It's difficult to encapsulate the essence of reality in just a few words. One reason is that reality, physical reality at least, isn't founded on words. Only human reality is. This human capability is what allows me to write this blog post and for you to read it.
But my favorite adage about reality is Philip K. Dick's Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. I've praised this sentence quite a few times on this blog, as in a 2015 post, "Best statement about reality, in just thirteen words." In that post I shared a quote from my first mention of the adage in 2006.
Out of the corner of my eye I can see a white hold-the-newspaper-down rock on the patio table where my laptop sits. Whether or not I believe in the rock, it’s there. My wife senses it too. So does everyone else who walks onto our deck. The rock is real, no doubt about it.
On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve thought once about God today. Certainly not this evening. I was focused on playing ball with our dog, eating dinner, and then watching a recording of the Oregon State—Boise State football game.
God hasn’t been in evidence, unlike the rock. Ditto for Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Krishna, Holy Spirit, Tao, Big Foot, Godzilla, King Kong, and every other entity that requires a thought to bring it into existence. Beliefs are sustained by thoughts. No thoughts, no beliefs. (Or so I believe; I could be wrong; but even if there is such a thing as a thoughtless belief, I’ll bet that it was born through thought).
We humans are advanced lovers of language. This is our superpower. Language, which is comprised of words, is how we communicate our knowledge, culture, beliefs, desires, fantasies, and so much else. All of these things are indisputably real, though not in the same sense that gravity, trees, oceans, buildings, and slot machines are.
Language often points to non-human reality. It isn't reality itself. It isn't what remains when humans are absent. It isn't what sustains the cosmos when thoughts and beliefs about the cosmos fall silent. This is why we need to be careful about ascribing more reality to our inner and outer speech than is deserved, because sometimes our words don't point toward reality, they gesture away from it.
Here in the United States the Trump administration has been deleting all mentions of global warming from web sites operated by federal agencies. Obviously, failing to acknowledge the reality of global warming doesn't change the Earth's climate. It simply is an attempt to impose a blackout on speech that points to this reality.
Similarly, fundamentalist religions have stringent rules against blasphemy and in favor of censorship. They hold that religious belief is so fragile, it must be protected from words that deny the One True Faith - which, of course, differs from other faiths believed by their followers to be a supreme unitary truth.
Having been an avid writer for most of my life, I'm intimately familiar both with how language and beliefs can bring us closer to reality, and also farther away. To my mind, it comes down to understanding the limit of language and beliefs, in line with Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Stated differently, Reality always has the last word. It earns this honor by not being comprised of words. So if all of human thought, language, beliefs, and concepts were to fall silent, what remained after the last word passed into nothingness would be the really real reality that doesn't require thought, language, beliefs, and concepts to maintain its existence.
This is one of the reasons I'm so pleased to have deconverted from religiosity. I rarely think about God or the supernatural now. This is far different from the 35 years I spent devoted to an Eastern religion that taught the importance of keeping the guru, believed to be God in Human Form, front and center within one's mind as much as possible.
We disciples were supposed to visualize the face of the guru when we meditated. Photos of the guru were in our homes. We were to thank him when things went well in our lives, and when they didn't, to be grateful for the guru's grace that supposedly "turned a sword thrust into a pinprick."
(Not sure what we were supposed to feel if we suffered from an actual sword thrust; maybe be grateful that we weren't slowly torn to pieces by a pack of rabid dogs?)
I'm happier now living in reality that doesn't require constant believing to keep it afloat. This is how I put it at the end of my 2015 post about Dick's adage.
Religious believers sustain their faith through (duh...) believing. Without concepts, thoughts, ideas, emotions, and such, God or some other form of divinity fails to exist.
So when religious people talk about God making a difference in their lives, that actually isn't true. Their believing brain is what makes the difference. No beliefs, no difference.
Sure, religious believers feel good when they worship; they are uplifted by their rituals; they get consolation from the words in holy books. And so on, and so on. All of these positive feelings arise from thoroughly worldly experiences.
Being in a church. Taking part in a ritualistic action. Reading books. Sensing a supposedly sacred object or person.
These are part of the reality Dick speaks of which doesn't require belief to exist. These things don't go away when belief does (though the inner experience associated with them likely will change). God, though, does go away when believing in divinity disappears.
There's nothing wrong with believing. We all believe in things that aren't objectively true, because doing this makes us feel subjectively good. Believing is part of being human.
However, we should keep in mind that everything within our mind isn't part of objective reality. That's the beauty of Philip K. Dick's one-sentence metaphysics -- perhaps better termed ontology.
It reminds us that not believing in something is the best way to determine whether it is part of the reality outside our own head.
For example, stand on a first-floor balcony and get yourself to believe that an invisible floor extends beyond the railing. Which is equivalent to not believing in falling through empty space. Then jump off the railing. See what happens.
If you fall to the ground, hopefully without breaking any bones, you've learned something about the reality that doesn't go away when you stop believing in it.
You can do the same with God, of course.
Stop believing in God. I've done this, as have many others. What I've found is that nothing changes. Nothing went away, other than my belief in God. Because, I'm quite sure, there is no God outside of human belief.
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