There are certain things that aren’t real, but it’s best to treat them as if they were. Money, for example. It’s just an idea, but it’s as real as most other things we believe are real. You can’t just say it isn’t real and get by without it.

Sometimes the actually real leaks through our projections and we can tell that some commonly accepted idea is a mass hallucination, but sometimes killing it just isn’t worth it.

Or anyway you know it would take a long time before anyone else admits it. The question is, how much pretending do you have to do to get by? For public show or for yourself?

What the hell IS real? Wouldn’t you like to know? I sure would. I’ve been struggling with that one all my life. It’s all symbol and metaphor, and meta-metaphors, and meta-meta-meta narratives etc. You don’t get to touch the real thing.

You can’t see the spot where your optic nerve meets the retina, but you can’t see the hole either. Your brain fills it in. That happens on every level. There will always be something missing, something we can’t know.

Some people don’t believe there is a bottom floor. Once you figure out how much of “reality” is made up by culture, it’s easy to just say nothing is real, or reality is whatever we say it is.

I don’t buy that. I do think there is a version of reality that is true no matter what anyone thinks, only I don’t think it will ever be nailed down. It’s beyond what can be proven by science. It’s zero divided by zero.

But it exists. Or anyway we should pretend it is.

I’ve decided it’s like the speed of light. You can never actually reach the speed of light no matter how powerful your spaceship. The best you can hope to achieve is 99.9 percent and after that keep adding 9’s after the decimal.

It’s easiest way to live is to just accept what you’re told is real by the tribe you identify with (whether they identify with you is a different matter) The tribe tends to react badly when you contradict them on important matters.

But the less real your reality, the more likely you are to trip over things. And knowing that on some level you’re pretending to believe, you’ll never be satisfied.

Anyway I enjoy the hunt.