Skip to main content

How real is reality?


Our perception constitutes most of our realities.  That’s why one man’s food is another’s anathema.  What is divine for me may be profane for you and vice versa. 

In Dan Brown’s most controversial novel, The Da Vinci Code, Langdon tells Sophie, “[E]very faith in the world is based on fabrications.  That is the definition of faith – acceptance of that which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove.” [Italics in the original]

We take a lot of things on faith.  When it comes to religion, faith is all that matters.  And faith necessarily transmogrifies reality.  Faith can make an animal more sacred than your neighbour whom you may kill in order to safeguard the sacredness of the animal. 

The sacred animal, like anything else in religion, is a metaphor.  “Every religion describes God through metaphor, allegory and exaggeration, from the early Egyptians through modern Sunday school,” explains Langdon.  “Metaphors are a way to help our minds process the unprocessible.”

We need metaphors to deal with life.  To make life less unbearable and more meaningful.  God makes it much easier to accept our pains.  We endure it for his sake.  We believe God has a specific plan while giving us the pains.  We believe God will reward us somewhere some time for our endurance of the pains. 

Thus religions with their gods serve very practical purposes in life. Metaphors, untrue as they are, enable millions of people to cope with life and be better people.  Should historians and scientists take away the people’s consolations by revealing the falsehood of their beliefs?  Langdon asks Sophie. 

Should we then encourage people to embrace their falsehoods as realities?  Sophie asks.  Their reality is no more false than “that of a mathematical cryptographer who believes in the imaginary number ‘i’ because it helps her break codes,” teases Langdon.  Sophie is a cryptographer.

How real is the mathematical ‘i’ though it helps in a lot of mathematical calculations and the fabrication of real technology?  Religious allegory is an integral part of most people’s reality though the allegory itself is as false as the virgin birth of gods or other such myths.

The problem, however, is when we insist on others accepting our metaphors and allegories as their truths too.  This creates strife.  Other people have their own metaphors and allegories which may be totally opposed to our own.  Our metaphors won’t work for them just as theirs won’t work for us in dealing with life’s pains.  That is why not all cows are holy. 


Comments

  1. In mathematics one could take any x, y, a,, M, etc. It has no fixed value.They are just assumptions. So is religious assumptions. They appear as different for different persons. In our culture there is a belief of blind obedience which made the situation worst. Fathers insisted that however old his son he must blindly obey. It doesn't matter if he is 50 or 15. The same situation is being created by religious leaders. No belief is true. So why do they insist on certain belief or else they must have them proved

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. One of the very practical uses of religion is subordination of people. But as we grow older and more mature as well as knowledgeable, it is our duty to see how much subordination is advisable. There are beasts among men whom religions seem to tame. But there are more beasts whose bestiality is supported by religions too, I agree.

      Delete
  2. Iota is as real as a simple periodicity in sine curve, as allegorical as a circle with no sense of direction and as absurd as the concept of faith in an intangible figure. Some cows will never be holy as long as it pays significant moolah of votes to some rakshaks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Reality and allegory make up the complexity of human life. Ultimately the motives of important actors matter. Right now there are too many vicious motives governing the country's politics.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I won’t vote

From Deshabhimani , Malayalam weekly Exactly a month from today is the Parliamentary election in my state of Kerala. This time, I’m not going to vote. Bernard Shaw defined democracy , with his characteristic cynicism, as “ a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve .” We elect our government in a democracy. And the government invariably sucks our blood – whichever the party is. The BJP and the Congress are like Tweedledum and Tweedledee though the former makes all sorts of other claims day in and day out. BJP = Congress + the holy cow. The holy cow has turned out to be quite a vampire and that makes a difference, no doubt. In our Prime Minister’s algebra, it is: (a+b) 2 which should be equal to a 2 and b 2 . There is an extra 2ab which is the holy cow. In George Orwell’s Animal Farm , the animals revolt against the human master and set up their own nationalist republic. Soon politics develops in the republic and some pigs become leaders. The porcine

Prelude to AtoZ

  From Garden of 5 Senses, Delhi [file pic] Hindsight gives an unearthly charm and order to the past. There can be pain too. A lot of things could have been different, much better, if only we possessed the wisdom of our old age back in those days. As a writer put it, Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear and a lot of those guys must have thought, “I wish I had known this some time ago.” Life is a series of errors with intermittent achievements. The only usefulness of the errors may be the lessons they teach us. Probably, that is their purpose too. We are created to err so that we learn, I dare to put it that way. I turn 64 in a month’s time. It’s not inappropriate to look back at some of the people whom life brought into my life so that I would learn certain lessons. No, I don’t mean to say that life has any such purpose or design or anything. Life is absurd. People come into your life as haphazardly as vehicles ply on your road or birds poop on your head. Some of these people change the chemist

How Arvind Kejriwal can save himself

Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a clear vision. Eliminate all opposition. Decimate them or absorb them. My previous post [link below] showed a few people decimated by them. Today let’s look at the others: those who are saved by joining the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP]. 1. Himanta Biswa Sarma  This guy was in Congress and faced serious charges related to the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam. He also faced corruption charges related to drinking water supply in Guwahati. His house was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI]. Then he switched over to BJP and all his crimes just vanished. It’s as simple as taking a dip in the Ganga and all your sins are forgiven. Today he is the chief minister of Assam. Nothing is heard of all the charges that were levelled against him. 2. Amarinder Singh  This former Captain in the Indian Army was a Congressman until Modi’s Enforcement Directorate [ED] started raiding him, his son and his son-in-law. He put an end to all those raid

The Good Old World

Book Review Title: Dukhi Dadiba and irony of fate Author: Dadi Edulji Taraporewala Translators: Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal Publisher: Ratna Books, Delhi, 2023 Pages: 314 If you want to return to the good old days of the late 19 th century, this is an ideal novel for you. This was published originally in Gujarati in 1913. It appeared as a serial before that from 1898 onwards in a periodical. The conflict between good and evil is the dominant motif though there is romance, betrayal, disappointment, regret, and pretty much of traditional morality. Reading this novel is quite like watching an old Bollywood movie, 1960s style. Ardeshir Bahadurshah, a wealthy Parsi aristocrat in Surat, dies having obligated his son Jehangir to find out his long-lost brother Rustom. Rustom was Bahadurshah’s son in his first marriage. The mother died when the boy was too small and the nurse who looked after the child vanished with it one day. Ratanmai, Bahadurshah’s present wife, takes her

Good Friday and Some Arithmetic

Two and two is not always equal to four, my young friend Tony says. 2 + 2 ≠ 4, he reasserts. Tony doesn’t think linearly though his thinking has the precision of mathematical logic. See these two, Tony offers an illustration, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. Then add another 2 to them, Ambani and Adani. What do you get? I smile in answer. It’s dangerous to answer Tony verbally. Now, Tony continues, let’s take two beggars from the street. And then add you and me, another two, to them. What do you get? Tony goes on with more arithmetic because he thinks I didn’t get it. (Modi + Shah) + (Ambani + Adani) = 4 persons (Beggar 1 + Beggar 2) + (You + I) = 4 persons Is the first 4 equal to the second 4? T oday is Good Friday. Good Fridays are sad because they are about the victory of vicious political power over simple goodness. Just a few days back, on what’s known as Palm Sunday among Christians, Jesus was led like a hero to Jerusalem, a political fulcrum in those days, by a hu