You are referring to some overarching reality, with a capital R, which is unknowable in its entirety. Contrast that to one’s own reality, which is both more and less real than the ‘outside world’. There are physical and social forces acting upon us all the time, but how we feel about them, when we even notice them, is what creates our internal reality. Which is vastly more important to our quality of life.
It feels like you’re using the word reality as a duplicate of the phrase personal experience. In that case I would agree. You can absolutely choose how you feel about the things you perceive.
But no amount of choosing how you feel gets you to fly. And no amount of thinking you can fly will ever prove you to be right when you try and fail.
Though you can certainly feel like it’s worth trying again if you’re so choose.
It’s a deliberate use of the word. Because people’s personal experience is their reality. Even among scientists, objective truth isn’t necessarily agreed upon, so aside from specific cases, it’s hard to use it as a guide post towards navigating life. Like you said, there are certainly hard facts in the world which impact us, but how we perceive and interpret these phenomena, how we grapple with theory of mind, creates our reality.
If that sounds a little too woo-woo then how about a more practical and fun example.
Your nose takes up 10 to 15% of your vision.
The capital R reality is that photons are bouncing off of your nose and entering your eye. Your eyes are seeing your nose. And yet, unless pointed out most of the time you don’t even notice that your vision is nose-less when, in fact, a nose is constantly in your field of vision.
Your mind has edited out the existence of your nose.
That’s not woo, that’s neurobiology. But so is the conscious construction of your reality. If you think about getting into a fight, your heart races, despite there being no real threat.
Now if a baseball suddenly hit you on the nose, you would be quite aware of capital R reality making it’s presence known upon you. But how you perceive why that happened and what it means determines the rest of your reality.
You are referring to some overarching reality, with a capital R, which is unknowable in its entirety. Contrast that to one’s own reality, which is both more and less real than the ‘outside world’. There are physical and social forces acting upon us all the time, but how we feel about them, when we even notice them, is what creates our internal reality. Which is vastly more important to our quality of life.
The rules can be bent.
It feels like you’re using the word reality as a duplicate of the phrase personal experience. In that case I would agree. You can absolutely choose how you feel about the things you perceive.
But no amount of choosing how you feel gets you to fly. And no amount of thinking you can fly will ever prove you to be right when you try and fail.
Though you can certainly feel like it’s worth trying again if you’re so choose.
It’s a deliberate use of the word. Because people’s personal experience is their reality. Even among scientists, objective truth isn’t necessarily agreed upon, so aside from specific cases, it’s hard to use it as a guide post towards navigating life. Like you said, there are certainly hard facts in the world which impact us, but how we perceive and interpret these phenomena, how we grapple with theory of mind, creates our reality.
If that sounds a little too woo-woo then how about a more practical and fun example.
Your nose takes up 10 to 15% of your vision.
The capital R reality is that photons are bouncing off of your nose and entering your eye. Your eyes are seeing your nose. And yet, unless pointed out most of the time you don’t even notice that your vision is nose-less when, in fact, a nose is constantly in your field of vision.
Your mind has edited out the existence of your nose.
That’s not woo, that’s neurobiology. But so is the conscious construction of your reality. If you think about getting into a fight, your heart races, despite there being no real threat.
Now if a baseball suddenly hit you on the nose, you would be quite aware of capital R reality making it’s presence known upon you. But how you perceive why that happened and what it means determines the rest of your reality.