The Trouble With Reality

a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can then do what you please.”

Arthur Schopenhauer in his aptly titled Studies in Pessimism: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

Arendt saw that in her time, too. “Instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.”

Is reality what we are able to confirm with our five senses? As New Scientist magazine noted some years back, “This answer ignores such problematic entities as electrons, the recession and the number 5,” not to mention a heap of phantom limbs.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that facts, even a lot of facts, do not constitute reality. Reality is what forms after we filter, arrange, and prioritize those facts and marinate them in our values and traditions. Reality is personal.