When I was seven, I loved convincing myself I was in a movie. I thought that someone out there could see what I was doing and was deeply interested in the plot of my life. No, I didn’t have any deep-seated narcissist problems or a traumatising childhood — it was just fun to play pretend. But this trend goes beyond innocent child’s play. More people than we think have this behaviour of assuming their existence and actions carry significance beyond what is true. The motivations behind this behaviour are complex and differ across the various manifestations of this trend. I like to think there are 3 categories of manifestations: the make-believers, the skeptics and the hopeful.
The Make-Believers: Recognise their existence in this world, but believe it has a special significance.
The Truman Show, a popular 20th century movie, depicts how a man was raised inside a simulated television show which broadcasted everything in his life. An additional twist I’d like to add is what if he had been imagining up his reality-television life?
Of course, if you outright think you live in a movie, that’s an actual mental health issue. The Make-Believers I’m referring to here live their lives as though they are in a movie, and occasionally toy with the possibility that they actually are. Others might wonder if they live in their own virtual reality game. Essentially, this category is for people who consider it possible that they have an entire narrative crafted around themselves that holds more weight than that of others’.
We could chalk this up to a huge ego or attention-seeking tendencies, but this phenomenon definitely runs deeper.
The first reason is understanding. Life is full of ups and downs, and sometimes people feel they are “targeted”. The belief that we are special and our problems or happiness holds particular importance helps us make sense of life’s narrative. We convince ourselves that everything has a purpose, and sometimes we might think hey, at least this makes a hell of a good story.
The more subconscious reason is existence. Our entire existence is shaped by our experiences and perspectives. Humans, as a race, think very highly of ourselves and we fundamentally find it difficult to accept that our existence is sometimes inconsequential in the eyes of others. Of course, we have loved ones who care, but we will never be remembered or thought about 24/7. As the old saying goes, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” If we exist but no one observes us to exist, or perceives our existence, then do we really? In philosophy, this concept is most similar to solipsism, a notion that nothing can be truly real unless it is perceived to be so.
We constantly seek ways to justify the significance of our existence. Let’s look at Youtube or Instagram. We have the ability to display every aspect of our lives, with the belief that someone out there is watching us and caring about what we do. Why? This adds colour and weight to our actions, because we need people to perceive our lives the way we perceive it. We crave understanding and connection, and we struggle to accept that there are gaps in time where we technically do not exist.
“You know sometimes, to get perspective, I like to think about a spaceman on a star incredibly far away. And our problems don’t matter to him because we’re just a distant point of light. But he feels sorry for me, because he has an incredibly powerful microscope, and he can see my face. [waves to the sky] I’m okay! No I’m not.” — Michael Scott from “The Office”, the epitome of solipsism.
The Skeptics: Outright reject the nature of reality and believe this world is fake.
The Matrix. Inception. The Maze Runner. Countless Black Mirror Episodes.
The Skeptics wonder if this world could be fake, and an unseen authority is monitoring us. We live in a simulation. We live in an experiment set-up. Our dreams are the true reality. Etc. Etc.
This is a notch less fantastical than the first category, as potential tech developments make these possibilities…well, possible.
In 2003, Nick Bostrom published three postulations on the future of humanity, one of which was the Simulation Argument. The Simulation Argument asserts that “if there were a substantial chance that our civilisation will ever get to the post-human stage and run many ancestor-simulations, then how come you are not living in such a simulation?” Of course there are many layers of argumentation to this, which I won’t get into. You can check out this post for a better explanation of the theory and its possible implications. My focus is the psychology behind the theory’s origins, which many believe is another form of collective solipsism.
“The discussion of Bostrom’s three possibilities involves … an attempt to say something profound about the Universe by extrapolating from what humans in the 21st Century are up to. The argument boils down to: “We make computer games. I bet super-beings would too, only they’d be awesome!” — BBC
This perspective champions the idea that we think our world is carefully simulated because it mimics something we, as a society, believe we might do. This could be possible, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a product of egocentricity. We can’t completely blame ourselves for this chain of thought. What humans perceive is shaped by our own experience as a species, and our wildest postulations on future experiments and the intentions of super-intelligent species are merely based on our own preconceptions. This is an inane limitation that reflects more on our biological and cognitive shortcomings than some form of species-wide psychological flaw.
The second aspect to this, closely resembling a behaviour of the Make-Believers, is that we want answers. For a species claiming to have complete control over its “fate” or “destiny”, it is very difficult for us to reconcile with unprecedented events. In some ways, questioning the authenticity of our reality is a coping mechanism. If we go through something bad, it’s an external individual’s fault or it makes us a more interesting, three-dimensional “character”. (Some people go so far as to applaud tragic experiences, as they believe such events shape more interesting “narratives” and prevent “characters” from being terminated from the simulation.)
The Hopeful: Recognise their existence in our world, but believe they are watched over by supreme, ubiquitous beings.
Why do people believe in religion, fengshui, horoscopes and karma?
There are many possible, legitimate reasons for people to pursue spiritual enlightenment. It would be naive to loop everyone into a single generalisation and explain this complex phenomenon that has spanned almost as long as mankind itself. Each and every one of us will have a different religion (if any), and a different reason for having specific beliefs. Even so, our extent of belief, commitment to faith and our personal relations with these unearthly figures will be unique. There are countless considerations we could discuss, but I will only attempt to explain one possible reason why people believe these unseen forces watch over them.
Humans have a very distinct sense of agency — we know we have control, and it’s almost unbelievable when we don’t. Spiritual beliefs hold the key to helping us reconcile with the impossible. For instance, religion is more commonly observed by those on their deathbeds or in the battlefield. The concept of death, a plug being pulled and just wiping the lights out of your existence, is inconceivable. We can’t remember a time in our lives where we never possessed consciousness, and to think that we will never again hold independent thought is terrifying. Whether it pertains to death, or any other unfortunate scenario, spiritual beliefs give us control and acceptance.
Another aspect to this is simply our human nature. It’s embedded inside us to believe that everything happens for a reason, so we project the intentionality we possess onto events in our environment. This is known as Animism, where we perceive agency in the complexity and unpredictability around us when in fact, there is none.
These 3 cases might seem distinct, but at the end of the day, this overarching idea of people watching us actually reflects our collective fears, habits and flaws. A running thread we saw was the need for control, and our inability to reconcile with our acute lack of it. We also saw aspects of self-centredness, in-built human “blind spots” and biases of human nature. Perhaps as a society, we should spend less time looking into the distance for answers, and more time reflecting on what’s actually buried deep within.
