GOD NEEDS TO PASS AN EYE EXAM
What is reality? What is perspective? Relativity is preferential to attention and consciousness; what a person attends to, dictates their interest, why shouldn't reality and how it is perceived be determined by what a person is willing to accept, willing to live with. Deception is the manipulation of truth, an illusion is not fully a lie as it is a truth under a false circumstance. But what is Truth? How significant is the preservation of Truth? I am firing all these ideas almost through a tommy gun in order to keep you, the reading party, from answering any one of the questions posed. In the case of this entry it is the question itself that is of importance, not the answer. Though I do hope that we both may find answers.
If real is what you can feel, smell, taste, and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain
-Morpheus (The Matrix)
You may agree that reality is subjective, it can be interpreted many ways because of other factors that affect the perception of reality. A child and an adult perceive the world differently, the same goes for the difference between a child and a newborn. Its still the same world but factors such as memories, education, practice--in one word, experience--experience plays a huge part in how we view, interact and accept the world around us. Now one can argue, reality is set stubbornly and certain aspects will remain unaltered regardless of interpretation. For instance the color red will always be the color red. We may not all have the same name for it, we may not all even actually see the same color but we know that a stop sign and a macintosh are both the agreed concept of red. However, precisely because red is only an agreed concept of red, what is to stop someone from calling red, green? We can never know for sure if what I see as red in my mind isn't what you see as green, but still call red because you were taught that whenever you see that particular color, red is the concept that describes it externally to the world. Have I lost anyone? Lets slow down.
Imagine a camera--No imagine two color cameras, both pointed at a red square of construction paper. Now Camera A takes a picture of the red paper and then Camera B does the same. When the pictures are developed it becomes noted that wherever the color red appears, Camera A shows the color green and Camera B shows the actual color red. Now for the sake of simplicity, lets make it that wherever the color green appears, Camera A shows the color red. You would say that Camera A was a faulty mechanism but what about if the world they were taking pictures of (interpreting) was in fact black and white? Now, in a black and white world what difference does it make whether Camera A shows green whenever the concept of red is written, so long as its consistent--so long as the color green always stands in for red it doesn't matter what name you give it.
If I started calling everything I know as red, green, the only problem I would run into is confusion and disagreement when I come in contact with someone else who doesn't share this name for the concept of red. Reality therefore is nothing more than an agreement. Coincidentally, sanity is similarly defined as an agreement of what's "normal". So what is reality? Does Truth have anything to do with it? If so, then it should be said that reality is Truth.
The Truth is a slippery notion. The word melancholy is defined as low in spirits; sad; depressed but the word's etymology is broken down as the greek words melas (black) and chole (bile); black bile. Black bile in fact referred to melancholia's original medical analysis, it was thought to be caused by an imbalance in one of the four basic bodily liquids (blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm). Now regardless of how close this is to today's theory of melancholia and depression in general, to be a chemical or electrical imbalance--it is not true that it is directly caused by an imbalanced distribution of the four bodily liquids. But at one point this was true, or perceived to be true. As was that the Sun and the universe revolved around the Earth, or that that very same Earth was flat. Truths can always deceive, can always be improved or discovered to be lies. Todays lies can become tomorrow's truths, how are we to determine which are which? But regardless of our ability to identify Truth it should still exist. Think of a time when you told the truth but no one believed you, it doesn't matter that they (the majority) disagree with the truth, it is still true. Or does it matter?
If the universe is said to be infinite, then where do possibilities end? I'd say in such a universe there is just enough room for every possibility, at least once. With that in mind, what is the truth of reality? Its whatever helps you understand the universe as you've built it to be comprehensible to yourself. Or, its whatever helps you understand the universe as others have built it to be comprehensible to yourself, in agreement with others. Human brains are only utilized by 10% this isn't a mistake, 10% is all we need to survive and reproduce; anything in excess of 10% might interfere with that natural design. So there's 90% of a universe you don't perceive yet naively we can say we recognize a truth.
The truth is we know nothing, and the ever-expanding universe takes anything we think we know and pulls it apart through time and space, so what's a fact one second has the potential to be a farce the next.
But there is perspective and there is experience; these things are gathered internally and interpreted. Note that they may also be expressed but once again, it becomes lost in the interpretations of others with different perspectives and experiences than you, the expresser.So even the agreement of ideas is questionable as people form different impressions of expressions, however subtle or conscious they are to the fact. But perspectives and experiences do exist. What's to stop a person from living a fantasy? The answer is other people. We are social through thousands years of behavior, culture, and the practical fact that we (humans) are so many, that we can't really avoid one another. Even if we could avoid people for a lifetime we at least need a member of the opposite sex with which to reproduce, or a mother to give us birth. When we create something we need to see it reflected, we need assurance that it is real, so a painting, a symphony, a cake, a script, by its creator is usually let out into the world to be seen, and seen--the world will view a reflection of the creation's creator. So if we made a fantasy world, I bet we'd want at least one person to agree with it, to assure us that it isn't a fantasy.
Its not just a fairy tale thats written by me;
Its not just a loneliness between you and I--
If on magic mountain you find you can breathe
then stay, don't look back, to the blue woven sky
-Pink Love by Blonde Redhead
This finally leads me to one of the questions from above. How significant is the preservation of Truth? The truth is, that the Truth is very worth preserving when it's your Truth, when its essential to your universe and how you find comfort in experiencing it. It just so happens that many truths are agreed upon but every once in a while a radical notion appears that threatens "normalcy" that changes reality from one second to the next, as the universe expands. Living in a fantasy isn't bad so long as it isn't escapism--it has to be a truth, it has to be a reality. Your perspective and experience has to be able to test the boundaries of your fantasy and find it authentic, find it workable and able to assimilate itself to build new logic and physics within this universe.
I'll stop by reminding you that our universe is mostly unknown. The more we discover, the more questions arise; this entry is meant to be full of questions, even the postulated answers should inspire questions, either from you or myself when I return to read what I've written.
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