The Quality of Real

The Quality of Real

Samuel Bird

I haven’t told you about it yet. Because of the causal flow of data across time, I can not fault you for not knowing about it. Even if you skipped a few sentences ahead, I want you to at least, after the fact, be aware of this thing I have not yet named. The concept currently exists in my mind, at least at writing this, and not yours. Before it existed in my mind, where was it? Did my mind make it ex-nihlo? Not entirely. This thing that I am describing is likely something you have heard of before, though it is oddly specific. However, while the sort of thing that I will soon mention exists, this iteration of it is markedly different enough to make it unique. Even as a concept, no other state of affairs culminating in an instant was just like it. However, could it just be that I am putting together a chimera of other parts and putting them together into this whole? No, as parts of it are also markedly different than anything before. We have to then ask, where are ideas before they are in the mind? This specific idea that you don’t have yet, you will get from my mind via language. However, where was that idea before I came up with it? This is worth a meditation, but it is not the point. Chicken coop. That is the concept I am giving you. Before you heard it, it was in no way real to you, as there was only the form of an idea without contents. Now you know what it is, a chicken coop. This phenomenon is a building often with a run for chickens to live in and be protected from the elements. We could add and subtract qualities until our idea would no longer fit in the words “chicken coop.” Perhaps we add on more and more quarters until we have a house that happens to have a small part for chickens. Perhaps we say all facts are one, and then the stars and planets were parts of that one great preeminent chicken coop. We get some arbitrariness from definitions and demarcations, but we could probably agree there is a certain series of facts we refer to when we say chicken coop. But I am not referring to the general field of chicken coops, but this specific iteration in my mind. It is five feet long, three feet wide, and made of spare pine. It has a slanted roof, an open run below, and a heated nesting box above. This is more specific, but we have just made a more complex form. There could be a variety of coops that fit this description with different hues and accents. I could spend to the end of time naming details, but until we had the instance of that coop, there could always be two coops that were not materially identical, that fit that description. Our language is gesturing, but the thing it points to is either in the mind or in the world. Let us now build the chicken coop. I will build it with you, so that we make sure the exact instance of mind is most closely represented. However, let us build it with our eyes closed. You try your best to be careful not to hit your thumb when you pound in nails that I grabbed your hand to guide you where they went. We put up the wire, hinges to the door, and finally our poultry home is finished. Only then, do you and I open our eyes. It is as similar to my vision as I can sense. No we see it. While you were feeling it, you were able to feel the shape, the texture of the grain, and more accurateulty build a model of the coop in your mind. Now, our eyes are open. You are visually perceiving the coop and it is having more facts available for your viewing. The wood is brighter than you thought. The building was slightly crooked, but we found such adorable. We have now brought something from mind to world via creation. More than a beautiful manifestation of the human soul, this raises some questions on ontology or what it means to be real. To start, I go back to the question I can do no more than ask. Where were our thoughts before we thought them? Perhaps an ex-nihlo creation or they existed before hand. If we say the latter, what would it mean that the ideas “existed” in any material sense. If we have a tabula rasa or blank slate view, we would have to say that the notion of the coop came from the mind. While one could say coops aren’t growing from trees, they would say we compiled ideas together to get the coop. However, the tabula rasa people say that data is synthesized from the world. This is fine, but we get back to that question in what sense the idea existed in our minds. With their idea of empirical synthesis using the reproducibility of the material, the coop in the mind is not something available for scientific study. We get back to this idea of what is real, and then finally, at what point did the chicken coop become real?

Let us next find what we mean by real. With deep meditation, I have found the best working definition to be a phenomenom or state of affairs that exists both in the mind, and in the world. Some would say that it would only need to exist in the world, but I am under the skeptical assumption that our perceptions brings ontology. If I am wrong, which is likely, than we would have to say what we mean when we say there is something we don’t know that is. This wouldn’t be something we knew its essence or energies. We wouldn’t know anything about what it is or are affected by what it does. Furthermore, in what sense could anything have the quality of realness without it being in the mind? Realness then would need to come from both its availability for perception in the world and being perceived in the mind. Let us follow the case of the chicken coop from your experience. Before you had the thought, was it real? It certainly was, in some sense, but not to you or me. What about when I told you the idea? It existed in your mind, but even if we ignored how off your concept was, it was still not in the world. We built it, but you did not see it. You perceived it through touch, but much of its being was unavailable to you. Was it real now? Well, it was in the world, but weirdly enough, not fully in your mind. This would be exacerbated by me building it alone. When you open your eyes, surely the chicken coop is real, right? It is in your mind, in the world, and perceived back into your mind to align those two concepts. “Oh, that is what he meant by a thatched roof,” you might say. Is it real? Let’s say we go to bed and wake up the next morning. We are rejuvenated and more alert than we were during our labors. You then perceive the chicken coop further. You notice all the little lines that could be imperfections, if you didn’t give up your original concept. You might notice the grains as having their own tapestry. You might remark the emotion experience you have watching the sunrise dance through the cracks in the timbers. Is it now more real? There are limits to our perception. Our senses seem to have to do more with survival than “truth.” We can’t sense electricity as it goes by, just when it makes a visible spark or shocks our bodies. We can only see the spectrum that is most advantageous for our diets. So then in what sense could anything be entirety real, to us or at all? Nothing will ever be completely perceived by the human mind, even if all of us spend a thousand years staring at the coop. As I have said before, we see the world as we are, not as it is. This ontological need for a deep perception is one the most core needs for a God. What is perceiving all this being to make it so? Whatever the case may be, what we have found out today is that “realness” is a gradient. There are degrees to which something is not real. We have now found that “realness” is a quality in that is an attribute some phenomenom can vary in having and to varying degrees. Now, I am positing that “realness” is a quality of value in the sense that to be real is more valuable than otherwise. For example, any later step of the chick coop building process was more of merit than the one that proceeded it. I am careful to turn facts into values, but I have a case for this that is of surprising consequence. In my idea of “contrastism,” we can identify a phenomenom by the negation of a relative phenomenon. How could we find the value of realness, other than to the value of its lesser?

We opened the door to the small cafe and made our orders. Once we had our afternoon snack, three of my closest friends and I sat down at a table and began discussing. Having just come from a lecture on ancient Greek philosophy and being who we were, we began to discuss this idea and that notion. One thought prompted the next, everyone’s thoughts on it and another source which added to the conversation. Once we were talking about books, the conversation moved to more contemporary pieces and less and less firmly philosophical until we were mostly discussing popular novels. Not being talented at silence, I made sure they knew my opinion on these books, as well as my issue with novels generally. “I don’t like that book at all.” “Samuel, I think that makes you objectively wrong. It has inspired millions of people.” “Yeah Sam, why would you not like it?” “Well, I think some people escape into their ideas, and that book seems to do it worse than others. Sure, if a book allows one to unliteraly experience their life as a proverbial way to be more participatory in their life, I can see the value of that. But, if it is just a means for escapism, I think that is a problem.” “What about film, video games, and other novels? Do you think they could have any merit?” “Slight and to the degree one can step into one’s life deeper by stepping into them, but I would rather read nonfiction. There are enough unknowns that are the case, that I don’t find it helpful to fill the mind with all the things that don’t exist.” “People’s lives can be painful and mundane. Fantasy is a way to escape from it and be somewhere better.” I became more passionate. “No, I don’t think people should do that. I don’t have too many ways I think everyone should live, but I can say that we have to play out what fate gives us instead of escaping into some fantastical realm.” “You simply don’t know what you are talking about Sam, these pieces of art are classics.” “And my convictions call me to forgo them and ignore the crowd’s chanting. If the whole world sought to not participate with their lives, I would stand in opposition.” In their democratic surety of the values of the masses, they ridiculed me and assured me my estimation was off, but this idea welled up in rebellion as I sought to put into words what was missing around me. 

My age does not make room for soul, and certainly not for the great souls. Heroes were dead tales we got to hear but were told to never emulate. We were told the world was settled and there was no reason to try to make a difference. Esse Maxim burst from my young mind as it was the questioning that made me exist so vibrantly. My poor peers had no avenue or outlet for their humanity. No wars, adventures, or creation. In peacetime, the art is lackluster, because the hero is subdued in his own mind. My peers escaped into worlds where they could be anybody and see anything. They saw more joy and beauty than I ever could. However, at the end of these adventures, they had to put down their medium for such and return to the family dinner table as a nobody that was alien to themselves. My soul could scarcely be crammed into my small frame, and greatness didn’t need its permission or affirmation. I was labeled a troubled and delinquent youth as I occupied the space in the world my soul needed. I would not be boarded up in a novel or banished to a film. I was alive in this world, and this was where I belonged. The wires that ran those devices were as chains to my peers. Now, they don’t know themselves and their lives. They could see and hear whatever they wanted as they willed, and were, of men, most miserable. I work to not be a foe to myself, but I am at least well-acquainted. 

I am he of which Nietzsche spoke of. I am the one who transvalued all values and made that bridge between mind and world as the value. Esse Maxim is that which was foretold, and worth its fanfare. With this, the new good before all goods. The highest value of the mind that holds value to be ever pressed up against the world where all such is manifestly found. Heaven is found once again, the soul located, and the great given their avenue. As I will speak on later, there is a new evil, a meta evil before all else. It is that which removes us from this participation with our existence. This list is occupied by that escapism I speak of here. If the real and authentic are valuable, then perhaps the fantastic and synthetic are our new evil. Called away from all that is before you to recesses of the mind given conceptual candy that starves the soul. This new evil is manifest in all its disingenuity. One could find a love, build a relationship and promise worthy, and come together in that divine dance of the ages. The souls intertwined become one to bring another soul into being. Sacred above near all else, is this chance to love someone enough to create another person to love. This value above all is then given bodily passions to make sure the whole being can be in on this celebration of life. However, it is not necessary that the soul celebrate with the body. One can climax without the rich context, only to crash as their is no one to hold you. A photo to see allows the mind to forgo the love and mate for an idea of someone that is free of all the rest of their humanity. There is no need to labor, love, and apologize to this graven image, only to posses it and have your way with it in your mind. You have simulated the dance of the ages, but you have done so without all the rich reality. You have only the mate in your mind, and none before you. The psyche becomes aware of its solitude and crashes down. The entire value of the real was traded for the partial, fleeting, and daming part value for now. The tasty food picked from the vine is traded for the processed poison that overloads our senses. The moments of triumph and satiation are traded for the smoking of a substance that gives that same high. The living of a life is traded for living in the parameters of another author’s character. In as far as we make these errors, we disengage with our existence. When we finally return, we find it as a stranger to us. This new evil is that phony that steals away the more consistent reality. Love, health, and success breed their own, but their synthetic counterparts don’t take after adding value, but minimizing it until the last moment you seek to steal the last bit of pleasure to find the vial is empty and so is your soul. Our consumption consumed itself. 

I have rambled on chicken coops, literature, and copulation, but we now need to ask about the consequences that made it worth the writing. In the ontological argument, a case is made for God alleging that Him having all qualities as part of His magnanimity, he would have the quality of existence. Kant made a case that the conclusion was not the case as existence was no quality for something to possess. Perhaps he would suggest it is rather that thing that makes one capable of possessing a quality in sort of predicating order. I am not making a case for what this quality of real is, other than that conjunction between facts of mind and world. Some facts of mind are incredibly powerful such as the a priori maths and logic. However, their power comes from the exclusionary precision. The endless supposing and day-dreaming of a value-starved being does not have that quality. Any dream I can think of would definitely be pulled into my mind's eye and every book, film, or tale would expand on all the places I could be but where I am. In an aesthetic plea, this is a shame. The great honor of existing is spent on the consideration of that which does not. No great story lived, but one was heard. No heroism was brought about, but visualized. No problems confronted, but wished away. If this real is so desirable, what is it? I define it as a state of affairs that are the case outside of our personal and immediate perception of them. For example, if you and I independently saw a shared fact, that would be effectively real to us, and was available for our sharing.

There is a game that our advanced minds play. The game is not simply undesirable as it can demonstrate states of affairs we can bring into the world. I call this game: “What if...” The basic idea is that we start with a premise that is different than what is the case and then follow inductive reasoning to what that could result in. If she never quit loving me... If I had more money... If I had not experienced such a horror... The last seems to be most susceptible to such. Having seen vitriol and violence sufficient that the recesses of my mind assumed control and wrote a code that would make sure we never experienced that again, of course, I will wonder what could have been different. If my psyche was irreparably damaged, affecting the core of how I related to the world, but still leaving me within to mourn it, what pleasantries could have been. The possible conceptual messiah that I escaped to become a hellish cage. Losing grip on the tender balance between reality and the inner world, I escape away to a world that doesn’t remind me of what it did to me and a world where I am in control to mitigate my horrors. Let me speak clearly, that world does not exist. We cannot affirm that antecedent conditional. It is nothing more than a thought in your head to change your actions, but that world has no proximity to you. I have watched as people I loved deeply slipped from me as they collapsed inward in a place they were safe. Once again, in an attempt to stop the pain, we create something that votes against the wonder of our existence, and was the next great cause of our pain. As I have said before, the thing that causes most of our suffering is that thing that we use to inappropriately rid ourselves of the rest of it. To miss this whole process and engage with my existence, I choose to be there for that which is real. It is miserable, ugly, bitter, and cruel. However, being my only frame of reference and not having the contamination of mind sweets, I see the rich aestheticism in the asceticism. I see myself as being a part of me and my organism meets the depravities of its environment with ferver and potency. I have had dreams of being a great musician, a great writer, and a great father. Instead, I am an incredibly finite person who has a little day job and writes his silly little ideas. The acquisition of dreams has been failed, but I never failed to engage. This life I live is limited, but it is the only life that keeps going on when I open my eyes. I feel my readers are smarter than me as I would struggle to read this chapter, but in closing, realness is a gradient in terms of how real something can be, and how valuable that is. To the first, be where your eyes meet the world and perceive with care. To the second, revel in the greatest degree of reality that you can muster. For all the simplicity your life may have, at least it has the decency to be real.