I vowed to post my comments relative to subjects about which I actually know something; thus, today I am writing about reality. I imagine all who read this post have a notion, and some experience with, the question of what is real?
Many persons believe that reality corresponds exactly to what they can see, touch, taste, hear, or smell. The apple sitting on their dining room table is exactly as it appears to be. It is red, has a certain texture, a certain smell and a certain shape. This particular apple is simply a representative sample of all other apples, although some may be green or yellow or some combination of the two.
Other persons believe that what they experience when they look at the apple is not the apple at all, but simply a representation or picture of the actual apple. The apple, after all, does not jump into our head. We simply experience things like color and shape and smell and our brain does the rest.
Still others believe that we never experience anything in the physical world. What do we experience? We experience our thoughts and nothing more. It seems quite certain that I experience thoughts because I am the sort of entity that thinks. But do I also experience tables and chairs and cows and unicorns or only my thoughts about tables and chairs and cows and unicorns?
We know that we can be deluded by our senses. The mirage appearing on the horizon of a hot desert highway is not a lake, or pond. It is an illusion. I saw the robber as he ran across the road and into the parking lot. He was short, wore a blue flannel shirt, had long hair and was Asian. You saw the same thing, but in your experience he was of medium height, had on a grey sweatshirt and had medium length hair. Eye witness accounts are notroiously unreliable.
So what is real? Is our everyday life lived in a real world? If so, to what extent? Perhaps we are all attached to the Matrix so aptly portrayed in the movie by that title. Don't you ever sense that perhaps things are not really as they seem to you?
I sometimes do, especially when I watch politicians in action, as I did today. I took in perhaps 30 minutes of the Blair House Health Summit from our nations' capitol. I had the distinct impression that the proceedings were staged and unreal. It was a play, carefully staged, full of rhetoric, signifying nothing at all. What was your impression of this play?
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