Creation of Reality
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Creation of Reality
Walk into any home in the world and then ask yourself, do you see what you expected to see? Perhaps you had already made assumptions on the homes contents before you entered. You may have been able to guess the color of the paint, the type of wallpaper, the amount of plants, or even the size of the television. Clues may have been received from the neighborhood that the home is in, or maybe even from the residents personality. However, whether or not you correctly deciphered the information, there is still a distinct pattern, but it is usually buried inside the mind of the creator / designer.
The truth is that even if the contents were 100 percent predictable, the patterns contained inside are flawless for the person living in the house. Every person constructs his or her own environment and, therefore, reality through a combination of mental and material reality creation. It is able to create an environment for something as simple as having an absolutely wonderful day or something as complex as becoming a millionaire by winning the lottery. On the other hand, the opposite is possible as well. One may go an entire week without having a good day or an entire lifetime without a lottery jackpot. Actually, as much as these people may want what they dont get, their goals are not reached because the reality that they create for themselves, and believe in, does not see these aspirations as feasible. Simply stated, you can win the lottery as easily as you can have a stress free day if you can get past the mental road block of winnings intangibility, thereby allowing it to become reality in your subconscious mind.
Arguments have been made that our world operates in a manner that is governed by laws that are not able to be bent. Many people these days, as they have for hundreds of years, believe in the idea of fate, the idea that things happen to people and that they have no control over them. This idea fits into the larger school of thinking based on Newtonian Physics, which works off the principle that events in the world are linear and rarely interact with or respond to human interference. This basically means that things happen and humans cannot control them but can only accept their occurrence.
Under this narrow-minded suggestion of the universes system is the idea of reductionism. In the theory of reductionism, an attempt is made to simplify every concept as much as possible in order to explain its occurrence. Even the extremely sophisticated subject of human consciousness is reduced to a mere function of brain and other biological activities under reductionism (Peat 155). In his book Synchronicity: the Bride Between Matter and Mind, Dr. Peat explains that reductionism fails because it argues “that even the most complex phenomena of consciousness and life, can be reduced to the behavior of matter and the laws of Newtonian physics” (152). Unfortunately, the system of physics that is actually at work is not linear and not quite that simple.
Everything, including something large like a human being, or something small like a humans thoughts, affect a mesh field of energy that is know to us as reality. This is an example of the science of Quantum Physics, which works by taking the Newtonian style of thought and bending, completing, or throwing out the equations. Quantum Physics is also what allows people to create their own realities in their daily lives; however, it is a very complex way of thinking and before looking at this involved method of reality creation, one must first understand the more straightforward ways that humans interact with the reality in which they live.
One of the simplest ways that we as people begin to create our reality is by designing the environments that we spend our time in. On a personal level, we decorate our houses to reflect our perception of our mental state and its reality. On a larger scale, places are engineered to appeal to our perceptions, often times to sell an idea or product. Take for example the Mall of America. Parts of the Mall have been designed to look and feel like the Minnesota woods on a warm summer day (Guterson 60). Temperature control, plant life, and many types of scenery are used to create the “forest” reality (60). Although it may be argued that this is simply a form of deception to get people to come and shop, it is actually a form of reality creation. Once this environmental reality is created, in our minds, there is no reason that these “artificial woods” should be any less enjoyable than actually being in a forest. Therefore, the forest, even though it is fake, is a form of reality.
Another outlet for reality creation that people have found is television. In fact, it actually plays a dual role in the process. First of all, it allows humans to watch and interact with different types of appealing, altered realities. As the name suggests, an altered reality is any reality that is different from a particular persons own reality. Interacting with these other realities allows for enjoyment, stress relief, and other such benefits. This is because it acts as an escape from our normal day to day routines and hassles. Other forms of altered realities, such as video games, act in the same manner, allowing humans to enjoy doing something that is not “normal.”
The second role that television plays in the process is the opening of avenues for a viewers own personal reality development. When a person watches a television show, they see reality as it is presented by the makers and producers of the show. In most cases, the reality depicted is starkly different than the reality that the viewer experiences day to day. It is for this reason that the viewer, by simply watching the program, is given more options for his or her own personal reality. These options are stored in the conscious mind until, perhaps, at some point the sub-conscious mind decides to accept one.
There is, however, yet another side to the argument that links television and reality; this one deals with physical reality. Some people, like Bill Mckibben, author of Daybreak, argue that our world has become “divorced” from physical reality due to television (66). But, who is to say what our physical reality can and cannot be. “Microchips and MTV”, as used by President Bush to describe our society in 1991, are most certainly part of todays created reality and an important aspect of it (Mckibben 65). With televisions in almost every home across the country, thousands of hours of programming each day, and millions of viewers each night, television has become a large part of both our physical reality and most peoples personal mental realities.
Whether influenced by television, family,