What is reality?

Cant believe no one ever asked this question here :flushed:

What is it by the way?

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Survival. Food and shelter. The rest is a construct

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Nobody knows, I guess. It always makes me see psychiatrists as a little funny, because their job is to decide what is objectively normal and what is not, what is objective reality and what is not. They seem to really see themselves as the authorities in this. Which doesn’t seem to make sense to me, or be very humble.

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It’s an important question. My answer is it is something psychiatrists shouldn’t talk about. In my opinion reality is something people in general don’t have a good grasp of, and saying schizos are detached from reality replaces a more exact explanation of the exact neurological features of a person’s symptoms: the reality. Hopefully one day there will be an exact understanding of the medical issue a person is having, as saying they are detached from reality is really a philosophical issue. As a philosophical issue psychiatry is not really coherent philosophically, because the perspective of science is indirect reality, but psychiatry argues a strict direct reality position. Indirect reality has always been psychiatry’s enemy as a feature of their own practice and as the object of their treatment. As practice: batshit crazy theories from freud to lacan to the one schizophrenia is named and more. As object of treatment: errors of perception found in mental disorder.

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[ gives property tax bill a dirty look ]

Reality is annoying.

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Passing reality.

I think reality,
Has an ability,
Inside humanity,
For all necessity.

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I think reality is just piss

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I couldn’t accept the harshness of reality so I suppressed my real feelings since childhood. Little by little I’m learning to accept real emotions.

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Reality. Thats a tough question. Its definitely not psychosis. I think its a combination of environment and social factors.

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I think reality is a perception of environment in one’s mind, with the memory of inference.

Getting things right from our experiences and decisions we had made before,
predicts the future upcoming actions, that are predicted from our mind.

So what is my reality?

I have no clue, one thing is for sure is, I step in fire it will burn my feet.

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I think about reality quite a bit as one of my go to ideas. Schizophrenia makes it an interesting topic to think about, because in my experience even when I was psychotic I was in reality, because reality in my opinion is ostensible. It’s a particular definition of reality that it is what is true. So having a false belief or perception by that definition is not reality, but that definition is philosophically weak for many reasons. Reality is really an exact narration of the totality of existence at a given time, including the false belief perception. To say someone is not in reality kind of projects them into another dimension, another reality, that is separate from the one of the perceiver. What is happening is there is a disagreement in perception, but that is not two realities, reality is unified. So I make the simple argument to avoid reality when discussing schizophrenia and suggest that the narration of schizophrenia becomes more exact and not just about a narrow interpretation of truth

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Have you see this ted talk on Anil Seth: How your brain invents your "self" | TED Talk

I just watched it, make an ok sense.

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I might watch that a little later. I am interested in the topic because I think reality is used in different ways , someone will say something is reality like having to go to work, or they will say they are finding more about the reality of schizophrenia meaning the inner workings, or they will say the reality of schizophrenia such as the life experiences of someone with the disorder. There are more nuanced usages of reality, many more actually, so I find it troublesome that psychiatry will use ‘reality’ when they could actually just stick to medical and biological concepts. The more precise they are with medical and biological concepts the better the treatment would be. But they are not in reality, and as a result the reality for schizos is crap right now.

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I don’t know, I was just thinking of a situation of an incident 4 years back and the person whom I have no contact with calls, who was present at that incident.
He rarely calls me like once in two years and I thought of that incident and bam he calls out of nowhere. If I think deep then its a problem for me as I would lose track of reality as per my current understanding.

I feel some thing are left unexplored, as the incident was related to one of my friend’s death. She was such an amazing person, who introduced me to the company job profile.
But her time had come, the truth is I lost my senses and was not able to accept and 2 days back is when I actually thought about her.
World works in a mysterious ways that no one can understand, so it better to stay in the general populations reality.

I just explain an incident,

Just weeks before she passed away, she planted a plant and informed me to water it, after she passed away, I was watering that plant and a flower from above fell hitting my head and fell on that plant.

She had given me aloe vera plant to my home, its still present and had multiple sapling from it, one of which has bloomed this week.

Online it says its lucky to have a aloe vera plant blooming.

So when you are asking what is reality, you are asking about the nature of reality related to the connectedness and coincidence of events. So that is yet another nuanced meaning of reality. Simply another reason I don’t like reality being used. But you also say thinking deeply about this would lose track of reality. You would possibly develop a false belief about the nature of reality, but reality I think is the exact thing you are experiencing so you can’t really lose track of it. Reality as a concept as it is nuanced is just confounded in itself, so you are in reality in one sense, but then in another sense you are losing track of reality.

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Now my senses are acting up all weird, I think its an escape from this conversation, when I get stressed I dont lie but I try to find answers from my surrounding and looking in my head is the only thing I avoid doing. I think may be I don’t have self thinking.

But any ways here goes my answer to the above comment:

Reality is build on a system of general understanding and validation and proofs, if I think of flying I cant, I will just fall and hurt self.
Losing it touch with reality is like dreaming with my eyes open.
Which is dangerous, Isn’t it?

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Both of those examples I guess would be accurate. However, I’m hardlining on the point that the foundation definition of reality is exactly what you are experiencing. When I was psychotic I had the idea/ belief I was being poisoned. That was reality. I was in that reality. My downstairs neighbor was also in that reality because I confronted him. That was reality. Did I have a false belief? yes. Is having a false belief not being in reality? In my opinion it is still in reality.

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So you mean to say there is no proper definition for reality ?

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Reality is what I perceive. That is reality to me. One day my body will disappear forever. Joy is reality. :smirk:

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I’m solipsist. As far as I’m concerned, reality is anything I can perceive. It begins and ends there.

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