Welcome to Reality

Posted on December 23, 2007
Filed Under Awareness, Fake Culture |

I use the word ‘reality’ a lot here on this site, and it occurs to me somewhat belatedly that people obviously have very different definitions of this word.

To me, reality is existence itself – not merely the human level of existence, but existence in its entirety; every aspect of the manifold universes, both seen and unseen. So, as I understand it, that generally isn’t what people mean when they talk about reality.

An old guy I used to work with, would – in all seriousness - repeat a wonderfully apt phrase to greet people after a holiday; “Welcome back to reality!” In his view, roaming the beaches, watching sunsets, spending time with the family and exploring different corners of the world was an escape from reality. Where as the arduous and repetitive mundane tasks of the work-world were the very definition of reality itself. That’s a ‘reality tunnel’; an individual’s limited perspective on what they define as reality.

The interesting thing about such reality tunnels is that they nearly always define reality by what is known; rather than both known and unknown. It’s not so much that the unknown is a thing to turn away from, but that within a reality tunnel everything outside of itself simply doesn’t need to be considered.

So ‘reality’ from that point-of-view could – in general terms – can be defined as: An anthropocentric belief in defining existence in terms of social interactions. In future then I will refer to that as pseudo-reality…