Defining What is a Reality and What is an Illusion

Nowadays, humans’ minds are lost up between what’s reality and what is an illusion. Although there are no specific answers could really define what those words mean definitively and what is the difference between both of them. Most of the answers or the theory that could define or distinguish them might lead to paradox.

“What is an illusion?” is a question that has multi different answers. In a broadest terms, an illusion is defined as something wrong or likely to be falsely perceived or interpreted by the senses. It is also known as something seems to be real, but doesn’t exist in reality.

Talking about reality and how others have defined it. According to the dictionary, the term “Reality” was defined as “The state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined.” While in philosophy, reality was described as “The position that things exist independent of the ideas used to describe them. That which is real is not fictional, is not imaginary, etc.”

Despite the thin line that differentiates reality from illusion, people must be educated enough to tell what is the difference between both of them. In the “Empire of Illusion” book, the writer, Chris Hedges, started his work by describing Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and he concluded it up with a meaningful quote says, “A culture that cannot distinguish between reality and illusion dies. And we are dying.”

In this quote, Hedges proposed; when people in societies become to a point where they can’t tell what’s real from what is not and believe knowledge comes from what they see or hear in the world only without seeking to know more about the truth or what’s behind those talks, their culture going to be disintegrated. People in this culture will form a state of permanent infantilism or childishness. Where everyone inside it acts like a child and react in a childish way towards any truth might face them (hear what makes them feel pleasant and ignore what might destroy their illusions and hurt their feelings). Individuals in this culture will be blinded by ignorance which then might lead into many issues such as (poverty and political oppression which comes from lack of education and knowledge).

What Hedges had proposed in his book is true. We are a part of a dying culture. Similarly to the people that Plato described in his cave, who believed that the shadows of the objects that were reflected on the walls were real and ignored the reality behind it. Linking Hedge’s statement to our societies nowadays, there are multi examples that could really support it. For instance, according to the FY19 Federal Budget, at the end of this year, 2018, America’s debt will be estimated about $21.48 trillion which it can never repay. Also, in 2016, the Official Measure of America stated that about 43.1 million Americans lived in poverty in that year. Other statistics found that one in eight Americans – and one in four children – depend on food stamps to eat. Despite these unbelievable painful statistics, Americans still have happy talks and happy thoughts about their government. They also still embrace the illusion of inevitable progress, personal success, rapid development and rising prosperity without thinking or questioning why do they have this massive number of poor people in America or why does America have this large amount of debt or what the government is trying to hide from them by the name of the betterment of the nation.

If people in future continued to turn their backs over reality and never ask questions related to it or seek to know the truth behind the illusion they believe in, the world will have a generation of ignorant. Those ignorant people will react angrily and aggressively toward anything they dislike. They will always have a faith that they are always right and other people are wrong which then will ignore the needs and feelings of others leading to a divided culture. But in order to forestall this impending calamity, people must encourage themselves to ask more questions about everything they see or hear even it seems a ridiculous question. Also, individuals in societies should keep spreading information and facts everywhere so that ignorant people could become educated a little. For example, things that I may do personally, I will keep discussing things with ignorant people and ask a lot of questions and provide them with facts and statistics to reveal the truth and prove for them that the knowledge they have is not enough perhaps they become educated a little bit.