Dear Niels,
I usually write towards myself in these meditations, but today I would like to write back to you instead.
To start at the ending of your letter, I would like to say that I feel the concepts of “perception,” “choosing,” and “reality” are indeed perceptions themselves—only deemed as such because we deem them to be reality. For quite a while now, I have taken a stance of contextual truth—that is, truth as something that lives within the construct of reality. With this letter, I would like to explore with you what reality and truth really entail for me.
I believe that the human mind is able to go beyond itself, but not outside of itself. That is, the mind is able to explore the possibilities of something beyond what is known to be true or perceived, but these thoughts will always remain contained within the mind itself. As the philosopher Wittgenstein said in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must remain silent.” I believe it pointless to speak of that which lies outside of the human mind, as this is only the realm of speculation. From there, we must not speak, but feel and believe. However, many of our problems go beyond the mind—not outside of it. This becomes not the realm of speculation but of reality. Here, unspeakable things lie, that go against the perceptions we hold and recontextualize them. Reality is inherently a human-made word (thus concept), meaning it can only be reasoned and spoken of within and beyond the mind—not outside it. Everything I will talk about in this letter and anything I will ever write or have written will be based on perception and my own reality, as nobody is able to reason outside of the mind and without perception or thought.
Now that we have this out of the way, let’s go over my definitions of “reality” and “truth,” starting with the latter, as the former is built upon it. You describe truth as something fragile, but for me, that is far from the truth. We need truth in order to reason, and thus truth must in some way be sacred. I therefore define it as the following: “Truth is that which is true.” Ack! Circular reasoning! Fret not, I say, for that is what you get when you try to define something outside of the mind! The introduction of reality should make things a bit clearer: “Reality is a context in which things are taken to be true.” Truth is something absolute within a given reality, and truth can only be shared when realities are agreed upon. This is the duality of fact and perception that I speak of. (As a consequence, for a universal truth to exist, there must exist a reality on which all things must agree, but this goes outside of the mind, so I will not speak of it further.)
We can see this as reality being the game we decide to play, and truth the rules to which we must then adhere. Assuming everyone can wrap their heads around the rules, the only reasons people could disagree are that the rules don’t cover a certain edge case or the players are playing a different game. Mind you, truths can be quite the subjective thing. In the reality that is my friendships as a whole, it would not matter if I did a silly dance (I have now proceeded to stand up from my desk to perform a silly dance). That is also a truth, and part of what I consider the reality of my friendships is indeed defined by the fact that this is a truth. I feel a degree of love, power, and awe in the fact that I get to decide what reality I live in.
Ok, maybe all this talk about definitions and stuff has gotten a bit mathematical. What I wanted to say is that even the definitions I give cannot be held as absolute truth, but I believe that this can help you as it can help me—as it seems we are slowly beginning to play the same game. As we grow up from birth to where we are now, different realities come and go. These can all be seen as the game that our mind decides to play, with certain rules it decides to obey. When I asked “What can even be considered real?”, you replied “What does it matter?” My answer is that the reality we live in decides the truths that we hold, and thus the trajectory of our lives.
You said, “Reality is whatever we are wired to view reality as.” My previous meditation was much a meditation on this fact. Isn’t it beautiful that my brain is wired in such a way that it believes it can choose what it views reality as? Is that only my biological response, or is it something I choose to view as truth? It does not matter—as my reality has defined truth, I am from there able to choose my own worlds and realities, and from there inspiration flows. Suddenly, it is as if I am in front of an entire bookshelf of board games where at first I was only allowed to play Ganzenbord.
In the end, this may be seen as a whole lot of talk about nothing. In my mind, however, these concepts hold a lot of meaning and relevance. For me, the ultimate goal of meditation is to come closer to the way in which I wish to live. By wording the concepts that live in my mind, they become even more real to me, as I get a new way to view them. Viewing reality in this way gives me more mental freedom in choosing which realities I want to live, and it also makes me more compassionate towards others in understanding their beliefs. Even if the things I feel are not true for most people, all my meditations help me align mind, body, and soul such that I can become who I am. Philosophy like this is the language through which I communicate and remember my love for the world.
Most of these things were already felt by me, but this is the first time that I have actually written this all down into words. I thank you for sparking the inspiration in me to meditate on this more deeply and to find out why I feel the way I feel about things.
Paul
P.S.
Some inspiring reading I’d like to share (loosely related to this topic):