What is "real"?

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My personal definition for “real” is: That which does not go away when the mind stops creating it.

The mind gives energy to things and perpetuates them when they would otherwise die.

“C’mon man, be real.” I’m referring to a position you hold in mind whose existence will evaporate the second you stop believing in it. I’m urging you to cease believing in things that you want to be true and to start believing in things that you don’t have to pretend are true to be true.

Belief is not the opposite of real. Illusion is not the opposite of real. Things can be real illusions. We are humans living in a world of symbols. A symbol is a kind of illusion. It represents something in mind that doesn’t exist in the real world.

Marilyn Monroe was a sex symbol. She pursued a career pretending to be something she wasn’t. The symbol was valuable to people even if they never ever actually had sex with her. What she represented, a certain liberation from social mores, was real, even if she wasn’t.

Donald Trump is a symbol of the hollowing out of the middle of economic classes in America. The discontent that America felt is real, even if Donald Trump’s candidacy, platform, and presidency were nothing but lies. His constituency believes in the symbol he portrays, and could care less about the reality. Trump is a real symbol.

When you watch television, you’re watching a device that has been carefully constructed in order to give you the convincing illusion of the reality of the events you’re experiencing. The events are not real. The characters are not real. The stories are not real. The settings are not real. But the television is a real thing. The show is a real show. It’s real in some ways but illusion, fake, in others.

But at the same time, the meaning behind the shows are real. There’s a reason why you watch the show, and that reason has to be real.

In fact, even though just about everything humans do is in part or in whole illusory or fake or symbolic, that illusion points to something essential and real. If you give an engagement ring to your love, the ring symbolizes your love, it’s not actually your love.

This is mostly because real things are expensive and time consuming to make. I could actually become Hercules, lifting weights all the time and training and looking for feats to accomplish, or I could just make a television show about Hercules. The TV show will probably convey better what I want it to convey than me trying to turn into a demigod ever would.

Humans are swimming in illusion, but that’s not the problem. The problem is failing to recognize what is illusion and what isn’t.