This is an essay about reality. Moonshard wrote this as moon's genuine identity and didn't feel like moon-ifying it, so moon uses pronouns in this to refer to moon. Don't follow mu-n's precedent, please refer to moonshard by only a moon-related nickname. Thanks! Anyway, this essay is about reality, or perhaps more accurately, the lack thereof.

Mid-1906, a lot of shit was going down worldwide. Second Geneva Convention, Second Occupation of Cuba, Finland even granted women full suffrage rights. Zooming in, we find the town of Somerville, Massachusetts, where the later stages of the industrial revolution were turning the town into, as it was called, “The Chicago of New England.” During this shifting time, a child was born, by the name of Henry Nelson Goodman.

Goodman graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor’s in Arts, honors. He ran an art gallery in Boston while he studied his philosophy degree. In 1941, he completed it, earning himself a PhD.

After helping the war effort as a psychologist, Goodman taught at the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis University, and Harvard. In 1978, he released Ways of Worldmaking.

Ways of Worldmaking has been one of the most influential books on my perspective. Once I read it for the third time, everything about my life seemed to click.

When I was a few years old, back in 2014 or something like that, I had my first “unexplainable” experience, which I wouldn’t speak of until many years later. In the middle of the night, a man stood outside my window, staring in.

When I walked closer, he disappeared.

This continued nearly every night. It got to a point where if I was laying in bed, sometimes I would see flashes of light from the window, like a camera flash. I thought, for my early years, that I was being stalked. And yet I didn’t tell anyone.

I’d later find out, from a counselor, that this was a hallucination caused by my anxiety. It all made sense now, that explained the disappearance.

Through middle school and freshman year of high school, I struggled intensely with anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts and actions. And then it happened. Everything stopped making sense in sophomore year. The sky would shift colors. The world would turn inside out, or melt, or flicker, or, most importantly, would cease to exist.

I got diagnosed with undifferentiated schizophrenia at age 17. I had already determined I had it, by this time, but I was diagnosed with bipolar I, so I didn’t think they’d add schizophrenia to my diagnosis. But they did. I had the most severe break from reality that I’d ever had, at that point, my judgement disappearing.

I had a boyfriend, and I ended up convincing myself that I was manipulating him. Deep down, I cared more about him than anything else, and my intense delusions were being shoved aside by this, “love.” I was starting to believe he was actually real. But my mind was fighting back. One delusion stood alone; that I “deserve suffering.”

Thus, I laid out my evidence that I’d been manipulating him all along. Unlike previous boyfriends, who would comfort me and say I wasn’t doing that, say I was a good person nonetheless, he agreed with me, cutting me off immediately. My hopes were shattered. He’s real, and of course I ruined the chance I had.

Someone real was something I didn’t think could exist, because of the way I came to understand Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking. Because of the way I came to understand reality.

But that’s beginning to change. Reality, as I knew it, is as follows.

How does one go about creating a world? “Worldmaking,” as Goodman calls it?

One does not “decide” to create a world, it isn’t a purposeful creation as much as it is an incidental spill of thoughts that, themselves, create truth.

Imagine everything. I don’t care what you believe, but imagine all of it, everything you believe, fits perfectly inside of a sphere.

Everyone else has a similar sphere. This is the person’s world.

Some overlap, some are wildly different. When certain parts of worlds overlap, they form belief systems, religions. When certain parts of a person’s world do not overlap with the majority, that person is considered “broken” by society – they are, in psychological terms, psychotic.

My world is not the same as the world that the majority of people see. My sphere, in fact, contains only one thing – myself.

People call this nihilism. Incorrectly, many define this word as very similar to pessimism. In reality, nihilism is the belief that you are the only person sentient in existence.

However, I am not a nihilist. I am an irrealist, I believe that there is no existence. To explain this, you must return to the spherical worlds. Bring to mind an image of 8 billion overlapping spheres… or something close, you probably can’t literally imagine 8 billion of them. Now, what is left where the spheres do not overlap? What remains in the external, in the “real” space between the “fake” worlds?

Nothing.

According to Nelson Goodman, there is no underlying, objective, actual, “real” truth. Every one of these worlds is equally true to every other one, from different points of reference.

His example, my favorite one from the book, is these two, seemingly contradicting, statements:

A: “The sun always moves.”

B: “The sun never moves.”

These appear to be opposite. Logically, one must be true, and one must be false. Yet, from the earth’s perspective, the sun always moves, while from the sun’s perspective, it never moves. Even further, one might say that the geocentric theory was disproved, therefore the sun never moves. However, science has uncovered that from yet a different perspective, the sun does move – The sun revolves around the center of the galaxy. It is clear, neither perspective is objectively more or less correct than the other. They are equally true – but which one is true? Which one, underneath the surface, underneath our perception, is the actual truth? That’s the thing – neither. If both are equally true, it must be assumed that both are not true, as if either was true, the other would have to be false, since they contradict. Both cannot be true, therefore both must be false.

What is “nothing?” Well, it’s absolutely impossible to describe in human language, because language, intrinsically, is something. Every word is something, whether it is the word “everything” or the word “nothing.” However, I will, as many before me have, attempt to do so. My attempt comes in the form of an anecdote from my life:

I was sitting in my favorite teacher’s classroom, thinking to myself about some assignment or something, I don’t recall exactly. What I do recall in perfect detail was the feeling that I had, as my mind separated from the world I’d built – I felt as though the room was floating. Not only that, but I felt it was floating through something, floating through some abyss, but when I tried to think about that abyss, it was impossible. The lack of ability to perceive. Not the lack of light or the lack of odor, the lack of perception. Scientific observation and measurement are forms of perception, but I couldn’t scientifically prove the world outside the classroom existed. Schrodinger’s world. Until I stepped foot out of the room, it was impossible for me to tell if it was there or not.

I have analyzed this experience in extreme detail, and I’ve found no other explanation that makes logical sense – there is nothing outside of the room.

You may be asking how that makes any sense at all, as clearly when I stepped out of the room, there was something there – perception is the concept that ties everything together.

Perception is the way that we create our worlds. By perceiving the world, we create it ourselves. We are not placed in a world which would exist without our existence at all, we create our world through perception. I look to my right, and see a cup of tea. The cup of tea is part of the world, not because it would have existed without anyone to perceive it, but because I was there to perceive it. It is not part of the world because it is something true, which underlies and creates perception, but it is part of my world because I perceive it. Someone blind, not sensing the existence of the cup, does not have it as a part of their world unless they perceive it. If they reached out and bumped their hand into the cup, then and only then would it exist in their world. Interestingly, it might not yet take the form of a cup. Imagine bumping your hand into a cup of tea with your eyes closed – would you instantly know what it was?

Knowledge is formed by perception, and we oftentimes conflate knowledge and truth. Because I am not blind, I am able to know that there is a cup there, and because I am able to taste, I am able to know that it is filled with lavender earl gray tea. Perhaps a blind and taste-blind person may know it is a cup, from careful inspection, but may never know that it is lavender earl gray tea held within, even if they know lavender earl gray tea exists elsewhere. Now, we’ve created two statements, from two frames of reference:

C: “There is a cup, filled with lavender earl gray tea.”

D: “There is a cup, filled with an unknown liquid.”

These are contradictory, just like A and B. The cup is filled with lavender earl gray, and the blind and taste-blind person knows what lavender earl gray is, so D cannot be true if C is true – it cannot be filled with an “unknown” liquid if it is filled with lavender earl gray, as that is a known liquid. Likewise, if D is true, C cannot be – it cannot be filled with lavender earl gray if it is filled with an unknown liquid, because both parties know what lavender earl gray is.

We have recreated the same situation as before, and in this situation, the same conclusion is drawn: neither can be true.

We can know what is in the cup, but just because we know does not imply that the knowledge is true. In fact, it logically implies nothing at all, as any knowledge obtained through perception can be transformed into a situation as described in A-B and C-D, and thus any knowledge obtained through perception must be equally true to any other knowledge obtained through perception from a different point of reference. As we determined previously, this “equal” truth is only logically able to be zero.

I’ve gone over Goodman’s ideas, the ones I find particularly interesting, and now I’d like to go over my own. I believe these to be new concepts, but I haven’t done too much research. They are, as far as I can tell, my ideas.

Consider dreams, for a moment. They are caused, as far as the leading theories can tell us, by the parts of our brains that handle perception misinterpreting the random signals sent to them by the pons. They misinterpret these random signals as genuine perceptible signals sent from the sensory organs. Thus, our brains are tricked into believing that it is, in fact, “real.”

There are other situations where our brains misinterpret certain signals, but these are usually due to repeated conflation of two signals. For example, take Pavlov’s dogs. They were conditioned to salivate at the ring of a bell. The conditioning process involved consistently associating the ringing with an action that naturally induced salivation: offering food. The conditioning outcome was a mental misinterpretation of a stimuli as a different stimuli. The perception of the ringing sound became equal to the perception of the food smell, in terms of what induced salivation. Thus, their brains were tricked into believing that it was, in fact, food.

Now, what is the difference between dreams and the Pavlov dogs? Dreams do this inherently, without being trained. These random signals are not tied to anything preexisting in the mind, they are simply random. Where they come from? No idea. But our brains conflate the signals with existing memories and ideas, which are tied to perception. You remember the first genuine smile from your lover, the smell of their perfume. Now a random signal comes along that the brain conflates with that smile, and suddenly you are perceiving that smile once more. Dreaming is a crucial slip of the mind, which reveals so much more – that dreams and reality are one and the same.

What is sight? Light particles, photons, hit your optic nerve in rapid succession. The speed of this succession is interpreted as color, and the position of this succession is interpreted as position. These successive photon-nerve interactions create the world we see around us. When I see my hands, typing on the keyboard, I am seeing the hand-colored photons that bounce off of them. The mind can gather a lot more from simply these bare perceptions.

What about the successive photon-nerve interactions is interpreted as items in the world? Why does sight help to prove that things are “real?” Why does collective sight signify “truth?”

Does it at all?

No. Sight proves that the things we see are real just as much as dreams prove that the things we dream are real – sight is the conflation of the successive photon-nerve interactions with memories of similar successive photon-nerve interactions. In what way can we prove that these photon-nerve interactions are not simply random signals from the pons? In what way can we prove that the random signals from the pons are not simply other forms of photon-nerve interactions? We cannot prove either, thus, the “real” world and the “dream” world are equally true. Taking this with Goodman’s logic, we see that thus, since the things we see and the things we dream are equally real, equally true, they are both equally and entirely false.

This concept carries over to other forms of perception as well. Importantly, science is included in the understanding of what is considered “perception.” Scientific observation, by definition, is observation. Observation and perception are one and the same. In order to observe, you must perceive. Even if that observation is done by a measuring device, that is still a form of perception.

Now we can come to the conclusion, logically, that nothing we percieve at all is “real.” We are able to know new ideas, concepts, objects, etc., because of what we percieve, but none of what we percieve is true.

Why does it matter that perception is, in its entirety, a lie? What does this change about our lives? We can go about life understanding that there is no objective reality beneath our perceptions, but that doesn’t affect our day-to-day activities, right?

Well, I propose an ideology that would change the way we percieve negative circumstances. I would like to title it “Perception Treasuring.”

In understanding that perception is not reality, in understanding that there is no objective truth, in understanding that there is no reality, that everything is equally “real” and “dream,” one frees themselves from the shackles of sadness, of happiness, of suffering, of societal norms. Since perception is all that there is, and there is no truth behind it, every single perception, “positive” or “negative” is to be treasured. Perception itself is a treasure to behold, a circumstance of our existence that allows us to exist, a self-creating masterpiece. In treasuring every perception in this way, “negative” perceptions become equal in value to “positive” perceptions. One becomes enraptured by sadness just as equally as one is enraptured, subconsciously, by happiness. Any neurological changes are considered to be more beautiful than the lack thereof. The lack of serotonin becomes not a hinderance, not something that ties one down, but a perception that introduces new knowledge. Feelings are not something that cause stress or lack of control, but simply “something.” The existence of “something” at all is to be treasured. The excess of dopamine no longer is considered a mental “disorder,” schizophrenic persons are no longer considered “insane,” but instead, they percieve a different world entirely. There is no underlying, “true” world that these people are lost from, there is no “reality” that they are “disconnected” from, they are simply creating a different world, through perception, than the majority of their peers. In understanding that mental disorders are no different than, for example, color-blindness, we are able to step away from our diagnoses and “live.”

My understanding of reality comes from what many would consider “disorder.” I do not believe the same. My hallucinations are not new perceptions that are “extra,” they are lack of perceptions that others have. When I hallucinate, it is usually something along the lines of the world coming apart at the seams. I see the world invert itself around a room’s corner, my brain refuses to acknowledge that things exist. My perception is not overabundant, it is lesser than my peers.

I believe this to be not a fault of my brain, but an evolutionary step. I believe that in our ever-growingly philosophical world, my mind being capable of understanding perception to be irreal is an evolutionary step, a positive mutation. Not only that, but my ability to see perception fade before my eyes is as well.

Life is a constantly evolving conundrum of esoterica. Thus it is not illogical to believe that perhaps there is a chance that my nonbelief in this world is a further evolution of my being, rather than a failure of the mind to recognize reality.

Thank you for reading. This has been Moonshard, and I hope you have found this informational.

hi! this is moonshard! i wrote this on a series of days where i was extremely high on marijuana, as part of a case study on my own reactions to the substance. as i've found, it personally makes me incredibly philosophical and introspective, so this is not a drug-induced perspective, as i maintain it while sober. instead, it is a perspective which i reached through careful and drug-induced introspection. read with this in mind, and enjoy!