Reality is an interesting concept but it is important to remember for any situation that our senses and perceptions are less than 100% accurate. All of us rely upon incomplete and even faulty information daily in order to interact with the world at large, however, forgetfulness or even disbelief of this fact is apparently a comfortable position for many people to take considering that actually increasing one's level of awareness has the potential to shift what amounts to a healthy level of skepticism towards an unhealthy level of mind-numbing paranoia. Needless to say, it is best to maintain a personal firewall between seeking a more fully perceived reality and having an over-active imagination.
Restrictions encountered when seeking a "mostly correct" perception of reality may be due to physical limitations or mental constraints. For example, the human eye has a blind spot due to physical limitations which is called a Scotoma (Greek for darkness) which our brain automatically fills in with an internally created image in order to accomplish a "best fit" to complete any scene being viewed. Conveniently the same term Scotoma is also used metaphorically in psychology to refer to an individual's inability to perceive personality traits in themselves that are obvious to others.
Simple reason must conclude that the physical limits of the senses upon which we fully rely to experience the world plus the often unrealized limitations to, or constraints existing within the mind will together generate only conclusions which range from being merely incomplete to being outright false. Basically it is easy to lie to oneself or each other about a great many things that one would normally assume to be obvious (see above) but human evolution has nevertheless historically favored quick reaction times over any tendency for extended contemplation in such matters (you snooze, you lose) .
The basic survival decision tree for all intelligent life goes like; (1) Is this a threat?, (2) Is this an opportunity?, (3) Is it safe to ignore? Mankind transgresses this only at it's leisure. One of the defining characteristics of human behavior, however, is that we are inclined to test things when given the opportunity to do so in order to categorize everything we know or at least think we know into some mutually agreed upon subjective reality which we then nevertheless tend to erroneously call objective. This objectivity thing sounds nice in theory but quite often things do not always work out between conflicting schools of thought even in the presence of scientific proofs and/or "expert" witness testimonies. It's almost as though humans are only human.
On a more personal level we have developed tests to help us evaluate both the without and within, the world at large and our inner selves. Some understanding and knowledge of both is deemed necessary to afford the luxury of our even approaching any true reality. At least that's one theory, but our pursuit of knowledge has also been deemed the ultimate exercise in vanity while being compared to a mouse nibbling on a mountain. Let's at least hope there is some cheese to be found in such an effort and besides, as long as the mouse is having fun what's the harm in that?
Theme Basis:
I know that I know nothing
Ignoramus et ignorabimus
Tests to play with:
duck test
smell test
Acid test
Personality test
love
