Reality

Reality is a philosophical notion. It is a construct. Jean Baudrillard's concept of Hyperreality makes us think about Reality. We assume that there is indeed a Reality, in the midst of which we live our lives here on Earth. This Reality is independent of us, of our minds. If somehow, God forbid!, the human race were to be extinguished tomorrow, still life would go on and there would be that "Reality" still extant upon mankind's old homestead. Let us do a Descartes: let us imagine the world with no people in it. Let us imagine the Reality we tend to see ourselves living within, yet imagine it to be empty of men and women. Is it possible? Not really. If you do the above Cartesian practice, you find that you, the conscious entity, are still present. You find that there is no imagining of Reality without that conscious entity: you, the human being. In short, what we uncritically mean by Reality does not exist without conscious entities. In short, beings with minds like ours create Reality. This is not to say that to exist is to be thought. There are things which exist independent our our minds. However, what we, the conscious beings, mean when we talk about Reality is a construct of that which exists and our interaction with it in the present and in the past - the work of memory- and in the future ( possibly the same as memory...only in the Future Tense.) The work of short term and long term memory is the basis upon which we create our Reality. Memory guards us against the interruptions of that which exists. This is why there is so much detail in the opinions of mankind: each of us is a conscious agent with our own memories, so we define Reality a little different from one of us to the other. We may agree on what are the things which exist in the universe, but the web by which they are all held together has no such common assent nor understanding from us. This diversity of human opinion is a source of much discord. What we have not entirely grasped is that this very diversity acts in the realm of consciousness very much like biodiversity works in Ecology: it is a source of strength and progress, not a hindrance. It is the source of good, not discord. Grasp it before it is too late.