Bruce
Reality
Bruce writes "Is reality just our perception or something more then that? Can anyone really claim to be the master of it's own reality?
The classic argument that there is no absolute reality revolves around an assumption that since all personal realities are equal and real to the people who believe them, there is no absolute reality. However, the personal realities had to come from somewhere. Tell me, how do you learn about the world?
Simply. Through perception. I think we can all agree on that. We can percieve that we fall if we jump, we feel the pain if we hit something, before anyone can even tell us about these things. We percieve some things before the society starts 'imposing its reality on you' as people like to put it, although that plays a big part in shaping it later on.
The material world isn't an illusion, either. The material world was there before us, before our silly ideas about it, before the Earth was formed, and we are just one little speck in the universe. It may be pleasing to the ego to think it's all in our head, something we created, but it's rather the opposite; it created us. All we can create are ideas and perceptions about it, and perhaps strive to make a difference.
Why personal realities?
The real problem in talking and thinking about reality is that it's too big and too complex to comprehend. None of us here can really comprehend the vastness of the universe, or what else exists.
What we call reality, actually, is the world of our perceptions, illusions, beliefs, interpretations... but it all fails short of the full glory of the real thing. We create interpretations about what we see, too. Looking at the lightning, some might see god's will, some a natural phenomenon, and no two people will have the same picture in their mind about it, although they might be very much alike. Now, I'm not saying that personal realities are a bad thing. On the contoary. I know what I know, you know what you know, but being statisfied with what you know and not looking for a greater truth is something what's bad, in my view. It leads to complacency and decay, eventually. "Now I know that I don't know anything." has a lot of meaning here.
So what's real then?
I'd like to introduce this term; real reality. The whole of existing things in the universe, basically, everything, composes the real reality. Through perception of what's around us, through thinking and learning, you develop your own view of it, which is your personal reality. The society teaches a standardised view of reality to make communications easier, but it also falls under the cathegory of illusions and perceptions, and it's hardly real. It's more like a compromise of many different personal ones, and a lousy one at that, because the best, unique parts were taken out of it to reach a common consensus. The reason why many people reject the idea of having only one reality is that they reject the commonly accepted one. The problem is that the commonly accepted reality is mistaken for the real thing.
However, what IS the real thing I've been talking about? I don't know. Obviously. Nobody ever will. You can get closer and closer to it, and still won't be close enough, not now, not ever, to solidly claim what's real and what isn't. Then again, you've always got the shield of belief when it comes to speaking about what's real and what isn't, you can always say you believe, and that is an argument beyond argumentation."