Reality as a consensus developed within a society.

This originally was a post to the "Heal Normality" mailing list.

Various things ranging from a sociology text to a quote from Albert Einstein to recent history triggered these thoughts...

Patience folks, I lead you slowly to the point of understanding "normality" better so that you may heal it sooner.

Einstein once said, "It's not that mathematics describes reality that puzzles me, but that it does it so well."

That becomes a useful thought when grappling with that slippery thing called reality. Why does mathematics do so well? The answer lies in the concept of consensus reality.

A consensus reality is a reality evolved and perceived by a group of people. The sociology texts are full of interesting examples of behavioral and attitudinal "taken-for-granted's" which may exist say within one group (eg. "western society"), and for which the opposite is "taken-for-granted" in some other group.

The depth and range of phenomena which are subject to a group view of "reality" is astounding. Everything from things abstract like marriage to something as concrete as the length of an iron bar.

One merely needs to live in a society such as South Africa in the apartheid era, or be conscripted into such an army to see how potent a consensus reality is. I'm talking about differences in what is believed to be true, real, did happen etc. Not just differences of opinion, judgement, value etc.

South Africa is living through a somewhat traumatic period where our Truth and Reconciliation Commission is revealing in terrible detail how evil the results of consensus realities can be.

The important fact to keep in mind when reading of such atrocities, is that in the consensus reality that those persons lived in, they did the good and right thing. (I have vivid memories of a group of people laughing about such a thing, firm in the belief that the tale teller had done the right thing with humourous results. Even I, though I felt sick to my stomach and hated, loathed everything about the group I was in, could feel the immense pressure of the consensus reality to giggle.)

I'm not justifying anything, I'm merely pointing out how dangerous and potent and REAL consensus realities are. (To the tortured, you don't get anything more real than torture, and within the consensus reality South Africa operated in we never tortured anybody and we never looked closely (except to deny in red-faced outrage) at any reports of it either.)

It comes to the fact that what is real, is what is declared to be so by the group you exist in. This is why solitary confinement is so particularly disorientating. (Reality shifts more easily). This is why mathematics works.

Consider what is necessary for a phenomenon to be declared real by a group.

• It must be consistent with everything else declared real by the group.
• It must be declare so by a respected member of the group.
• It must be repeatable by members of the group. (A weak requirement.)

Mathematics and Science is, a priori, by definition, that which fits the requirement of "that which will be declared real by a group".

Thus I claim that there is NO absolute one true reality that is described so well by mathematics, but only a consensus reality of those in the group that obey the arcane rules of mathematics. (I should know, I'm an Applied Mathematician :-))

I further claim that a consensus reality has no claim on us beyond as a means of interacting with other members of that group.

Ie. There may _indeed_ be fairies at the bottom of your garden, but not at the bottom of mine. (My Little Green Men would clobber them if they tried... ;-))

Watch how we train our children. Watch how we patiently, time and time again, day in and night out, correct their deviations from the true path of the consensus reality we live in, just as we were ourselves so trained. Not because our reality is any more real, but so that we may interact with them.

And this is the point of my message to "healnorm"....

Be aware of consensus realities. (Check and test my claims, read some sociology texts, consider, investigate and experiment with the groups around you.) Realize that consensus realities are only tools for interacting with groups of people. If you need to interact with a group of people for various nefarious purposes of your own, learn what their reality is, and wear it as a cloak. Be aware that that reality, as are all others, is unreal.

This places you at the superb advantage of tweaking the blighters from directions they don't even perceive as existing. (Try not to let the thought that nothing is real drive you too mad, its not a problem really. Once you have learnt to fall off a bicycle, you never forget how...)

Postscriptum.

Comments, queries and conversation.

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