this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2026
244 points (90.9% liked)
memes
22612 readers
2629 users here now
Community rules
1. Be civil
No trolling, bigotry or other insulting / annoying behaviour
2. No politics
This is non-politics community. For political memes please go to !politicalmemes@lemmy.world
3. No recent reposts
Check for reposts when posting a meme, you can only repost after 1 month
4. No bots
No bots without the express approval of the mods or the admins
5. No Spam/Ads/AI Slop
No advertisements or spam. This is an instance rule and the only way to live. We also consider AI slop to be spam in this community and is subject to removal.
A collection of some classic Lemmy memes for your enjoyment
Sister communities
- !tenforward@lemmy.world : Star Trek memes, chat and shitposts
- !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world : Lemmy Shitposts, anything and everything goes.
- !linuxmemes@lemmy.world : Linux themed memes
- !comicstrips@lemmy.world : for those who love comic stories.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It feels like you're using the word reality as a duplicate of the phrase personal experience. In that case I would agree. You can absolutely choose how you feel about the things you perceive.
But no amount of choosing how you feel gets you to fly. And no amount of thinking you can fly will ever prove you to be right when you try and fail.
Though you can certainly feel like it's worth trying again if you're so choose.
Sorry, looking over my usage today I just realized I didn't really address your statement at all, except to hand-wave it away. That seems to be happening more as I get older, sort of lose the thread and meander off to continue insisting on points nobody is really refuting. Probably just dementia or something.
But, yes, I certainly agree. There are some hard facts about the world that impress themselves upon us. Like there's no amount of mentalizing that's going to change physics. Hell, most spiritual traditions are largely about understanding and effectively coping with the things we can't change.
I have read some interesting proposals by legit philosophers that argue the entire world is in fact created by the mind. Post doctorates and well learned spiritualists are often as equally skilled in logical arguments as they are in sophistry so many of their points can be hard to refute. Not necessarily convincing, but certainly compelling in a way that makes you reconsider the nature of reality.
Still, if someone is convinced they can fly, they might better try taking off from the ground first.
It's a deliberate use of the word. Because people's personal experience is their reality. Even among scientists, objective truth isn't necessarily agreed upon, so aside from specific cases, it's hard to use it as a guide post towards navigating life. Like you said, there are certainly hard facts in the world which impact us, but how we perceive and interpret these phenomena, how we grapple with theory of mind, creates our reality.