What is real?
This is not a straighforward question, it would seem, with a simple answer.
Of course, in some areas, you would _expect_ this to be a hard question to answer. In terms of your personal experience, there are so many things that can affect your perceptions.
When I'm under the foggy blanket of depression, I live in a different world than when I am clear and energetic -- it is a different reality, where I seem to have entirely different skill sets, and my understanding of what is easy and hard, what work is good and what work is poor, all of these things can change.
That kind of personal reality is by nature hard to nail down. It changes with time and mood and attention.
On the other end of the spectrum, some forms of reality are hard to dispute. This pad of sticky notes on my desk is pretty clearly a pad of sticky notes.
But it's possible for a person to perceive it as something more... perhaps you feel that 3M has put nano-probes in the glue of the notes and are secretly monitoring you through them. I knew someone who felt that the red light on a building in the distance was watching her -- seriously felt this to be true.
We laugh at these perceptions, call them crazy, say that these people need to adjust their tinfoil hats. Because to us, these ideas are silly, unreal. But to them these perceptions are as real as anything else.
And there are the conspiracy people, who like to talk about things that seem crazy (unreal) to many people. One, for example, is the inclusion of the All Seeing Eye on the Great Seal of the USA (the eye in the pyramid; look at your money http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/All_Seeing_Eye.htm).
Is this true or just imagination? Perhaps it used to be true and isn't now, or was not true but is because people thought it should be. We can't go back into time and ask the players, so we get to make up whatever stories fit the evidence we see.
That's what people do.
And once we have a story in our head that seems to fit the evidence, we act upon it as if it were real. To my mind, a wise person also adjusts their story when new evidence appears. But I suspect that most people find so much comfort in their mental stories that they will discount and adjust evidence so it fits instead, no matter what.
Now, if your imagined reality does not mesh with the accepted "true" reality, you are considered to be a nut, a deviant, crazy, in need of help. Or at the very least, unwell.
That's the thing, though. Is the accepted true reality the real reality?
I live in Texas. My reality is not the same as the majority reality here.
The bulk of the citizens of this fine state are Christians, and conservative ones at that.
They believe that the set of old, edited, and politically motivated stories in their bible are true stories, reflecting a true reality. In many cases, a literally true reality. In fact, our nation as a whole tends to believe some pretty wild things that lack any kind of real evidence: http://www.pollingreport.com/science.htm
How they can be sure that a "day" in Genesis corresponds to 7.94e+14 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom (the diurnal period of this planet around our sun) before God had even bothered to invent light or dark yet, is a mind-bogglind proposition. But I digress.
For these people, the reality of the universe is such that good (them) and evil (everyone else) are locked in an epic battle that, while possibly fore-ordained that good will win, requires efforts on their part to make it happen.
To these people, anything I say that is not in line with their teachings from church is most likely motivated by a personal demon of mine, that is feeding me clever lies to confuse them and test their faith.
For them, to give the appearance of sanctioning the evils of homosexuality, would be to lose a battle in this war. So when they vote to define marriage according to their religion's preference, they are striking a blow for goodness and godliness.
This is real for them. Their reality. They are living their lives according to, what to me is, a misunderstood fairy tale. And to be honest, they aren't even doing that correctly. But again, digression threatens.
These same people celebrate when Target supports their "right" to not sell you Plan B if they choose not to. And they would feel that our complaints and points of view are simply ignorant, or influenced by evil powers that we are not aware of. And that we should pray to Jesus and turn our hearts to him to find happiness and clarity.
When we talk of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, do they understand what we mean? To them, the FSM is just a silly story, a political tool. Nothing at all like their stories, which are the true words of God and the one correct guide to life, the universe, and everything.
Nothing at all in common.
This is their reality.
But then, to other people, the stories in the bible and the precepts of the FSM are all too similar.
So the accepted true reality in my world appears to actually be a form of insanity. My personal beliefs are such that my reality is not in step with the majority reality around me. Does that make _me_ insane?
I don't think the blinky red light is watching me, and I have no fear of my Post-it notes, but neither do I think that God hates homosexuality, the world was created in 6 days with one day of rest, that Sunday is holy, that Jesus learned to bypass the fermentation process, and so forth.
To my point of view, if you think that the sun stopped in the heavens (literally) because God said so, you are probably insane... that is, holding a view that is out of touch with what is real.
But I'm in something of a minority.
Does that make me crazy?
Because I feel like a sane person in a world of crazy people. And, even worse, the inmates are running this asylum, not just inhabiting it.
Our country was founded by sane, intelligent people. Every time I read something by, for example, Thomas Jefforson, I am impressed by his insight.
On the contrary, some of the things I hear from George W. Bush makes me ashamed not only of my country but, sometimes, of my very species.
I think part of the problem is that the really crazy people are very, very sure of themselves. Their reality is more real than ours. And, as long as this reality is not immediately destructive to their survival, this certainty of theirs turns them into effective leaders.
People like certainty. It feels like safety.
Sometimes it seems hopeless. These fairy tales are compelling, so they collect converts quite easily. Are they true? Who knows! But they have a psychological benefit -- they are a form of mental parasite. They gain life, and we gain... peace of mind. At the expense of living our lives with a mental model that does not, as far as I can tell, reflect a true reality.
And on top of this, many of these lifestyles promote breeding, so these communities grow from within as well as from without.
What does the future hold for people who live in my reality? We don't offer the same comfort, we don't breed as fast, we aren't often charismatic leaders. Are we trapped? Destined for extinction? Or will there always be a thin film of us to help moderate, to leaven if you will, the fermenting majority that are not like us?
I like our planet. I love the beauty and power and ferocity of it. I love people (as individuals, though as often as not I dislike people groups or categories). I wish I could have a thousand lifetimes, so I could love more people, to have more friends, to do more things (except for those days where I'm too burnt out to care anymore and all I can do is sleep; but those days always pass).
So I feel a real dismay at what sometimes looks like the inevitable destruction of what I feel is good and beautiful about humanity.
Cultures have been overrrun and destroyed before, by the violent or stupid or corrupt. They usually come back again, too, some hundreds or thousands of years later.
But is that recovery guaranteed? Or would it be possible to be caught in a cultural revolution, a new Dark Ages, a spasm of fundamentalism, that could go on for a thousand years or more, or forever?
There are people, many people, who are actively working to do this. Fundamentals of several stripes, Muslim or Christian, or whatever, would love to see their fairy tales overrun the consensual reality so hard that we never recover.
For us, this is madness, a short-sighted foolishness that boggles the imagination.
For them it is reality, it is their holy battle, it is their very reason for existence.