The question of what is real has never really bothered me, that is until I started reading philosophy. The fact of the matter is, reality is a relative, changing concept that cannot and will not be defined. For instance, before September 11th, a plane crashing into the Pentagon was only fantasy, written by Tom Clancy. At 9:55 am on September 11, the image of a plane tearing down buildings became a reality, albeit harsh. Plato best illustrates this in his allegory of the cave, found in his masterpiece, The Republic. In this allegory he tells of men raised in cave and forced to live in restraints, allowing them to only look forward. The cave is lit by the sun at the very top, and a fire behind and above them. In this cave there are men who take statues and caricatures of animals and people and parade them in front of the fire light, thus throwing shadows all over the walls of the dimly lit prison. Plato writes: "If they could converse with one another, do you not think that they would consider these shadows to be the real things?- Necessarily." He continues to say, "Altogether then, I said, such men would believe the truth to be nothing else than the shadows of the artifacts?- They must believe that."
For those men, the shadows were real, living beings. How do I know that when I see myself in the mirror that that is a real reflection of myself? How do I know that I am really typing this bla(h)g? Who tells me that the word "hello" is a salutation? I've never looked up the word "hello" in the dictionary, and yet I know what it means, why? Moreover, how do I know what I believe is the color blue is in fact that color? The answer is one that philosophers have lamented over for hundreds of years, and I will make no attempt to end their quest. Rather the point that I want to make is reality is different for everyone, and, I feel, is equally determined by ones perceptions and ones upbringing.
I will discuss the latter first. How I was raised determined what I know to be true. Plato realizes this when he makes the condition in his cave allegory that "The men have been there from childhood..." Why does that matter? Why did Plato make that condition? If I was placed in the conditions of the cave tomorrow, and someone was to parade around with the statues and such, I would be able to determine say a real tiger from a shadow, because I was raised to look at my shadow and I was taught how to discern my shadow from my real body mass. The men, who spent their whole life in the cave, had no way of knowing the difference of a shadow and a statue, because they have never known any other way. The same is true in everyday life. If I was raised in the South Hampton’s with a butler and a maid, the reality of having to use a washing machine is nonexistent. Perhaps that example is weak, but my point remains strong; reality is in part conditional upon the state of affairs leading towards ones maturity.
The other half of the reality equation is ones understanding of his perception. I believe the term that defines this anomaly is Subjective Idealism. That is, reality is mental and dependent on the mind perceiving them. Once again, George Berkeley, the 17th century Irish philosopher put it like this in his work, The Principles of Human Knowledge. He writes, "That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, exist without the mind, is what everybody will allow.--And to me it is no less evident that the various sensations, or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combined together (that is, whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in a mind perceiving them-I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this by anyone that shall attend to what is meant by the term exist when applied to sensible things." He goes on to say, "The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed--meaning thereby that if I were in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it." He concludes by stating, "This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions.-- For as to what is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to their being perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible. ...Nor it is possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them."
Berkeley, in his longwinded intelligence has hit the nail on the proverbial head. How can things exist without someone first perceiving them? For example, how could the plane come into being without one of the Wright brothers, and hundreds before them first conceiving such a wild idea of a flying machine? If something is perceived to be real, to the person doing the perceiving, that thing is reality—because it is impossible to discern perception from actual reality. Now this theory is dangerously without limits. I say that because to some people Elvis is living in their basement, or little green men are communicating to them. But under the laws of subjective idealism, these perceptions are reality.
I think the school of thought that best fits my personal beliefs on things metaphysical is a post-modern antirealist constructionist view. We hold that there is no objective reality (one that applies to everyone/everything) but rather reality is personal, shaped solely by influences and experiences. Manuel Velasquez says that for the postmodern antirealist “there is no reality independent of the particular language or system of concepts we use and the particular world or worlds we create with them.” That is there is no “real world” or ultimate reality, only the one that you’re living in—whether it is considered reality by the masses or not, it IS indeed reality to you, thus real.
The reality of the matter is that reality is a complex phenomenon. I once got a fortune cookie that read, "Reality is for those with no imagination". I agree with that sentiment. In our day and age, reality has a negative stigma attached to it. That is, when someone needs to face reality, he needs to realize that he has made a mess and needs to get his head out of the clouds. To me reality is what the world does, that is, the social norm. Now, whether or not I spend any time in reality depends on my mood on any given day. My definition of reality is to conform to the ideals of the masses (a neo-materialist view, I suppose). Most of the time I'm a conformist. I have been trained to accept what is real by looking at what the masses find real, thus my sense of reality is horribly corrupted. History is the perfect example: we’ve been taught in our American schools that we (the allies) won the Second World War. Chinese students, however, have been taught that Americans were holding out of the war until it was profitable for us to enter it-we then bombed our enemies, colonized Japan, and tried (and failed) to democratize Germany. To thousands of Chinese students the U.S. is an evil tyrant with out eyes on world domination. The threat of American invasion is a reality to millions of Chinese people. Are they wrong? I think that most Americans agree that we have no intention to invade China anytime soon (if ever). But the Chinese don’t feel that way; whose reality is correct? It is impossible to prove one’s reality as superior or “more correct” then another, thus reality is not a standard by which we can measure, but rather a personal, subjective, relative idea.
Finally, it seems to me that those who dare to dream, those with an imagination, are looked down upon and are expected to fail. On the other hand, the few who succeed get movies made about their life, (ref. Rudy, Shackleton's Adventure, October Sky and countless other "heart warming stories of overcoming all the odds") telling all of us to follow our dreams and never give up. Those deciding what reality is (the masses), would say that you're an idiot for being different, that you should know your role and shut up, and stop making waves, because it's annoying us. And yet if his perception of the world is one that he is successful, whether it be by surviving in Antarctica, or playing football for Notre Dame, he is accused of being unrealistic- that is until (or unless) he succeeds. To perceive against the accepted reality is to be ridiculed. But to those who choose to remain in their perceived world and make it become a real world are the spoils! What is real? The only reality is there is no objective reality.
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