by Kc Mulville

Created on: June 27, 2009   Last Updated: June 29, 2009

There is reality. There is knowledge. Do not confuse the two.

Reality doesn't depend on knowledge. Reality doesn't give a fig about knowledge. Distant galaxies spin, nevertheless, despite our ignorance of them. Their reality doesn't depend on our knowledge. Knowledge doesn't govern reality.

Consider: the police barge into your house and arrest you for stealing diamonds. You didn't do it. However, the trial comes and they convict you. They claim to "know" that you did it. Do you then tell yourself that you must have been lying to yourself, and that you must have done it? Of course not. You know the difference between reality and their "knowledge." Even if you complain that their knowledge is false, you'd have to argue that what disproves their "knowledge" is reality itself. But then, having done that, you couldn't turn around and claim that knowledge makes reality.

Besides, if knowledge dictates reality, where are the diamonds?

It's a figure of speech to say that our experience is our reality. It isn't. They're two different things. We always work on the assumption that the world is exactly as we experience it; but that's just a practical necessity. We simply don't have the time to monitor the level of subjectivity in our experience. Life passes too quickly. We need to take some things for granted, and we take our experience for reality. But when we pause to examine things, as we do here, we have to remember that it's just a pragmatic assumption. Indeed, as science progresses, it shows us constantly that our experience of the world is not how the world really is.

Others experience the world differently, not because reality is different, but merely because experience varies by person. That only makes sense once you abandon the idea that experience is reality. Once you leave that assumption behind, it's easy to accept the plethora of experiences that others have, without fearing that you're swimming through a river of various fantasies. It's also why we enjoy the surprise when the world behaves unexpectedly. We find that our experience is restricted (if not "tainted") by our expectations, and, on occasion, reality refuses to abide by our expectations. It surprises us.

I submit that the urge to elevate knowledge above reality, and claim that reality obeys knowledge, is simply a human urge to "subdue the earth" on the cheap. If history is any guide, humanity has been trying to mentally shape reality since the dawn of time. The whole magic of magic is precisely the desire to command reality through mental experience alone. The magician appears to move the rock, not through sweat and muscle-tearing effort, but by some hidden mental power. But, like the whole of magic, this is fantasy. Our knowledge does not affect reality. It affects experience, but that's not the same thing.

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