Do you think much about how malleable reality is? Does it freak you out or blow your mind?

If so, how do you deal, and what do you do, especially if your understanding is uncommon?

What I’m getting at is that we obviously understand reality from our own perspective. Collectively, we might have a mostly common understanding of greater reality, but whether it’s personal baggage that has given us ideas of how things should go or religious or political ideology or human rights issues or the influence of addiction or even the difference between what we believed in the past versus what we believe or understand now is reality not essentially chimerical?

We may say that others are wrong in their ideas or that we were wrong in our own ideas from the past (or that our elders who carry ideas from the past were wrong or misled), but our impulse in the moment is to treat whatever ideas or perceptions we have in the present as reality. Collectively, that which is most commonly agreed upon (plus what has the benefit of being enforced by collectively ceded power) is truth and reality. (I also want to squeeze in here somewhere the idea that one man’s truth is another man’s propaganda.) For example, unequal rights for women and minorities in the U.S. was truth and reality for an entire and substantial segment of society up until a few decades ago. It’s still true in some (many?) parts of the world. I would venture to assume that on Fluther, most of us believe this is wrong, but it doesn’t change it’s very real nature for millions or billions of people around the world.

Do you get what I’m saying?