How can I be sure my reality is accurate?

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Individual realities are weird. You would think that it would be best to have them reflect some ‘universal’ or ‘objective’ reality, but there really isn’t any such thing. When we think about universal reality, what we’re really pointing to is our own individual reality.

We don’t have the brainpower to be able to handle multiple realities. Some people are smart enough to be able to read and think about and internalize alternative points of view, but generally what’s happening is they’re building a larger, more abstract reality and then making that reality their new one.

So if I read a biography about John D. Rockefeller, that doesn’t mean I have internalized JDR’s worldview. Instead I’ve thought carefully about how JDR’s views and actions and such intersect with my own, and then alter my reality to accommodate my interpretations of JDR’s actions and understandings.

It gets worse than that. I never actually read anything that came from JDR. Instead, I’m reading the author of the biography’s determinations!

The only universal constant is ignorance. And there’s no way to completely dispel it.