Definitions: (Webster’s)
Reality –Noun, Singular
The quality or state of being real.
Real – Adjective
a: not artificial, fraudulent, illusory
b: occurring or existing in actuality
Actuality – Noun
The quality or state of being actual
Actual – Adjective
a: existing in act and not merely potentially
b: existing in fact or reality
What this work is about Preface
This book seeks to engage the reader. Beyond lifting the words from the pages, it’s hoped that the various exercises, juxtapositions and questions will allow you to contemplate not only the nature of what is going on in the outside world, but your role within it. In reality this book is about thinking. It occurs, to me, that the only way to progress as a species is to think about thinking— at least every once in awhile. Many of the problems in modern society, indeed even in ancient societies, seem to stem from a lack of understanding about what is really occurring at a given place and time. We all have that impulsive friend, but how much of what we, the human race, has done has been much more than impulsive? Sure, the great inventions, the aqueduct, the light bulb, the wheel, and the long list of things which moved the human race’s ability to prosper forward, came from long deliberation on what was wrong with the way things are. However, it seems that most of the things we all cringe about, war, murder, all forms of hate and prejudice, would have been avoided had their perpetrators simply considered the problems they faced a little longer. In fact, this is implied in the very word prejudice. Pre- Judging. Judging before. Before what? Before thinking, before facts, before analysis.
One of the things we very rarely consider, and understandably—it’s hard to conceive of, is what we are doing in terms of the big picture. What are our reasons for the way culture and society function? Who decided them and who decides them now? Well, this book is here to argue that our language decides them. Thinking about thinking, thinking about the way we think, requires us to recognize the simple fact that we think largely in language; for those reading this, English. It would make perfect sense that few of us have considered this fact in any depth as most of us begin to learn to speak and communicate in English as near-infants and learn to visualize (read and write) it as toddlers. It is ingrained in us before we have the capacity to question it. Language as a whole has been the most influential construction to the progress of the human race. Without language, there would be no passing of learned information. Without language each of us would all still be figuring out the wheel for ourselves right now, unless of course we were lucky enough to witness someone else do it and adequately able to copy their actions without any guidance, including hand motions, grunts and eye-rolls. So, how many of us have stopped and thought about how we use language? Not just, how we structure sentences and define words, but how we relate to them, how they influence our perceptions and therefore our actions. Perhaps the real question to ask is, How are our actions a product of our language?
Chapter One Introduction A Definition of Terms A Brief Survey of the Arts and Sciences How did We Get Here?
The notion of “Objective Reality” is archaic, but no one seems to know it yet.
What follows in this book is a path towards a new definition of the human configuration. We must redefine our view of ourselves if we are to make a significant move forward in our species evolutionary process/progress. No longer are we, human beings, separate entities who have the authority to define and organize the rest of reality into some concept of “the outside world.” THE OUTSIDE WORLD IS INSIDE US.
Over the past two hundred years, nearly all of the sciences have rejected the notion of “objective reality” or “provable truth.” Einstein and the quantum physicists showed that our scientific measurements of the world are entirely pre-defined by our relationship to the subject being measured.
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