With all that going on in politics right now (the 2020 presidential elections being contested by Trump and the coronavirus spiking), I’ve been thinking a lot about what is truth, what is lies, and what in reality is absolute. Mostly, nothing is absolute. Maybe the physical laws of the universe are absolute, but only in this universe. Pretty much everything else is relative, even morality. I like to think that some things are just bad and others are just good. One of the most wrong things I can think of is murder. Killing is wrong to me, but I eat meat, eat plants, take antibiotics, and wash my hands. All these actions result in the death of another living thing, but I still do them. Is killing a plant evil? In my day to day life, I wouldn’t say so. In fact, plants live with adaptations specifically to lessen or take advantage of herbivory. I might refine my statement to be: killing humans is wrong. But I can think of instances in which it could be justifiably right, self-defense springs to mind.

This idea of self-defense launches a whole new quandary for me. How immediate does the threat to life have to be? Can we define the exact moment which divides right from wrong? Is killing a killer right? What if you got the identity of the killer wrong? What about war? What if the killer thinks they were justified in their action?

Of course, I think we all have a moral code that we could apply in these instances to decide rightness and wrongness. But without a doubt, the verdicts would not be unanimous. This lack of consensus points to the lack of absolutism in morality. I think this extends to reality as well. Because even reality is a matter of opinion. Is the sky blue? Or is it clear? Some people say my eyes are hazel, others say brown. This makes me think that reality is what we make or perceive of it. The self-determination of reality is the most absolute concept I can think of, besides maybe the physical laws of the universe.

This idea of self-determination is at once magic and disaster. Magic, because we have the power to define reality for ourselves. Disaster, because we must also live with everyone else’s reality. This coexistence of reality is probably one of the most difficult to achieve. It requires compassion, humility, flexibility, and conviction.

Take for example, Trump’s insistence that he won the election. The way I perceive it, he did not win, but many, many Americans do believe he won. If enough of us believed he did, we could make it the culturally dominant reality.

More than seventy million people voted for him, those people see reality differently than the people who voted for Biden or one of the other candidates. Without a doubt in my mind, every single Trump voter thought Trump was somehow better for the country or themselves in some way. Even though my reality doesn’t align with theirs, it doesn’t necessarily make my reality the “right” one.

Now, this doesn’t mean that I think reality is so fluid that it becomes too fragmented and meaningless. I just think we, as humans, should work toward shared reality. Vitriolic rejection of another reality doesn’t always make it go away, and in fact, it can give the reality more concreteness, more justification.

Trump has planted the seed of reality where the election was rigged against him. As news media fact-check him and state that there is no evidence, some people will become more assured that the fraud is being covered up. Since distrust of new media is a fairly common reality, some other means of dispelling these fraud claims will be necessary. Perhaps in court. I don’t know. I don’t understand the other realities well enough to say

Divisive rhetoric about other people’s realities only serves to drive humanity away from a mutually acceptable shared reality. That’s why I think definitions are so important. We need to define reality with some level of standardization so that we can all exist here. Some people will insist on their definition, but ultimately, reality is democratic.

This concept of reality as a democracy gives me hope. The magicians of humanity, those whose realities differ sharply, will serve to push and pull the shared reality. I think we’ll be pulled in the “right” direction in the aggregate. Certainly there will be zig zags on this path, but I also believe humanity is well-intentioned mostly, and since reality is self-determined, we’re likely to move in, what I would define as, the right direction. I’m a participant in this democratic reality, so of course I would push us towards what I believe to be right. Just like everyone else will too. Think of the force of that kind of movement!