Why there’s no such thing as objective reality

February 24, 2021 Mike Zonta 1 Comment

Greg Anderson|TEDxOhioStateUniversity (ted.com)

In the grand scheme of history, modern reality is a bizarre exception when compared to the worlds of ancient, precolonial and Indigenous civilizations, where myths ruled and gods roamed, says historian Greg Anderson. So why do Westerners today think they’re right about reality and everybody else is wrong? Anderson tears into the fabric of objective reality to reveal the many universes that lie beyond — and encourages a healthy reimagining of what other possible ways of being human could look like.

This talk was presented to a local audience at TEDxOhioStateUniversity, an independent event. TED’s editors chose to feature it for you.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Greg Anderson · HistorianGreg Anderson uses history to question the way we think about the nature of reality itself.

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One thought on “Why there’s no such thing as objective reality”

Michael Kelly says:

February 25, 2021 at 2:24 pm

With all due respect, to make a big deal of the conclusion that the field or discipline of history, which is based on an expert interpretation of artifacts in cultural context, is not *objective* is not news. And then to couple “objective” with “reality,” and then to deny that, is a purely rhetorical move.

That said, the TEDx talker might be serving a very useful social function by reaching people who are woefully ignorant of history, let alone reality!

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“Fear is a choice.”
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“The world breaks everyone but afterwards many are strong at the broken places.”
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“Inside every head is a different world.”
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“Thank God our time is now, when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere, never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took.”
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“If you’re neurotic and you think, I’m not where I deserve to be or my mother didn’t love me, or blah, blah, blah, that lie, that neurotic vision, takes over your life and you’re plagued by it ’til it’s cleansed. In a play, at the end of the play, the lie is revealed. [T]he better the play is, the more surprising and inevitable the lie is, as Aristotle told us. Plays are about lies.”
–David Mamet

“If you want to be a writer, you don’t want to live in a comfortable place.”
–Benjamin Alire Saenz

“Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”
–Octavia Butler

“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
–Anais Nin

“Often people think that it’s a question of adrenaline, [that] it’s an adrenaline addiction. I think what they are addicted to essentially is brotherhood. It’s a very healthy impulse that is taking place in a very unhealthy place.”
–Sebastian Junger on troops in combat

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
–William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

“Love well, be loved and do something of value.”
–Aristotle

“Tread softly upon the earth because the faces of the unborn look up at you.”
–James Cameron quoting Brazilian tribal saying

“You don’t attract what you want. You attract what you are.”
–Wayne Dyer

“We will go through the gate. If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in.”
–Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi

“Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid.”
–J.D. Salinger

“If things don’t seem out of control, you’re not going fast enough.”
— Mario Andretti

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”
— Anais Nin

“A change in the weather is sufficient to re-create the world and ourselves.”
— Marcel Proust

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
— George Bernard Shaw

“. . . the only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten that you are divine.”
— Peter Solomon in The Lost Symbol

“Have an open-mind, but don’t let your brains fall out.”
— Jacob Needleman

“When thought races ahead of Being, a civilization is racing towards destruction.”
— Jacob Needleman in his new book What is God?

“A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it.”
— G.K. Chesterton

“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.”
— Edgar Allan Poe

“Give thanks to unknown blessings already on their way.”
— Native American proverb at cafe in San Francisco

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”
–e.e. cummings

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Why there’s no such thing as objective reality

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