Most of what we will ourselves to do is a response to this thing we call “reality”.
Reality is the surrounding stuff we can’t easily change. We can change some things, but they operate on immutable, universal rules. A few clear examples are the color black, pain, and adrenaline.
To put it more simply, reality is the part of existence that we all agree on.
Philosophers debate endlessly about this, but knowing the nature of reality has very limited practical use because it doesn’t remove the components of cause-and-effect.
The tricky part about reality is that the purpose we use to perceive and do something with it will profoundly define how we see it.
The mechanism of cause-and-effect exists in various forms beyond human perception (though even that is hotly debated):
- Physical cause and effect (e.g., a ball rolling across the ground).
- An abstraction of the event (e.g., the thing that is the same with all balls that roll across the ground).
- Contact of the thing with other things (e.g., the ball’s relationship with the ground).
- Imagination of that thing (e.g., when an individual perceives a ball rolling and all their thoughts linked to it).
Uncertain
The trouble with reality is that it’s never 100% certain. Instead, most things in reality are likelihoods, and then we trust the gaps aren’t relevant.
Some intelligent, thoughtful people will fall into an existential froth over how we can’t 100% prove anything.
There are deductively only a few possibilities for acting in light of this uncertainty:
- Everything really does exist, so existential uncertainty about it is silly.
- Everything doesn’t exist and is some sort of illusion or fabrication. But, it’s reliable enough to predict things somewhat accurately, so it’s not worth worrying about.
- Everything is unknowable, but we can’t really know, so it’s probably one of the two above and should be treated as silly or not worth worrying about.
Since reality itself is filtered through our perception, we have trouble imagining reality without our thoughts tangled in it.
We can’t know anything for certain, so that uncertainty means we must believe there was both a state we remembered (even if it was a few seconds ago) and a state that exists now that we don’t know.
One thing we can’t attribute to our minds is legitimate pain, since something must cause that, and it’s not reasonable to assume we fabricated it for our purposes.
Since pain is so certain, we’re forced to believe one of a few possible value structures:
- From our perspective, reality is nothing but pain. This is the most accurate if we don’t believe anything beyond it, but it’s absolutely useless from a cultural standpoint.
- There are presently unknown good things. This requires belief in the unknown, but it allows us to accomplish and inspire others toward meaningful actions.
Experience
We have sensations and experiences, but those aren’t technically what we call “reality”. Instead, we form small values out of reality and call that reality:
- Light waves are a frequency of light that hits our eyeballs, but the color “blue” is a mental label that uses language to make sense of the optic nerve’s interpretation of those frequencies.
- Scent is a cluster of molecules picked up by the nose, but we interpret the scent itself using feelings and language.
- Our nerve endings detect things we touch, but then we assign groupings to them, like “sticky” or “creamy”.
Time is particularly difficult to understand. The past only exists in our memories, and the future only exists in our imagination, so the only thing we actually experience is a consecutive string of “now” instances that we treat as a passage of time. We believe it to be constant because we’re relatively accurate at tracking it, but those instances of “now” transition more quickly to our perception when we’re not paying attention (such as being engaged in habitual work or daydreaming).
Even without outward evidence, some things exist because of the pure principle that our minds create them. A relationship between two people, for example, is simply a person’s collection of memories, beliefs, and ideas about another person, with the other person having something resembling the same. If there were no minds, there’d be no relationships.
Facts
Facts are aspects of understanding that do exist, to the best we can define them. They are values based on what is true. We often believe incorrect things, but share a remarkable number of conclusions about reality with most other people.
Multiple facts can’t contradict each other, though different points of view can imply that two true statements are contradictions. Since we tend to prioritize certain things, we’ll grab more facts that confirm our preconceived bias unless we’ve disciplined ourselves otherwise. It takes tremendous patience to look beyond initial impressions.
We can’t precisely grasp facts as they are in nature, but we can assemble them into stories we do understand. Other people tend to interpret the same stories, and we will then “agree” on seeing the same stuff if we communicate back-and-forth. For the sake of conforming to or repelling others’ beliefs, we tend to rewire many parts of our understanding, and that feedback is necessary to validate what we see.
Good facts are often difficult to find. Usually, we must purpose ourselves to seek diligently for them, and they’re typically not that useful by themselves.
To find good facts, we require hefty amounts of analysis, as well as reaffirming truths we already know. Facts are easier to internalize if we use education and proper use of technology to increase our understanding, but who we listen to will profoundly influence us.
Our story-based method of understanding interferes with finding immaculate truth. As we gain awareness, we can prevent our feelings and beliefs from interfering, but it’s never perfect, even with training. Beyond any practical point, unbiased thinking isn’t useful.
When people indicate an assertion that isn’t necessarily true to be patently obvious, they may have a hidden purpose to obscure the truth. Other times, their perspective has a different set of values that define how their bias runs. Often, everyone is at least somewhat correct, though some are certainly more correct than others.
No matter how much post-modern philosophy denies it, there are universal qualities within humanity. The thing that’s constantly changing is our perceptions, but by comparison, reality itself is quite unmoving. Even aspects of aesthetic, which are relative in their finer points, have human-made absolutes in the general case.
Details
When we analyze reality closely, every single thing can be divided indefinitely. Taken far enough, we have many tiny components, but we can never find an end to the smallest possible things we can divide (e.g., a human body has many parts, one of its parts is a heart, one of its heart valves is a muscle, etc.).
The small components form parts of a whole. The entire collection, whatever it is, is (typically) of dramatically more value to us than the individual parts. We tend to find value in the collective more than the components, either for our purposes or what we love. That added value usually includes something that makes us feel like the thing is somehow more complete.
We typically see the entire thing first, then must observe closely to find the parts. We will then discover patterns within the parts that permeate the collective thing. When that collective becomes a part of a larger collective, the larger collective will either reflect the pattern as well or appear to be disordered.
Wisdom and understanding come through seeing the parts that fit into most things, with one exception: cultural sensibilities will define some patterns across seemingly unrelated domains as taboo to address.
Denial
Accepting reality at its most raw can force overwhelming changes. Most people deny or adapt elements of reality to cope with those changes (especially if it’ll affect their social standing), and the easiest ways to do it are by altering language a little to shift the implications of the story portrayed by reality.
Most people are terrified of the consequences of reality in its rawest form, so their habitual mode of thinking will subconsciously alter their views to fit more easily with what they knew before the new discovery. In this case, they find more usefulness in their past perception of reality than in the updated information they’re witnessing.
The only cure for a defective understanding is love from both the conveyor (to expedite the change through gentleness) and by the receiver (to forgive and release).
Application
We shouldn’t be hasty in judging something as reality, since we could be wrong. We also should be quick to disrespect our opinions of what we perceive.
Believing things are changing is usually more useful and safe than believing in things staying the same.
Test what you know against what you’re told, and don’t presume one thing is more correct until you’ve thoroughly examined it and can trust the source.
Each of us must find our journey to truth in our own way, and there’s no clear answer or pattern that applies to everyone.
Whether we can or can’t know reality doesn’t really matter. It’s very consistent either way. Even if we’re really in some dream, we can find meaning through doing the best with that dream’s rules, and living the good life requires more performance than concerning ourselves with what may or may not exist.