#19 - Windows on Reality
Or, alternatively: why you should view reality as if it is a lava lamp.
The reality we live in is incredibly complex. While I’ve heard this sentiment expressed by others, I haven’t heard the following analogy used. It’s a good one, so hold on to your seats!
Picture reality as a gigantic lava lamp. The “lava” represents reality: it’s shape is complex. It is always changing in ways that are unpredictable to the observer.
But to provide a proper analog to the human experience consider that the glass of our lava lamp is blacked out so that we can’t actually see reality or how it’s moving. As we grow up, a small window appears from which we can see some little chunk of our complex reality. Or at least, that’s how we start. The location of our window is reflective of our starting condition: where we were born, income, family situation, et cetera.
New ideas serve to expand that window. They give us a better glimpse of reality! But it’s only one angle that we see, so we will miss a lot, and if we extrapolate from what we can see we’re (all) quite likely to be wrong.
Some ideas and experiences can even open up windows on different parts of the lava lamp, granting us completely new views on reality. When you can say that you can now see the world from a different perspective, that’s a new window on this huge, multidimensional lava lamp we call reality.
We can, and do, learn more ideas over time and thus scratch away more and more windows, but they’ll always paint an incomplete picture. Moreover, reality is ever-changing (just like the lava lamp) so we must continue to look through our windows and continue to interpret the latest movements and even project ahead to where we think reality is going.
Naturally, other people will inevitably have different windows scratched off. So ideally several people collaborating are able to get a better picture on reality than any one person. This is why families, groups, and companies can and should be able to accomplish more than the sum of the parts. In practice, all these groups face the challenge of imperfect communication between the parties with differing views, which can make or break any family, group, or company.
But with that all said, more windows will lead to more information and better decisions. And you are in the right place: this column’s goal is to help you expand your window on reality with new concepts and interpretations that help you see reality more clearly!