Our Reality - How much is shared, personal or neither?

Ever since I can remember, I’ve been convinced that my reality may not necessarily be the same as others. For that reason, I’ve thought of reality as consisting of two parts. There’s the reality out there outside of me of which I can have only an approximate understanding and then there’s the reality created by me and those with whom I share a language and understanding of existence. Therefore, the words and mathematical models we use to explain reality can only approximate it. They can never be the same.

Science reflects a similar understanding of the world. We can never be sure of anything, only to an extent. Zen Buddhism proposes a similar but different understanding of the world and our relationship with it. That is, words interfere with the understanding of meaning and so, life is best experienced by clearing the mind of them. Easier said than done.

Humans have constantly been confronted with their ideas of reality conflicting with its actuality throughout history. The Catholic Church once held the earth to be the centre of the universe with the sun and the stars and the planets revolving around it. Then Galileo came along and, with the aid of a telescope, discovered that not to be the truth. But, Church leaders spoke with the authority of God, and so their reality couldn’t be contradicted. Therefore, Galileo was jailed.

In the late of the 18^th century, Adam Smith changed Western understanding of economics by introducing the idea of the Invisible Hand to economics. His theory was that if we all pursue our own self-interest, a good for all will result. Greed was not only okay, it was to be encouraged. Whole new religions such as Calvinism sprang up to provide God’s support to that pursuit. With capitalism, money became an abstract that should be pursued without reason because it was a good in itself. An individual could never have enough.

In reaction to these ideas, Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in the mid 19^th century. He

argued that that capitalism separated human labour from the individual. The individual was thereby subservient to the owner of the business just like slaves had been subservient to the master during feudalistic times.

Lenin attempted to convert the ideas of Marx and Engel to reality with the Russian Revolution in 1917. When agricultural production tumbled, he felt forced to compromise on Marx’s ideals by allowing for the existence of individual initiative. He permitted the creation of a limited market economy within communities when he introduced the New Economic Policy.

Of course, his successor, Joseph Stalin replaced the limited market economy with a completely centralized system of production and distribution which necessitated extreme levels of repression. Farms were coopted and production dropped which, along with prohibitive quotas led to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians, an event otherwise known as the Holodomor. Stalin’s reality became the reality for the entire country. The Five-Year Plan was introduced and the Soviet Union went from a backwater republic to a world superpower.

The Great Depression caused the introduction of numerous alternate social realities to the United States and other capitalist countries such as Canada and Britain. Capitalism was discovered to not be the self-regulating model economic theory had proposed it would be. Banks lent indiscriminate amounts of money and, on October 29, 1929, the New York stock market crashed as did the economies of Canada, the U.S. Britain and Germany.

The traditional economic theory of Adam Smith predicted that when prices were depressed and

labour practically free business would invest in new projects. In point of fact, the opposite happened. Rather than invest their money, people saved. John Maynard Keynes recognized this reality and suggested a solution. Private investment could be replaced with the creation of large infrastructure projects such as roads and dams funded by the government. Those employed in the building of these projects would then spend their money in the private sector thereby boosting the economy as a whole. This was the theory of John Maynard Keynes put into practice with mixed success by Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s.  

Limited democratic socialism became the standard practice of most Western democratic countries until stagflation of the 1970s. The standard practice of increasing government spending when unemployment rose became untenable because Inflation would rise at the same time. The United States and other Western nations supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War against Egypt in 1973 and so the Arab nations placed an oil embargo on those nations. The price of gas went from $3 per barrel to $12. Gas was an essential element to every aspect of the economy and so the cost of everything rose from agricultural products to air travel.

The classical economic theories of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek presented a solution.

Countries should return to the unregulated market economy first proposed by Adam Smith. Interference in the market by government or labour organizations should be prohibited. Margaret Thatcher in the U.K. and Ronald Regan in the United States were elected with the idea of applying these neo-liberal policies to their respective countries and for many reasons, their economies recovered.  With the fall of the Soviet Union, capitalism was seen as the only legitimate economic model for a government to follow.

Developing countries such as India and Communist China adopted the market economy model and the world economy grew. The world became wealthier and, according to the World Bank, over a billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 25 years. Problems have emerged as well. Good paying jobs in Canada and the U.S. disappeared. The gap between rich and poor grew and continues to grow. But more importantly, we’ve come to realize that the planet cannot sustain this level of economic growth.

Climate change has resulted in extreme weather conditions and rising sea levels. Deforestation has exacerbated the problem of rising CO₂ levels. Deforestation has caused soil erosion changing areas that were once dense forest jungle and home to numerous animal and plant species into semi-arid moonscapes. The proliferation of plastics and micro-plastics in the ocean has caused a similar dissipation of animal and plant life that will eventually impact on the well-being of the humankind that are creating and using them.

Politicians can act like the clergy of the Catholic Church in the time of Galileo and ignore or deny the reality of what is happening. Or, they can acknowledge this reality and begin making changes to our economy that will ameliorate or at least slow the impact human activity is having on the planet.

Or, they could accept what science has to say about the subject. For example, I don’t understand the mathematical models that support the argument for climate change. They’re incredibly complex and require the help of very powerful computers to crunch the amount of data that must be inputted. Nor do I have a detailed understanding of the impact of human activity on land and in the water.

Nevertheless, I do understand that science and data have allowed me to live for as long as I have. Science has provided me the computer on which to type this diatribe and the internet by which I connect with others. Because of science, I have a car I use to travel long distances quickly and thereby maintain relationships with family and friends. And, of course, it allows me the miracle of flight.

Am I going to accept the benefits and intrusions of science in all these parts of my life and not believe it when the individuals responsible for its proliferation are telling me that I need to alter my lifestyle so that my children and my children’s children can enjoy the planet and all its wonders in the future? 

The alternative to the reality suggested by science is reality interpreted by faith. God or Gods or some superpower, whether of Christian creation or another, will save us from all problems we may confront, whether caused by nature or others or ourselves. After all, those who profess such a possibility argue that science is only based on probability. It’s never 100%. Frankly, I’d rather go with a probability of something that’s been observed than 100% of something that may or may not be the product of somebody’s imagination.