In our world, regardless of the widespread awareness of Conspiracies to conceal the truth, the average man remains blissfully ignorant of the true nature of reality.
The problem we create for ourselves is the same as what feudal civilisations faced hundreds of years ago.
Chapter 1
It would seem impossible to doubt the reality of this world; it exists objectively, independently of ourselves; we have only to stretch out a hand to feel it.
And yet in dreams and hallucinations we believe equally in the reality of the images which are simply the product of our own minds.
The question at once arises — absurd enough at first sight, but on second thoughts perfectly sound — whether the external world may not simply be an entity that does not really exist, nothing but an image formed by the thought of each individual...
What man is accustomed to call the external world is nothing more or less than what he is capable of knowing, and is quite distinct from the real Universe itself.
One would not be far out in agreeing with the idealists that this known external world is simply the product of human thought; but one might also join the realists in claiming that the known is not the essential, since there exists a perfectly objective real world quite independently of what man is able to apprehend of it.
There is no contradiction between these two points of view as soon as one accepts, in the light of our present scientific knowledge, a more universal frame of reference, that is to say, one not subordinate to man himself.
[edit on 14-6-2009 by iulslion]
