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A Dissertation on Reality Are We Real or 'Imagined? January 31, 1969

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"People take drugs because they can't face reality." "Be real." "You must take the realistic approach in your life--get a job."

How many times have you heard these sayings, or ones like them? Yes often, I'll wager. However, you object to them for only one reason, the rebellious one. You object to being told what to do with your life by someone or something else. I do not look down on this, youth is rebellious, and it should stay that way. But there is more to this question of reality, much more.

What is reality? The American College Dictionary defines it as "the state or fact of being real." But what is real? According to the Beatles, "nothing is real." I tend to agree. This paper you are reading, the chair you are sitting in, or the wall you're leaning against, indeed even you, are but an illusion, empty space, sparsely populated by dynamic atomic particles. We are built as the solar systems and galaxies of our universe are built, only our comparative infinitesimal size allows us to see them as they really are. Shrunken a million times beyond any perception by man's finest instruments, our "real" world would appear the same way. The "inanimate" universe is as alive as we are.

This revelation only adds to our picture of reality; it comes nowhere near completing it. For our universe is still described as the whole of existence, which it is not. It is a mere tidepool in the ocean of existence, a tiny piece of infinity given a beginning and an end by the shackles of time which our puny minds have supplied. We cannot fathom the true reality of infinity, and so we withdraw to our own little corner and supply definitions of our own.

Of course I realize the above represents my own personal beliefs, but I did not write them to convince anyone of my point of view. I stated my beliefs to argue another point, that reality is completely a personal affair for the individual to decide. In my opinion, telling someone to face reality is like telling someone to believe in a particular form of God; the individual should determine what is real to him and structure his life accordingly-it should not be done for him.

by Ed Parnell