what are we allowed to believe in this week? Part 1
I struggle with the word "real." I've had a lifetime of first-hand experiences that most people dismiss as not real. This creates a fundamental problem: if I experienced something directly, how can it not be real? The usual assumptions follow: I dreamt it, imagined it, I'm lying, or I'm delusional. Because of this, conversations that depend on defining "real" don't get off to a good start with me.
It's like there's some app that people have on their phones, and they keep checking this app which has two lists on it: a list of things that scientists and psychologists say you are allowed to believe, and another list of things that you're not allowed to believe, or you will face societal disapproval. (But - and this is important - check back next week because these lists keep changing.)
Remember when the earth was flat? And there's tectonic plate theory, meteorites, and even the platypus was once considered a hoax. I don't wait for science. Whenever I hear, "There's no scientific proof of that", I silently add the word yet.
(TLDR)
You asked what stays the same even when language fails. That made me think about distortion. Humans distort everything. I know I do it too, though I try not to. We experience things, misinterpret them, misunderstand them. Information from the Unconscious becomes heavily polluted by the time it reaches consciousness. Then language adds another layer of distortion on top. So what remains constant when language fails? If you remove the human element, what's left is nature. Everything that isn't human.
And then there's the definition problem itself. If something exists in my imagination, is it real? My imagination is real. Human beings have an imagination, so imagination is real. That's not in dispute. Therefore, anything existing inside my imagination is also real.
I'll never be comfortable with the word "real" the way it's commonly used, meaning something external that can be measured, studied, and validated by others. What's that word? Empirical. Yes. But even that means something that is verifiable by observation or experience. Basically, I reject the entire definition of "real" as it pertains to the list of things that I am allowed to believe in as dictated by The Council of Scientists and Psychologists who convene every Tuesday to decide what's real this week.
Are my dreams not real? Everyone has dreams. Dreams have been proven to exist. So why is the content inside a dream suddenly not real? It's the same old division: inner world versus outer world. If something happens inside, it's not real. If it happens outside, where other people can examine and validate it, then they decide whether it's real. And you know how I feel about needing other people to validate things. What are your insights?