What is Real

What is reality? 

I have been putting some thought into this notion recently. Thinking about how mentally ill people have "lost touch with reality" and can't tell what is real and what isn't. Thinking about what truly is REAL. What does it mean for things to be real?

To me, reality only exists as how I perceive my environment with my senses. If this is true for everyone than the idea of reality would be pretty subjective. Sure there are some things about out reality that are objective. We exist as living beings on this planet. We have brains that process information about the things around us. Other parts of our objective reality are that we are born and we die. We get sick. We have to eat, drink water. We rely on the sun. We have instincts and urges and talents. 

But, what about the rest of reality? By that I mean, society. The rest of the human experience is predicated on a bunch of "agreed upon terms" and it is THIS part of our reality that is the most subjective and dare I say, pretend. We play pretend about literally everything else. 

Humans have made everything else up! Everything. And then groups of people have discussed and decided to adopt these made up things. 

Here is a list of some of the made up things I am talking about:

• Hierarchy 
• Money
• Religion
• Economics
• Math
• Language
• Laws
• Political Ideologies
• Social Norms

None of this really exists. If you think about money, it is probably the fakest thing we have ever made up aside from the thousands of gods we invented to explain away things we didn't yet understand. I have been thinking a lot about how all of the things people get so bent out of shape about these days; none of it matters. None of it. Not really. It only has value because we have assigned it value. We put a lot of unnecessary pressure on ourselves and others as we try to push towards an ideal that is completely made up. It's an interesting thing to think about.