Reality

What is reality?
It is what is real, right?
It is the things that are grounded. The things around us that are certain and known.
If you look around, you will see your environment. You will see your hands, you will see your body, you will see your feet. What you see is reality, isn’t it?
Not quite.
What you are actually seeing, is your brain’s interpretation of reality. Your eyes take in messages that is interpreted in the mind. This can be easily manipulated.
Hallucinogens have long been used by mankind to warp their perception of reality. Schizophrenia shows how people can perceive something is there that is not. The mind is malleable, it is vulnerable to manipulation.
So, is this simply an exception? If one day you start see a purple elephant, you know that elephants are not purple and so you know this is a hallucination.
But where do you know elephants are not purple? Most people have never seen an elephant in person. One knows elephants are grey from books or television. But then it is quite possible that there are elephants that are purple and you have not found out about it.
Even then, you are relying on your memories to tell you that elephants are not purple. But memories can become distorted. The brain does not save memories in stone. It is an organ. It is constantly changing and so some memories are forgotten and some are changed. The imagination can invent details where there are not. The brain fills in blanks. Memories are not solid recordings but the brain’s storage of information that corresponds to an event that occurred in reality. There are ways to manipulate this as well. Hypnotism can make people think they remember something they do not. Sometimes, the mere suggestion that you know someone you don’t remember can cause you to invent a memory that may not be there.
How do you know that you did not simply pop into existence this second and everything you have ever known is merely a fabricated memory. Well, you know this is not so because its not possible, right?
If I jump I will fall. If I stop breathing I will die. Inside I have a skeleton. I eat food to live.
Anything that deviates from the above facts are not possible.
But how do we know what is possible and not?
We can perform experiments. We can take an apple and drop it and it will fall. But then, you are only perceiving it to fall and when it is done all you have is a memory.
Then you can get other people to do the experiment with you and then it will be for certain. But how does one know they are not misperceiving?
How do you know the apple will fall based on it falling before hand. If you watch a dog go outside and it lies down. Does that necessarily mean that anytime a dog goes outside it will lie down?
Even if the apple falls one hundred times out of one hundred, how do you know it is going to fall on the one hundred and first time?
What one has at best is a suspicion. A suspicion can be strong but never certain.
There are laws of nature like gravity, that we do not truly understand. We only understand models. We understand that when something leaves the ground, it must come back down. Our word for this is gravity. This word inspires an image in our mind. But it may be nothing like “reality.”
For some time, scientists followed the plum pudding model of atoms. Atoms were believed to be electrons embedded in a positive sphere. This is what atoms were seen as. The model worked when one performed experiments or fitted into one’s perception of everyday life and so it was reality. But then came Rutherford and his students. Their experiment showed an effect not expected from the plum pudding model. It was then proposed that a different model be invented to match the results. Even the model we have today, is merely a representation of atoms. They are used because in an experiment they explain what is happening. It is quite possible that the model will change in the future.
Our minds cannot comprehend the universe and its forces, it can only see models.
So, it seems that reality is not merely something solid. The nature of reality seems more fluid and subject to change. By that definition it is not truly reality as this word means certainty.
Hence there is no reality, hence nothing is true.
It follows then that everything is permitted.
If the laws of the world are not certain then it follows that anything can happen. It is not necessarily guaranteed to happen but one should not be surprised if it does.
The world, yours and mine, is rooted in ideas.
And ideas are rooted in the minds of men.
One must realise that ideas are not certain.
And yet throughout the world, people kill and destroy; all in the name of their ideas. They are certain in the conviction that these ideas are true. But even when you prove the idea wrong, they do not see it. That is because humans are not designed to see the truth. Humans have no organ in their bodies dedicated to sensing the truth. We are mere creatures with poor facilities, woefully under prepared to understand the universe. But rather than face our helplessness, we construct our own false realities and be content with this.
Most of the time this is not even conscious behaviour. Note how many people see the world naturally in their favor. How, conveniently, the world is set up that they are privileged or special. Note that anyone who challenges this idea will be faced with anger and even violence, primal behavior in response to a reasonable suggestion.
We have evolved to believe in illusions in order to cope with the world. It is my theory in the least, that over generations, those who are overwhelmed by the world succumb to depression or anxieties and are less healthy than those who delude themselves. Hence, humanity is prone to delusion whether through a successful cultural tendency or a successful genetic tendency.
Though, it must be noted that those who see the truth can obtain a strength unmatched by those who succumb to delusion.
People still model society after these delusions. They create traditions, taboos, laws and conventions that almost always are rooted in irrational thinking. They invent reasons to justify laws but in the end their laws may not do as they say. Laws are meant to serve man but more often then not man serves laws. A lot of times these laws, taboos, etc. merely serve a minority who propagates them in the hope of benefiting somehow.
Nevertheless, people who dedicate their lives to finding the truth often first stumble upon the first half of the maxim.
Nothing is true: the suggestion that your perception of reality, of society, of the rules are false.