply be the friend you would want. If someone doesn’t like me I wouldn’t want them to pretend. Not in a mean way, but in a clear way. There are 7 B people in the world. No loss of two of them don’t get along. If someone does like me I’d want them to remain steadfast and reliable. I’d want them to take a moment to think of me and do little things that show it. That’s the friend I’ve decided to try to be. It has simplified and clarified my life. There’s no fear of pretending because I’m not pretending. Somehow that alleviates the fear that others are pretending. There’s no fear people won’t support me when I need it because I embrace the role of unwavering support. When I express the behavior I want to see, I feel it reflected back. Maybe because I’m the one I spend the most time with and I’m becoming better company. I become the thing I want to see in this world. And there’s comfort in that.