Reality of life!!

Your reality is “the” reality.

No one else than you can tell what is real and what is not. Is what you see real ? Is what you feel real ? Are we all in some sort of Matrix ? Is there an evil genius that makes you think that you are even real ?

I would like to present you an awesome guy : Sir Descartes.

Here is a very famous quote :

cogito ergo sum

which means “I think, therefore I am” (“I am” meaning “I exist”). When you doubt about everything, including whether you exist or not, you have this thought. A thought. So at least you are producing something, and even if it is not you that is producing it, you are related to this thought so if this thought exists you exist. So by questioning your existence you proved your existence. You could say you are “real”.

Let’s start from that. You are real. What can you extend this to ? Well, too bad for you, you can’t.

This can even be extended to things you haven’t experienced, but you know their existence. For instance take any mythological character. At the very moment you have heard their name, even if they have never “existed” (as “lived on Earth”), they “exist” (as “they have a substance”). Basically, you could say that every idea “exists”.

Now this is troublesome. You can say that everything is real. Dragons are real. The Moon is real. Magic is real. Your house is real. Demons are real. You can’t really tell the difference … or can we ? As you can see, I previously used a trick. I used twice the same word, but with different meanings (e.g. “exist”). Here is the breach in your question : what do you mean by “real” ?

Real : what you can reach.

Can you touch the wall in front of you ? Can you see your family ? Can you smell this delicious steak (or salad if you’re veg, no big deal) ? Can you listen to others ? Can you hear your voice in your head ? Can you feel your heartbeat ? Can you feel that you are alive ?

Reality is a matter of present. Everything that is real is something you perceive in the moment.

Even things that appear not to be real later may have been real before for you. Random example : if you learn that you have been adopted, you could say that your father is not your “real” father, but before knowing you could have felt like it was ; in the end you can continue to think of him as your “real” father (let’s not go too deep in this twisted example, I guess you got my point).

People like magicians play on this, making you experience a reality that is different of their reality. I would not say it is “fake”, this is would be too narrow-minded.

Thanks for reading. I am not a pro philosophe or anything, but I wanted to share my point of view since I love stories that messes up with the concept of reality. Not the best cultural reference maybe, but I rzally like a quote from Sword Art Online :

What is the difference between the real world and a virtual world ? The quantity of data.