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Class Discussion Realities Joseph Donovan

I am here today to discuss reality/ies. Reality is defined as, the conjectured state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined (Oxford Dictionary, 2006). When thinking of reality, it can get very philosphical and hard to describe so I'd like to start this discussion with this video, It describes how we as humans like to perceive reality and define it, measure it, and label it, with examples and some other philosphical ideas I will be discussing that relate to realities and perception.1

Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life by Alan WattsWatch until 5:18https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gol8Ifi2ew&list=PL02D3110151849463&index=3

Individual Perceptions

I will now speak about perception and the thought that we individuals, all live in our own perception of reality, influenced by everything that we are, and everything that we have done. There can be no third party objective viewer of reality all we have is our own perception, when the majority of people all have the same or a similar perception on certain ideas or things a lot of people would like to call that the 'real' and the minority are oftenly labeled, wrong, ignorant, stupid or crazy. From these individual points of view everyone else could be the crazy or ignorant ones, our perceptions of the world in which we live are completely subjective, and biased torward our individual experiences. I don't believe that anyone knows what really is real, what is our reality, we are only capable of knowing what we percieve.3

Perception, The Interconnectedness of our World & Illusions of Reality

If you can't have the perception of a figure without a background, if you just can't see it, If the background is non existent. Doesn't that not mean the background and the figure are inseparable? They are different, they are almost opposites that contrast each other, however they are inseparable differences. For example observe the two sides of a coin, if one got a file and completely removed one side of the coin, there would no longer be a coin. In this way we as individuals as human beings are really inseparable from the whole natural environment in which we live, despite what we like to think. Without what we call 'things' there would be no world, but without what we would call the, 'whole world' there would be no things (Watts, A. 1959). 4

Perception, The Interconnectedness of our World & Illusions of Reality cont.

Similarily in life, when people pursue a life of pleasure, trying to shut out pain. Hypothetically if someone managed to rermove all pain and negativity in their life replaced only with pleasure they would no longer take pleasure out of things, because there is no pain to contrast the pleasure. If you look at life through this lense of everything happening at once, everything being interconnected in every possible way, not thinking of reality or life as disconnected things (including ourselves), you are less likely to get stuck in the trap of thought as a foreign observant to this reality and feel more at home within nature, within our world, if we percieve the everything of our reality as all inseparable we can take it all in at once and understand the illusions of reality and our constructed society. For example, putting a grid over a squiggly line allows us to measure it, plot it's points, and gain all sorts of information, but we put the grid there. It's just something we made to make life easier, but it is an illusion.

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The Boondocks Quote Illusions of Reality

Aaron McGruder, (Jan 2006.) The Boondocks season 1, episode 8, The Real."Obi wan kenobi said, "Your eyes can decieve you, don't trust them.It seems to be getting harder, distinguishing reality from the illusions peoplemake for us, or from the ones we make for ourselves. I don't know, maybe that's part of the plan, to make me think I'm crazy... It's working."

I'd like to quote a sentiment shared by the protagonist of the tv series The Boondocks,Aaron McGruder, (Jan 2006.) The Boondocks season 1, episode 8, The Real."Obi wan kenobi said, "Your eyes can decieve you, don't trust them." It seems to be getting harder, distinguishing reality from the illusions people make for us, or from the ones we make for ourselves. I don't know, maybe that's part of the plan, to make me think I'm crazy... It's working."6

Arrogance of Perception/Ignorance of Reality

I believe it's important to keep in mind that our constructed society, our constructed reality is an illusion, it is nothing more than the majorities perception. There is no right or wrong. For me at least, I think that reality is interconnected in every single concievable way, an example would be bringing in cane toads to eat the beetles and now we have a plague of toads, we can't just regard reality or nature as something to be attacked or conquered, we cannot allow our biased perceptions to conflict with nature or, the universe.7

Thanks for Watching Folks

Anyway to wrap this up, everthing we know might be wrong, the continuities of our conciousness, self identity, our ego's and our super-ego's are all illusions. I don't have any 'truthes' to tell you because I'm not sure if there are any, we could all be floating on a giant turtle in space for all I know.8

ReferencesCompact Oxford English Dictionary of Current English, Oxford University Press, 2005.Aaron McGruder, (Jan 2006.) The Boondocks season 1, episode 8, The Real.Alan Watts, (1959). Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life.