What is reality?
"What is real? How do you define real? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.
-Morpheus, The Matrix
It has been said that perception is reality. Someone was trying to make the point that the public's perception of a politician WAS their reality, regardless of the truth. Well, politicians not withstanding, I think that this maxim holds more truth than you might realize.
We live our lives taking certain things for granted. We assume that blue is "blue" for everyone, that lonely is "lonely" for everyone, that mashed potatoes are "mashed potatoes" for everyone. I've been following a train of thought, and I think that this might not necessarily be the case.
Your reality, you awareness of the world around you, exists as a picture in your mind. Your body receives external stimuli, smells, sights, sounds, and through a complicated process your mind turns this into your "reality," or the world around you as your brain has interpreted it. But who is to say that your brain interprets these stimuli in the same manner as my brain? One way to illustrate this is to ask someone to describe the color green. You can't can you? You might say that green is the color of grass, or point to a green object and say "this is green." And you would be right, your eyes see a certain wavelength of light and your brain tells you "green" or "blue" or "red." But what if my brain gives me a different "picture" of green? What if the green I see appears blue to you? We don't know any different, you see green and your brain fills in that blade of grass with what you perceive to be green. My brain does the same thing, yet I might see a completely different color than you. The ray of light you are seeing does not change, but what if our brains interpret these signals differently.
Now, we all may actually see the same hue when we see "green," but you have to admit, with as many different tastes and preferences as each individual of the human species has, who is to say that our brains DON'T interpret these signals correctly? This isn't just limited to colors, but to sounds, tastes, everything our external world provides to us so that we can form a three dimensional picture of our world. I taste mashed potatoes, you taste mashed potatoes, but what if they don't taste the same to each person? Isn't this possible? After all, some people don't like the taste of mashed potatoes, some people do. What about music? What if we hear the note "C" differently? Now, the sound itself is a constant. The soundwave for the note "C" will always remain the same, but what if our brains iterpret this signal differently? What about the way the note "C" is produced? Via guitar, saxophone, piano. While the note is the same, the actual tone differs via instrument. What if a "C" chord is played on electric guitar is interpreted differently by our two brains? Afterall, some people like heavy metal, some like blues, some like country.
Now, obviously, this doesn't apply to everything. Pain might be relative, and some of us might be able to tolerate the pain from a broken bone, where some cannot. Some women can take the pain from natural childbirth, and some can't. But if you place your hand on a hot stove, and the heat there is sufficient enought that you will experience cellular damage, that will not change. This is that same for the physical world. The wavelength of light for the color green, or for the soundwave of the note "c" does not change. However, some men look at a woman and see someone very attractive, and others see the same woman, but consider her plain or even ugly. What if our intrepretation of external stimuli varies as much?
What I'm getting at here is that our reality, or what we see when we interact with the outside world, may not be the same as the actual, physical world. You look at an orange basketball and accept it as "orange." Others look at the same ball and think of it as orange. But the only reason for this is that as a child, you were given an object that is universally accepted as "orange" and told "This is orange." From that point on, everything you saw that was the same color you automatically accepted as orange. Colors are fairly consistent, however. Something is either orange or it isn't. But what about other signals? What you hear and accept as "good music" differs from what I think of as "good music." While the beat of the music is a constant, the actual SOUND we hear may differ. The same goes for the taste of food, the feel of an object, the smell of an odor. Some people like the taste of cilantro, some don't. Some people like their beds a certain softness, other may find this same bed uncomfortable. Some people cannot stand the smell of coffee, some like it. While the stimulus itself remains the same, our brain's interpretation of this signal may be as unique to each individual as their fingerprints.
With this in mind, consider the physical world around you. That red pen you're holding is RED, there's no arguing that. But does it look exactly the same to another individual? To that person it might appear what you consider "green." But since both of you have always accpeted the color you see as "red" there's no way to know what it actually looks like. When you're looking at that red pen, you aren't seeing the actual red pen, just what your brain is interpreting as "a red pen." Here is where "perception is reality" comes in.
The reality each individual creates in his or her mind might vary greatly from the next person, and this in turn could vary from the actual physical world. Of course, it is impossible to actually know. You can't change the way your brain interprets input from the physical world. But your perception of the physical world that surrounds you is just that, your own perception. In this, you might say that you are alone in the world. The world your brain creates for you could be vastly different from the world by brain creates for me. All you are is shaped by this world. Your emotions, feelings, beliefs, all are shaped by this world. Considering how varied each human being is in these, isn't it entirely possible that our worlds do vary?
I'm not trying to tell you that our worlds are only limited by our minds as is the philosophy in The Matrix quoted above. Try jumping from one skyscraper to another, and you'll end up a dark stain on the concrete below. All I'm trying to do is open you up to the possibility that human beings are so different possibly because their "worlds" are different.
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