Fractured Walls, Mixed Realities
Reality is such a strange concept. There’s the lovely Physics that decodes the nature of reality per its theories, foundations, and ideas. Then there is the brain that twists this reality according to its own understanding, interpretation, and filters.
Our brain’s interpretations are so flimsy when compared to what exists. Distorted realities that people construct from their own experiences. I was contemplating a simple conversational exchange. You say a few words, another says a few more. You derive some meaning out of it, so do they, not necessarily the same.
In between, there exists a wall. A wall made of biases. A wall built from responses to many situations that we would have encountered. Each experience chipping away bits of our mind through which we lose more and more of our ability to interpret the reality that physics decodes.
I love the concept the illusion of transparency people use in social interactions. I wonder what a world with actual thought-transparency would look like. And what would a world with our senses attuned to perceive reality as it is would feel like. A deadly combination.
The veneer of individual rationality might cease to exist. The planes of interpretation, the layers of understanding, and the barriers before our thoughts become bare might vanish. And if so, would there be a common plane which everyone can “tune into” to catch a glimpse of what reality truly looks like?
For now, you see the world as per your biases. You think thoughts that are contortions in your brain. There is a filter applied when your vocal cords alter the air and your tongue changes the output that becomes your voice. Same for each and every individual. Where walls made of biases are built, where realities of individual perspectives reign supreme.
Is everything we see then a combination of fractured walls and mixed realities? Combine two individuals’ realities together and you make an object. Break down a portion of the walls and mix the material of the wall with another’s. Together it makes for a stronger wall, the intermingling realities a gooey mix of some interpretations that holds the disparate bits of two realities together.
Is this how we are? Have we built our humanity on a messy block of partial interpretations? What hope is there but not for a temporary refuge, a hive, an intelligence evolved to understand reality?
