Perception and Reality

Imagine in a world of worms, every worm was born with a helmet on.

One worm has a blue helmet, one has a green one, others have stickers or accessories, and no worm has the same exact helmet.

One day while looking at an apple, they debated the color of the apple.

The blue-helmeted worm claimed, “The apple is definitely dark purple!”

“No, the apple is muddy brown,” said the worm with a green helmet in rebuttal.

“Actually guys, I think the apple is very bright red with sparkles!” said a worm with a pink helmet and sparkle stickers.

Even after their endless debate, none of the worms were right nor were they wrong.

What is reality?

Humans have spent centuries trying to understand reality both empirically and conceptually. We were equipped with senses to observe and understand the world around us. But what is reality, really?

Some would say that reality is the life that we live, others would argue that reality is everything as it is. Both might be true in a sense, but when speaking about reality, how do we know what is true and what is not?

We as humans love evidence and for the longest time, we have believed that truths are the things we can prove. Things that have evidence of their existence, undeniable, and can be proven. While we experience reality through both our perception and senses, which then creates judgment or conclusion, how do we prove that what we conclude is what reality actually is?

Perception in its essence is subjective. We process information and interpret it to create conclusions or understand the world around us. So the layer of understanding depends on the workings of our mind, experiences, and reason instead of seeing things as-is. Meanwhile, reality is mostly objective. Objective things don’t have perception, hence they do not perceive anything. They simply exist.

Then how do we access objective reality using our subjective lens?

The limitation of perception

The answer is that we cannot. It’s like trying to see without eyes and lights, it’s just not possible. Perception requires a subject that processes every input of information through a filter, or a ‘lens’. Just like the story at the beginning, the worms cannot perceive the apple’s actual color with the helmet. But it’s also not possible to take it off because it dictates the worms’ existence. The helmet is a metaphor for our perception, as we were all born with it and to erase it is to erase our own existence.

The story of the worms reminds us that they see things differently and yet we cannot say whether any of them are wrong nor right. Because what they see depends on the helmet they have, even though the objective reality of the ‘apple’ has an actual color independent of the worms’ helmets. Which is why the medium that we use to understand things is not compatible with how objective reality works. Because perception shapes understanding based on the system it’s in.

The reality we perceive vs reality as it is

The reality that we perceive using our senses is based on the thing processing it, which is the brain. The brain works intricately and it is shaped by experiences, values, knowledge, and pattern recognition. This is the reason why one concept can be understood differently by different brains, hence why differentiating between the reality that we perceive and the reality itself outside of our perception is important. That creates this rule where no one can be extremely right or extremely wrong. And at the same time, no one can dictate which is right or wrong solely by perception alone.

This creates the question: how do we know what is right or wrong if we are unable to know the truth? The thing that I found is, we cannot. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find the closest thing to objective reality. We humans have spent centuries trying to find methods that could explain reality. And those that survive meticulous reasoning and trials are those that might have been the closest to the as-is. The ‘facts’ that we have now are centuries of trying to get as close as possible to the as-is using empirical methods like observation and calculation.

The importance of consistency

Now the question becomes; how do we find the closest thing to objective reality if the exact thing is impossible? 

The human race has invented many methods to measure reality. When the goal is to find the closest to the truth, consistency is important. We cannot believe that something is true when the methods tell us otherwise. Say we’re trying to find the exact color of an apple. Most people would say that the apple is red, but there would be those who see it as green (like those who have red-green color blindness). We cannot say that one is ‘wrong’ because it is what they see, but we cannot say it’s right either. But we surely can make conclusions based on the majority vote or observed patterns.

Is the majority vote always the truth? Probably not, but it does give us a clue on the closest to the truth. At least based on our own comprehension of reality. Experiments, research, and surveys are exactly how we can get closer to it. Maybe never the exact thing, but it gives us the shape of what reality could be as-is.

From my perspective, the methods that we use to describe reality are just like language. We don’t call apples ‘apple’ because it’s the actual name of the object as-is, but we call it apples exactly because we use language to describe things. Language, numbers, and symbols are our tools of understanding. We might never be able to access everything in the as-is, but we sure can interpret it based on our perceptions of it.

The wisdom in not knowing

Our inability to access objective reality, or the as-is, is not just a flaw that we should try to overcome. It is, in a sense, fundamental to our nature. And despite that, our species had spent centuries trying to make sense of reality and probably even successful in getting close to it. It also teaches us that reason cannot be accepted as extreme truths, be it our own perception or other people’s. There is this sense of freedom in knowing that the truth of everything might be inaccessible, but we surely can access the truth within perception. Wisdom is not believing everything at the extreme, but in knowing that we might never be 100% sure of the truth. And that is fine, because conclusions don’t have to be final. 

It is such a freeing thing to realize that.