Recently I’ve found myself using an expression a lot: “real-world reality“. It’s sort of sad, I think, that I have to keep mentioning this. But yet I find that one has to continually say things like ” . . . but in the real world” or “that’s not how it is in the real world” or “there’s something called the real world” and other similar statements as it seems that many people, nowadays, have forgot what the real-world is. My observation is that this has caused a lot of conflict.
The real-world
The “real-world” means the world as it is. One finds the real-world by experiencing, observation, and by doing. Often, though, the real-world does not suit us and has many unpleasant sides to it. As a result, it makes us not want to accept it. Some common “unpleasant basic facts of the real-world”, that I have found, include:
- There are bad things everywhere
- There is always injustice
- There is always unfairness
- There are times when nothing works for you, no matter what you do
- Someone will always disagree with you
- Though you may be right in one way, you are wrong in another
- You never know what’s going to happen
- You don’t know everything
- What you think is right isn’t always right
- We make mistakes
- Bad things happen to good people
- Good things happen to bad people
- Sometimes, no sense can be made out of things
- We are all vulnerable
- We are not invincible
- Sometimes, we are helpless and can do nothing
- We can’t always get what we want
- You often have to do things you don’t want to do
- Sometimes, you have to accept things as they are
We do not dictate the real-world . . . it dictates us. Our understanding of the real-world is always short and incomplete. My experience is that, as I always say, “we are always trying to catch up with the real-world”. What this means is that our understanding of the real-world is always flawed. As a result, we are always trying to match our understanding of the real-world with what happens and so we are continually following it, having to change our understanding to fit reality. In actuality, the real-world is lord and master. We follow what it does, no matter what we think or believe.
The “idealized world”
The opposite of real-world reality is the “idealized world”. It is the world based on some idea of how we would like it to be. In this way, it is really an interpretation-of-the-world-in-your-favor point of view. What often happens is something like a false perception of the world is created. It often takes on a quality of “fantasy image” of the world, that is not based in real world reality. This often begins to be accepted as the real world and there often develops a belief that everything should be done to make things fit this “idealized world”.
This “idealized image” often reflects personal interests and concerns. That is to say, it usually reflects a tendency to make the world “personal”, as a reflection of oneself. But this is often done at the expense of real-world reality. In this way, an “idealized world” is a world that is dictated and controlled by one’s whims, concerns, and interests and not by the world-as-it-is. Because of this it tends to become disassociated from the real-world. The result is that we tend to “live in our own world” . . . that is, until the real-world comes in and intrudes on that world.
Finding a balance
It is good to have a degree of an “idealized world”, and it is healthy . . . to a point. An “idealized world” makes the world “ours”, a part of us, and meaningful to us. In this way, it is healthy and good. But, in general, an “idealized world” must be tempered by the conditions of real-world reality, and it must not be excessive. Finding the balance between real-world reality and an “idealized world” is tricky and one could say it is one of the great challenges of life.
A part of growth is modifying ones “idealized world” with reality. This goes on throughout one’s life. We must continually modify our “idealized world” because any image of an “idealized world” is always faulty and inadequate (as I said above: “we are always trying to catch up with the real-world”). This requires a humility, a willingness to change, and a willingness to abandon one’s wants, whims, and desires. This can be hard to do. For some people, it can even be one of the most difficult things they do in life.
The dominance of mental fabrications
An overly strong “idealized world” is primarily a result of the dominance and overvaluation of thought, of mental fabrications. My experience is that mental fabrications are insufficient to describe real-world reality. They may come close or appear to reflect it, but they are always flawed in some way. The fact is that the real-world has forces in it that mental fabrication simply cannot grasp.
In a society, mental fabrications become dominant from a number of sources:
- Culture
- Religion
- Explanations of life, such as personal impressions, opinions, philosophy, and science
These have implanted mental fabrications as critical and important in life.
Recently, several forms of mental fabrications have helped to make mental fabrication prominent and dominant. These include:
- Science
- Political theory, such as Communism
- Technology
- Media
These have given mental fabrications, and what it creates, a great power. In fact, it has given it such a power that there is a tendency, now, to deny the real-world. There is a tendency for people to use these things as the basis of life and there is little attempt to follow the real-world. Not only that, but they also won’t even change their views based on real world experience. As a result, they have given great power to the “idealized world”.
Civilization versus the country
It seems, to me, that civilization tends to promote an “idealized image” of the world. This, no doubt, is because life in civilization is removed from nature, being primarily a life in the mental fabrications of humanity and what it creates. People who live in the country, away from civilization, tend to be more real world oriented. This isn’t surprising as “reality is in their face”. Reality forces them to have to follow it.
This is not the case in civilization. Because of the extensiveness of civilization, it offers a protection for an “idealized image”. This is because civilization keeps the real-world at a distance. The result is that an “idealized image” tends to foster unabated in civilization. Without the real-world to temper it the “idealized image” grows sometimes unabated and unchecked. In this way, it can go in almost any direction or intensity.
The effects of the Enlightenment
It seems that the movement called the Enlightenment in the 1700’s (with its emphasis on logic, science, freedom, democracy, and progress) had great impact on the modern tendency of denying the real-world. This is because of a number of effects it created, such as:
- The power of ideas. This was greatly caused by the success of science. It placed ideas as all powerful and all important.
- The effects of science which allowed us to “change nature” to what we want. This gave us confidence in the power of what we can do.
- The idea of progress. This was primarily caused by the effects of science, industrialization, and consumerism. It convinced us that we were right and that we were capable of anything.
- The idea of freedom. This was often portrayed in political theories that followed the French Revolution. In particular, I speak of democracy and communism. This gave us the idea that we could do whatever we wanted.
- The idea of a utopia, that we can create a “perfect world”. This created the idea that we can create a perfect world with our ideas.
- The belief that all the above is our Saviour. This gives all this a self-righteous quality.
Since the 1700’s the attitudes of the Enlightenment have caused a continuous tendency to try to change nature to create a utopian world based on our ideas, of how we think things should be. There has been an ongoing attempt to change practically everything, even down to altering DNA, a person’s sex, human beliefs, societies, and the physical world. But, in so trying to change nature to fit utopian ideas, they deny nature as it really is. They deny its sovereign nature, its authority, and its overall power. In trying to change nature we place our ideas as all-important, above nature, and is our savior. As a result, we believe what we think is God.
The effect of all this is a self-righteous denial of reality which has caused a number of things to happen:
- It created a blind attitude toward the real-world. That is to say, there is little thought in the effects of the denial of reality. No one questions trying to change nature or reality.
- Some people think it’s something of a righteous cause or even a crusade trying to change nature and even that that it will save us.
- An overvaluation of what they think. There is a tendency to think that if-you-think-it-then-the-world-should-be-that-way.
With this mentality it has set into motion a modern tendency to overvalue the “idealized world” and deny the real-world.
The effects of an artificial world
The modern world, with all its gadgets, gizmos, and such has created an artificial world for people to live in. This artificial world has a similar effect as civilization in that it keeps people from the real-world and protects any “idealized image” they may have. The result of this, of course, is that they tend to live in an “idealized world”. The artificial world becomes their real world.
Denying the real-world
The success and prevalence of mental fabrications, and the “idealized world” they have created, has caused a tendency to do these things:
- To deny the real world
- They start to expect the world to fit their “idealized world”
- This causes them to try to change the real world to fit their “idealized world”
Many people seem to deny or refuse real-world reality and as if try to make the world fit their “idealized world” to such an extent that they become alienated from themselves and the real-world. A good example of this are the trans-gender people, people who physically change themselves to the opposite sex. This, to me, is an outright refusal of real-world reality, an attempt to deny and change the real-world to fit their “idealized image”. They are basically denying reality and trying to change it to fit their whims, thoughts, political views, or whatever. I’ve even heard of people claiming they are both male and female or are male in the front and female in the back and such. Some people, I am told, are even “identifying” themselves with mythical creatures.
Many people who deny the real-world tend to expect the world to change for them. In this way, they act as if they expect the world is supposed to cater to them. This makes them appear like spoilt children. This attitude is seen a lot with the younger generations I’ve found, such as the “millennials”. This is no doubt because they live in such an artificial real-world denying world.
Mental problems with the real-world???
It seems, to me, that the denial of the real world is causing many mental problems. In fact, it may be creating new types of mental problems. It almost seems that they are so new that its hard for people to grasp these problems. What I mean by this is that these problems tend to not be recognized as problems or are explained away or are interpreted in some other light. In these ways, these problems are not being recognized for what they are.
Having to teach the real-world????
There are times when I think that, nowadays, there is a problem with many peoples association with the real-world to the point that I sometimes think that we need to start having classes on “living in and accepting the real-world” or something like that.
Copyright by Mike Michelsen
Mikes passing thoughts Blog 