Reality and Our Perception of It

The Time and Reality Series

Beartooth Wilderness, Montana

“In the wild, simulations die.”

Awareness is a dangerous thing.

If we are honest with ourselves, we confront reality as it exists. We find reality as something apart from us, that cannot be contained, nor controlled. We discover that reality can be a harsh master, revealing our vulnerabilities and casting doubt on the stories we tell ourselves as self-propaganda.

Reality removes illusion and false perceptions of the world showing us our true selves. We may not want to see this picture. We may prefer the branded simulations that we construct to convince us that we are what we want others to perceive us to be.

When the simulated reality fails, where do we turn?

We lose our job. We get terminal cancer. We discover our spouse has been unfaithful. Or, our business partner has been stealing from the company.

We find ourselves involving other people to help us resolve the crushing blow of reality.

The harshest realities we experience are the ones that our children experience. Death, disease, betrayal, and the failure of them to live up to our expectations for them.

This is the crushing burden of reality.

Is it any wonder that we make up stories to distance ourselves from these realities?

Is Perception the Problem?

Our difficulty with reality finds its roots in the simple idea, commonly held, that“perception is reality.” Descartes' maxim “I think, therefore I am” describes the preeminence of self-perception over reality. Our perception defines reality. This is the problem.

If we create reality, then all the problems and crises of the world cannot be thrown at God, but are the products of our own perceptual mastery. We are the origin of pain and suffering in the world. We create the reality that we perceive. At the same time, we ignore our responsibility for what we create.

How do we explain the disappointments and failures that we experience? Are we the authors of these tragic events? Are we responsible for the death, disease, betrayals, and failures that our children experience? Are we? This is the crushing reality none of us wants to face.

This perceptual order is the source of the simulations that have come to define the modern world. The initial thinking that produced The Spectacle of the Real in 2013, has led to this realization today in 2025.

In a perception is reality world, we are the creator gods of what exists. Our quest for power and control is the center of this world, and technology is its vehicle. This is the world we made.

This awareness raises the question that is not simple to answer. The question confronts us with our own inadequacies and mortality.

Ask:

If reality is separate from our perceptions,

then we only perceive that which is partial, incomplete, and quite possibly an illusion.

What are we aware of?

What are we really consciousness of?

How is our conception of reality separate from our perceiving of it?

More specifically, how do we experience reality prior to perceiving it?

This is the question that living with my essay The Spectacle of the Real has not let me escape. Increasingly, the idea of the spectacle and of simulated reality is resonating with people.

Reality is something I experience in all its ambiguity and brutishness. It is hard to face reality. Harder when we have been unaware that the simulation exists

I have become more conscious, aware, and present to the things in the world that are hard, painful, and resist human intervention. I see the whole, but live at its periphery.

We live by the stories we tell ourselves and others. Our stories are fragments of truth and experience. As fragments, they point to the reality that nothing is whole, except reality itself.

A transition point is upon us.

The old institutional structures that have been the center of our lives are now fading into obscurity. The world of simulation is replacing it with digital spaces that produce a hyperreality of alienation and depersonalization. It forces us to leave the material world to be captured by the Eternal Present of the simulated world.

Six years ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with the realization that the chapter of my life that focused on leadership was complete. Not complete as in done, but complete as in whole, and sufficient for helping people learn to lead as persons of impact.

As I laid in bed, I asked God, what now. It has taken all this time to get to this point in my life. Normally, this would have been a time of retiring into a time of legacy remembrance. But that is not me.

It was not clear at that moment, but it is now. Focusing on the relationship between reality and the world of simulation is now the task to energize the remainder of my life.

Venturing forward, I am addressing the question of the world of simulation and living in a hyperreal world.

I began my sabbatical in March of this year with the intention of clarifying the question of the nature of reality. The question took two forms.

The theoretical question about reality leads me to the question of time. We live in time, like we live in reality, but we cannot control time. The clock is not a measure of time. It is a measure of the passing of present moments in time. The measure of time is generational. Our connection to time is through our generational memory.

The practical question about reality leads me to the question of how we live. We live our lives in time. We live in relationship to the people and places that inhabit our lives. The conflict that the world of simulation brings to us is that it becomes a barrier to the intimacy and mutuality that we desire in our relationships.

I’ve lost three aunts this year. I think about their impact upon me and my sisters, my cousins, and their grandchildren. We don’t live only in the present, but in the continuity of time that transcends days, years, and centuries. Their impact is their legacy created through time.

This chapter of my life now is clear.

Restore our awareness of time and reality for living lives of meaning and impact.

I will do this in three ways.

First, I am developing new resources for applying the principles of the Circle of Impact. These resources will be available here on my Substack.

Second, I am going to write two books in parallel.

One will be the theoretical capture of thought about time and reality. Working title: Time and Reality

The other will be a novel where these ideas are woven into a story of a young man and his extended family. Working title: The Simulacra of Time.

I will soon post a draft of the first chapter for paid subscribers.

The Third way is through The Eddy Network Podcast. Our conversations are examples of what it is like to meet and talk in time.

The posts related to Circle of Impact and the two books are offered to paid subscribers. I encourage you to join me in this venture.

Thank you.