The Story: Returning to your home town, to find it exactly as you left it
Many travellers and adventurers, having spent years outside of the bubble they were born in, are often puzzled to return home and find things almost exactly as they left them. Their old colleagues are still working in the same jobs, dating the same women that they always said they would break up with, plodding along as if their life wasn’t a conscious act of creation – but instead, a train on a single rail, going back and forth between destinations… Or a simple clockwork toy, with a basic, prescribed set of behaviours, clapping its cymbals and dancing on the spot… A non-player character following its script. As a wise man once said, there is nothing which can show you how much you have changed, as to go back to a place where things are always the same.
But what if they are not just the same in our minds, but literally the same – never having changed since we’ve left? And when we get back, the simulation in which we live, struggles to formulate some sort of baseline level of story to present us with, when we return to our hometown. Our consciousness breathes life into these places, making it seem real once more, just for a few days or weeks while we visit. There’s no way we can ever know for sure, for whatever is outside the bounds of our awareness, must always remain outside the bounds of our knowledge.
In this episode, Kurt has a conversation with Aaron about his momentous return to his hometown, experiencing that feeling as if nothing has changed, noticing how people don’t recognise him any more, wondering what that says about him, and about the nature of the universe we live in. Please join us for another reality-shattering episode of … The Paradise Paradox!
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Anomalies of consciousness – Episode 19
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