From upstream looking down, we see other people as extras in a movie and ourselves as the lead, but who is upstream of us and what do they see? Who’s sitting in our audience, and do we even care? No one thinks of themself as an extra or a b-lister in their own production; we all think we’re the star of our own show, and that actually is the case because, whatever else might be going on, you’re the only self-aware being in your dreamstate bubble. Whether or not anyone else is real in their own bubble is knowably unknowable. No one can ever know if anyone else is real in the sense we know ourselves to be, or if they’re all just non-player characters which, in the end, we all are.

Hang on tight. This metaphor has a lot of moving parts and a tendency to sprawl.