Man Versus Reality

Of course, there is also a chance that perpetrators might take advantage of the conversations to get their stories "straight“.

There are some who believe that if we are seeking the truth, it is better to have a group consensus among the witnesses rather than ten different stories. Some philosophers believe truth is a social construct; it doesn’t exist out in the world. It is whatever the community judges it to be. Even if you do not agree with that view, it certainly seems it might be easier for investigators to deal with only one story. But it turns out our chances of getting at what really happened are greatly reduced when multiple observations are no longer available.

Let’s consider for a moment, two esoteric concepts: truth and beauty. What is truth to one person may be just false propaganda to his about the events except the students’ opinions. neighbor. And in beauty, our views are even more divergent. I love Baroque art and architecture, but there are many who prefer postmodern abstract art and the sleekness of steel and glass buildings. It is not the object under consideration that contains or lacks the essence of truth or beauty, but rather the judgement that comes from the mind of the observer.

If an individual’s own interpretation of an event can change that dramatically with just the passing of time, can we really trust the truth and accuracy of our observation of any object, event, or idea that we encounter—ever? And if we can’t trust our own perception, how can we trust that of others?

In his famous Allegory of the Cave, Plato deals with this concept of perceived versus actual reality. The movie The Matrix, a Plato rip-off, does the same. What Plato’s prisoners and the Matrix’s “plugged-in” people witness is nothing close to reality. Neo isn’t in downtown Chicago; he is living in the fetal position in an egg-shaped pod. The shadows and echoes that Plato’s prisoners’ experience are not the real world. In both works, these people are indeed prisoners. To see reality, they must escape the cave, or the pod. And of course, the process of that escape isn’t pleasant either. But the pain is necessary if you want to see the world as it really is. Maybe that is why we avoid it.

When I taught my humanities students the stoicism theory of happiness, I used an analogy most all of us can relate to. When we are jilted by someone we loved, we almost always see it as a tragedy. I would ask them to think about such an event that occurred in their lives a few years earlier. Almost everyone got the point immediately. It was a tragedy then; today it is either neutral, a good thing, or maybe even the best that ever happened to them. As one student put it, “I really dodged a bullet on that one.” Yet the events themselves had not changed at all. As humans, we are not disturbed by things that happen, but rather by our opinion of things that happen. Nothing changed

The fact is, it is a universal characteristic of mankind to ignore the reality of the world around us and instead create our own reality in our minds. It is in our DNA. Some of us do more than just ignore what is real; we actively run away from it. Oftentimes, when forced to face the truth about some small part of the world or of life, rather than accept it, we deny its existence and immediately accuse others of intentionally misrepresenting it. I suppose that is how we get political factions.

You might think it would be a nice, Utopian situation if we would all choose to see the world and life as it really is—to be objective in all our observations. The truth always lives “out there,” right in front of us, all the time. We just have to be willing to see it. But it seems to be a trait common to all humans to let our minds determine what we see and believe, not the object or idea under consideration. I guess it is easier, or at least more fun, to live in the world we create rather than the one around us.

Perhaps T. S. Elliot had this in mind when he wrote, “Humankind cannot handle very much reality.”