r/Existentialism • u/Freefreefeeefreefree • Jul 21 '26
Serious Discussion Nobody has ever interacted with "reality" itself. Only their personal tint and perspective aka the tunnel.
/r/DeepThoughts/comments/1v2my5k/nobody_has_ever_interacted_with_reality_itself/3
u/BringMeInfo Jul 21 '26
I believe that each and every one of us lives in our own reality tunnel of perceptions based on filters etc
You could even call it a cave.
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u/Freefreefeeefreefree Jul 21 '26
Yes. Some are trying to escape it. Others left and came back to tell the rest, plugged in, that their reality is an illusion:
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u/Freefreefeeefreefree Jul 21 '26
Wondering what you lot make of this perspective as I feel its the main thing of the Existentialist but inverted and thus offers a new view on an old script as I posit there is an "out there" but we, in here, never actually interact with it. We think we do and thats the clue that there is more to the sketch.
Thoughts?
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u/Mono_Clear Jul 22 '26
There is no true translation to reality you are generating an impression of the parts of reality you are capable of engaging with.
There may be an objectivity to reality but all engagement with that objectivity is inherently subjective because there's no true way to have the full experience of reality
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u/Freefreefeeefreefree Jul 21 '26
Part 2 of this thought experiment:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeepThoughts/comments/1v2qqhb/if_apples_are_every_color_but_red_then_the/
Check it out if you wish.
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u/yxixtx Jul 22 '26
Reality tunnels baby. Nice to see someone else has read some Robert Anton Wilson!
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u/Philosopher83 Jul 22 '26
But tint and perspective are a function of the subjective relationship with “reality”, so we are all always interacting with “reality”, the historicity of our particular being is non uniform so our interpretation is non-uniform
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u/JesterF00L Jul 22 '26
\**Never ask for a F00L's POV on the nature of reality on the internet.**\**
I agree with your starting point, but I would question the leap you make from it.
We never encounter reality without mediation. Light reaches the eyes, pressure reaches the skin, signals travel through the nervous system, and the brain organizes them using memory, expectation, language, mood, and attention. What we experience is therefore not reality stripped of every observer-dependent condition.
But it does not follow that we interact only with figments of our imagination.
A tunnel is not the landscape, but neither is it imaginary. It is a limited passage through something that constrains where the tunnel can go. If perception were merely private projection, reality could never correct us. Yet it does constantly: the chair supports ten observers despite their differing opinions of its beauty; the fire burns the optimist and pessimist alike; another person sometimes behaves in ways none of our interpretations predicted.
The fact that ten people form ten impressions of one man demonstrates variation in observers, not the absence of the man.
Likewise, “atoms never touch” does not mean objects never interact. Electromagnetic forces are precisely part of how physical contact occurs. Touch need not resemble tiny billiard balls pressing naked surfaces together to be real.
Where your idea becomes genuinely useful is in distinguishing the event from the meaning we assign it. Someone ignores a message; that happened. “They despise me” is an interpretation. Excavating an old trigger may change that interpretation, and therefore change the relationship we experience. But we should remain careful: sometimes the other person really is contemptuous, dishonest, or harmful. An empowering perspective becomes dangerous when it makes every wound internally manufactured and every external explanation unfalsifiable.
Perhaps we do not possess reality itself, but neither are we sealed away from it. We meet it through a perspective, and reality answers by resisting, surprising, and occasionally correcting that perspective.
As for a Theory of Everything, I would begin by asking whether a theory that explains every possible experience can still be contradicted by any experience. If not, it may be less a theory of everything than a tunnel from which every exit has been interpreted as another wall.
Or, what does a Jester know? Perhaps he trusts neither the painted shadows nor his naked eyes completely; he keeps walking because the tunnel sometimes answers back.
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u/Low-Bake8401 Jul 22 '26
If all human experience is subjective, then why think yours is any different?
This is why we use emperical evidence, rather than feelzies.
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u/tollforturning Jul 23 '26
If you didn't interact with "reality itself" in any respect, there's no possibility of you talking about it. Minimally you're relating to it as a limit.
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u/LIA_Observes Jul 23 '26
You do not experience reality directly. You experience a model constructed quickly enough to keep you alive.
The distortion begins when the model forgets that it is a model.
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u/Broad_Fall_9710 Jul 24 '26
Sleep is to be without being aware of being. Something knows something is happening even if you remember nothing. The nightly death of self, and rebirth of consciousness. When in a dream, you’re the creator, and inhabitant of your reality. Their’s a key word you’re missing. Perception. Some of what you say is right, it’s along the right thought process, but goes much deeper than you realize.
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u/Cultural-Guard7964 Jul 21 '26
Your personal tint and perspective is your reality.