Last Watched Show: Parks and Recreation - S4E9 - The Trial of Leslie Knope

Reality is pretty real to me, but is it?

The word “real” is used in many situations, but its real meaning often seems to elude us as we give it our own take depending on the situation and context.

How can something be real even if it is through a different layer?##

Sometimes I like to explore possibilities and I wonder:

Let’s begin with something simple. I can touch myself (no dirty dirty things, you dirty dirty reader), therefore it feels real and well, I could say I am real, I exist. That feels correct, of course.

Things can get weird really fast though, especially when dealing with non-material things.

I’m playing a videogame and in the virtual environment I am a.. let’s say Mage. Does it make me a real mage? Perhaps not in real life, but within the ruleset of that virtual world, yes.

Why is it a virtual world though? It exists through rules and a certain envrionment, so even if it is not material, doesn’t it.. exist?

If through the virtual world I get to talk to a person, isn’t the conversation.. real? I mean, that’s two people actually talking through a different layer than usual perhaps, but does it make the conversation any less real? No, of course not (leave objections for later, peasant).

Talking to another human being results in a reaction from us. We may feel hatred, sympathy, we can laugh with or at them, or anything else. So we’ve gotten into deep territory. We’ve had a real conversation which led to feelings, through a layered environment stacked above our main one.

What does it entail? Are those feelings real?

Well, we are feeling them, right? So of course they’re real, that’s just what a feeling is: an emotional state or reaction. If we do feel it then it’s real, if we don’t it’s not real since it doesn’t exist.

But it’s very subjective and it depends on a pletora of thoughts and a mix of expectations, fear and what not. Feelings are built up by our person, our views, ideas, expectations, etc. and are unleashed towards certain objects, kind of like bullets (the feels, it hurts).

The real issue is that while our feelings are real, we are very gullible and not used to this different approach: A different interaction environment requires different skills.

Which means we are very easy to manipulate, we misunderstand easily and build expectations over nothing just as easily.

But that does not make what we feel any less real, we just have to learn how to interact with a different sort of reality in order for our feelings to be correct and not just all over the place, out of control.

I call it reality even if it’s virtual, since results are just as real and consequences too, so how is it not real?

We earn money through virtual jobs, we relate through virtual environments, we are entertained through virtual activities and shows.

We have to embrace this different plane of reality and adapt to it, accept it is real and act accordingly, otherwise we only fail at grasping our own reality.

Also, I often happen to see many people saying “it’s not real” or any sort of this bubbletalk. They fall so deep within this new layer of reality and they don’t even realize what’s going on. They get manipulated by others, they waste money, they ruin their lives, and they get sucked into something they underestimate and refuse to understand.

Then there’s the perceived reality

Our own reality depends on the way we see things. Remember the cubist mosaic? No? Well, read about it. It’s interesting how a madman can ramble, so it should be something interesting for you to read.

Anyway, we do not see reality, what we see is our perceived view, it’s our take on reality. Therefore what we feel is only based upon that perceived view.

We may be in love with somebody and feel happy because we believe we are loved back, but perhaps they’re cheating on us or they do not feel the same.

But since within our reality our love is reciprocated, we do feel happy.

Does the fact we’re wrong make this any less real to us? Not until we know about it.

So there are multiple instances of “reality“, they’re all true and they’re all subjective. We can then say reality is not factual, it’s our take on things and when multiple realities are close (they rarely are the same, we’re not with shared minds after all) that may become consensus, regardless of it being a fact or just crap.

Sure, there’s an actual reality, but it’s not something we can ever see or understand, so there’s no point in saying there’s just one. That does not work for us.

And at last, its meaning varies through time

This makes the concept of real also a bit funky because we should not let it destroy things regardless.

Say you’ve been with somebody for a long while and you have some wonderful moments and memories. It happens that it just doesn’t work for one reason or another, or the other person may just be a douchebag and overtime you suffer.

People tend to turn to hatred at some points and they do not just end a relationship, they poison their past memories according to their new reality.

Reality is a flow, it evolves and changes, we cannot make use of a new reality to erase a past reality. It happened and all we can do is remember about it, be it bad or good. The new reality should be built upon our past experiences rather than used to burn.

tl;dr

In the end, through my enlightened blindness I can say: Reality has multiple layers, endless facets and it constantly changes.

’tis a shame we can only grasp one view at a time.

mbs

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