A busy schedule has left me little time for an in-depth issue of Unreality this week, so this will be a light touch one based on a simple conversation that recently got my mind whirring. You may want to take this as an opportunity to catch up on any of the previous 15 Unrealities you have missed - can you believe I’ve done 15 of these things??
Head to unreality.substack.com to catch up on the archive so far and revisit your favs.
That doesn’t exist in my reality
As I’ve often mentioned, I’m really interested in the idea that everyone has their own personal reality. In relation to this, I’ve previously spoken about the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, also known by the term frequency illusion.
[...] Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was invented in 1994 by a commenter on the St. Paul Pioneer Press’ online discussion board, who came up with it after hearing the name of the ultra-left-wing German terrorist group twice in 24 hours. The phrase became a meme on the newspaper’s boards, where it still pops up regularly, and has since spread to the wider Internet.
- The apparent origins of the term (via Pacific Standard)
The gist of the frequency illusion is that once you’ve learned about something new, it seems to be everywhere. Having never heard about something until now, it suddenly appears frequently in your life. It’s closely related to confirmation bias - the notion that we favour or otherwise disproportionately acknowledge information that confirms prior beliefs. The consensus in explaining frequency illusion is that those references were just as frequent before you acknowledged them, but it was learning this new piece of information that caused you to begin noticing them i.e. they were there all along.
Yet I find it interesting to consider this slightly differently. Yes they were there all along, but if you did not perceive them, did they exist in your version of reality? I suppose this is a more long winded version of the “if a tree falls in the forest…” thought experiment. If you and I read the same article, but each takes something different from it based on our prior knowledge and personal context, are we experiencing the same reality?
This was brought to my mind recently when my partner uttered the brilliant phrase “they didn’t exist in my reality.” We were recalling a late night conversation from some time ago that had me in tears laughing, in which he was insistent that you cannot purchase a bag of frozen corn cobs (you can). It was hilarious to me that he did not believe in the existence of something so perfectly ordinary, that I had encountered many times before. When I asked which was more likely - he just had never seen them, or I was completely misremembering their existence - he considered the latter more plausible. When recollecting the conversation a few days ago with some friends, he insisted they simply did not exist in his reality until I had proven as such. And really, they didn’t, right?
If we consider our reality our individual perceptions of the world, then of course they are all different. Think of a time that you may have had an argument with someone because they misconstrued your actions, words or tone - their perception of the situation is technically accurate to them, even though it doesn't align with your own. I find this an interesting way to think about the concept of alternate realities, and to really emphasise that reality is far from fixed or objective.
I feel like it gives you a new way of looking at life if you start to think of everyone’s version as true for them. Let me know if you think of any interesting examples from your own life, I’d love to hear them. Did frozen corn cobs exist in your reality before today?
The question of whether things exist if you've never perceived them made me think of solipsism. Everything you experience is internal to you, so can you really be sure that anything is real beyond whatever it is that gives you consciousness?
There must be an infinity of realities, or at least as many as there are sentient beings. I like to think that this means everything exists on a sliding scale, as it makes for endless scopes and possibilities. As someone who tends to be constrained by an OCD way of life, I find the idea of no fixed boundaries surprisingly liberating. If we could all accept these infinite realities, we might be less judgemental, more compassionate and generally more accepting of "other". I am prepared to accept the quasi existence of frozen corn on the cob, but at what point during defrosting does it become just corn on the cob?