New word of the day from AskOxford:

cosmothetic
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[Brit. kos-moh-THET-ick; US kahz-moh-THET-ick] an adjective meaning 'something that assumes there is an external world'. It is used about a theory of perception that posits the existence of an external world but denies that we have any evidence of it or knowledge about it. [...] From Greek words meaning 'world' plus 'positing'.

When I was a lass, on punishment for various infractions including running with an older boy, I read through the rather small wall of science fiction at the local library. Amongst these indiscimrinately selected tomes was "The Eden Cycle." I didn't care about authors then, and so had no idea who wrote it (it was Raymond Z. Gallun, aka William Callahan). The plot went around what I recognize now as an old sci fi trope that the world was populated post-holocaust by dreamers hooked up to a huge virtual reality network. They experienced their virtual lives as real, and would eventually die out of one and into another, reincarnation style, with no memories of past lives. Some of their fellow dreamers were virtual characters while others were the representations of real dreamers. Of course, somehow one dreamer gets wiser and wiser until s/he "wakes" up.

This story had a profound impact on me, I suppose, because I was terribly unhappy and wished I would wake up to discover it had all been just a dream. The dimension of such virtual dreams in which one could go lucid and thus gain control over it was also an appeal. It may be one reason why Buddhism, albeit of a secular variety, has had a an even more lasting impact on my adult existential understanding. Buddhists, of course, believe the world to be a dream, one in which the dreamer should not invest desire, for desire leads to suffering.

Yet, Buddhists also reason "right living," a doctrine of ethical choices and good works, by their sense of working toward individual and mutual enlightenment. To believe in the dreamlike nature (emphemeral, transitory) of this world, with no promise of another (for secular or agnostic buddhists), isn't to render the matters of this one without importance or consequence. It is, however, to avoid becoming attached to particular interpretive or doctrinal forms, even those most basic ones by which we or the world are socially defined and determined. A cosmothetic view offers the possibility of liberating one's consciousness, to a degree -- of providing one means to relative autonomy.