Reality. What a concept.

"Huge numbers at the Three-Minute Hate. Huge."

You've been watching the impeachment hearings. And slapping yourself silly. You see it. But you just can't believe your eyes. What the hell happened to facts? They used to matter. When did that change? Have people gone nuts or what?

Glad you asked. Sorry the answer's complicated.

Philosophy is a walk on the slippery rocks. But let's take a stroll.

Schopenhauer put Kant, Nietzsche, and the concept of Maya in a blender. “The World as Will and Idea” is what he came up with. Basically, experiential reality is a Rorschach blot; the mind imposes order based on desire. Heidegger (a smarty who joined the Nazi party) took this notion and ran with it. Take it to the edge, and there’s no there there. Face facts? F**k facts. Life is what you make of it. Literally. But only if you’ve got enough willpower. If you can’t defeat Russia, your will just wasn’t strong enough.

Like poison in Kool-Aid, this rotten idea is in the water. It's been there for a long time. Orwell called it out in “1984.” Back in the 1970s, "Werner Erhard" popularized it with the pop phenomenology of est. “Life is about stories.” It’s fifth-grade, comic book Heidegger. Dumbed down. In the decades since, it's gotten even dumber.

Welcome to the post-fact era.

What is truth? There ain’t no truth.

OK. Let’s say there is no truth. “Life is what you make of it.” 

Literally. 

Good news, everyone! You create your own reality! You’re God in your own private universe, baby.

But this radical subjectivism has a catch.

You’re in a mind-field. You and all the other yous. Separate identity is an illusion. The objective world is make-believe. It’s a story we tell ourselves. And you’re not the only storyteller. Reality is consensual. If enough “little yous” buy into a story, that narrative becomes the world.

It’s all about agreement. If enough people agree to the germ theory of disease, that’s reality. If enough people believe in “chem-trails,” that’s reality. Control the dominant narrative and you control reality. 

That’s the catch.

As Orwell pointed out, the dream of “collective solipsism” is a function of force. (I.e., a boot to the face.) As Mao pointed out, “Truth comes out of the barrel of a gun.”

Who’s holding the biggest gun?

They get to tell the story.  

Their word becomes law in the universe.

This Big You imposes a Big Story by sheer force of will. If enough “little yous” buy into it, the tale becomes the truth. If Big You’s gang of thugs declare the earth is flat and beat up anyone who disagrees, QED, the earth is flat. The “little yous” don’t get to vote on it.

What matters isn’t evidence or argument. What matters is will.

The Big You with the biggest will wins.

I don’t buy this bullshit for a second. But millions do. 

That’s where we’re at.

For want of a better word, that’s “reality.”