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There is not a topic from which I derive more pleasure than this one! For I am a firm believer in the idea that there certainly does exist an objective "reality" outside our individual consciousnesses (of which, each of our consciousnesses are indeed a part). And that it should be highly rewarding and positive for all of us if we were to live, not only in full pursuit of understanding the true nature of things, but also to strive to make the world we live in a far kinder, cleaner and happier place.
There are however a vast number of individuals who would have us believe (and I think, try very hard to have themselves believe) that there can be no such thing as an objective reality.
Even as a small child I remember having the vague suspicion that there was something fundamentally and disturbingly twisted going on in those peoples minds. Yet I became partially convinced by their "cleverly" worded arguments, and for a number of years, wasn´t quite sure what to think...
Until recently.
I am now quite satisfactorily convinced that those arguments display nothing other than a certain quirky skill in the creation of puzzling and amusing little word arrangements. But words are only tools, with no meanings other than those we each assign to them. And so it is clear to me now, that any argument which requires excessive importance to be applied upon the individual words themselves, is almost invariably making up for the lack of substance (or existence thereof) in the ideas behind the words. And in most cases, these kinds of arguments can be relatively quickly dismissed as the folly that which they are.
So now one may be inclined to ask. Why do otherwise intelligent human beings devote their minds to such senselessness? Why deny what your biology in constantly reminding you of, every time you flinch at the sudden barking of an non-existent dog?
The answer to this, I also believe to be quite simple.
Such people are terrified of reality, they are also terrified of their fellow mankind, and as to how they are thought of by their peers. They know well deep down that reality exists, and they also know well that our planet is in a bad way and desperately requires our attention. But they lack confidence and feel uncertain as to whether they would be able to offer anything useful in dealing with "real" problems.
They have been tormented, crippled and alienated throughout their childhood education, and have never been able to shake off the fear and the hatred which resulted. So what are they to do? Stick their neck up and say "YES LOOK, there IS reality, here it is!! Lets get together and concern ourselves with it!" Though they´d love to be strong enough to do this, the fact is they are not. They´d be terrified that it would end up like the last time they tried to do something they really believed in and cared about. Like perhaps, how when at 8 years of age they wrote a story which they were really passionate about, but after proudly presenting it to the teacher, he/she said it wasn´t appropriate at all and while reading a sentence out to the class (to demonstrate what not to do) all the other kids laughed.
So what these people are really saying (if you search between the lines, and look deeply into their troubled and flinching eyes) is:
"YES DAMN IT, there is a reality, god of course there is!!, but it´s so fucking horrible and cruel and painful that I´ve been burying it away all these years, nobody cares and we´re all just hurting each other, I can´t face any of it anymore, so I´ll just pretend it doesn´t exist, hide it away and deny it. But then the truth is I can´t seem to convince myself, no matter how hard I play with these word games, and even if I manage to almost convince other people, something keeps telling me that this really IS happening, and the echoes of pain from all those other kids still reverberates in my heart. I want to stand up but I´m just too scared."
So what are we to do?
I really feel that we have to help one another "snap out of it", and communicate the idea that it is ok to believe what your own eyes are telling you, it is ok to care, and it is ok to struggle for the things we care about. We´ve just got to start waking to the fact that there´s a whole beautiful world out here, a world that we can touch, see, hear, smell and feel. And yes, we CAN trust our senses! It IS real, and we ARE allowed to feel, we simply have to lose all our fears.
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