What is reality?

What is reality? This is a question I have been asking myself a lot lately. I’ve had a number of disagreements with people, both personal and political, that have caused me to question my reality in a way I haven’t truly done since learning about Descartes’ skepticism in my freshman year. I see things a certain way, and with a certain degree of confidence (not 100%, but definitely over 90), and the people I talk to see the same situation as completely different, and are just as sure.

So what do we do when two people reasonably disagree about something? The most obvious answer would be: we can look at the evidence. The problem with that, is that “evidence” doesn’t exist independently of its observers, and it’s highly subjective to interpretation. Logical arguments aren’t likely to reveal the truth about reality either, as they must be based off of premises, whose truth must still be determined. Perhaps an appeal to authority? Which one? Maybe popular opinion should win out. Should it? Why? And who gets to pose the question, and how do we decide how to interpret the popular opinion?

I think, maybe, skepticism has gone too far. It saddens me to say that, as one of the values I cherish most is critical thinking. But perhaps the more critical thinking is that which involves rational, selective skepticism – not questioning everything, only specific things that seem to be more questionable than others. Still, how do we know what’s worth questioning?

Imagine being in a relationship with someone, and feeling like they aren’t putting as much into it as you are. You approach them with your concern, only to hear that they feel that your expectations of the relationship are too high.

Who’s right in this case? Assuming you both love each other and want to be together, most people would probably say that both of you are right, and both of you are wrong. They would suggest that instead of focusing on who’s right, you each try to change in the way your partner is asking. You can try to expect less, and they can try to do more. But isn’t there a fact of the matter about who’s right? Maybe it doesn’t matter, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist? It’s possible that you’re both right, but also possible that one of you is being completely unreasonable and just trying to get away with not having to put any work into the relationship.

What if we applied the same logic to social and political issues?

For example, you might think people talking about racism and feminism and demanding trigger warnings and specific pronouns are just “attention-seeking snowflakes” that need to stop complaining all the time. Meanwhile, they might see you as racist, sexist, privileged, and maybe just simply mean.

Is there a reality here? Does it matter? We might be unwilling to compromise, because it does matter. We care about which one of us is  right. Why? I don’t know.

Or, maybe, we just don’t know what a compromise would look like. Maybe we really want to find a middle ground, but don’t know where to begin to search for it. Another, slightly less optimistic possibility is that people on different sides of social and political issues don’t really care about one another, and so they have much less motivation to try to work together. After all, if you didn’t love your partner, would you really want to stick around to try to work out a solution? Probably not. But unlike relationships, people can’t just “break up” from those with whom they disagree. We’re all stuck in this together.

Or are we?