Will the Real Reality Please Stand Up?

Postmodern philosophy became popular a few years ago. Postmodernism is basically a denial that objective reality exists or can be known. It teaches that each of us has our own reality, because we cannot know objective reality through our senses. This is merely an excuse for people to behave as they wish, and is foolish in the extreme.

Objective reality really exists. This is why science works. If we each defined our own reality, then we could not find out how things work through experimentation. A given experiment would turn out differently for different people, depending on the “reality” of each. But this isn’t the case. The sun rises and sets for everyone, nuclear bombs really can destroy entire cities, and you really do exist. These things, like the science that has given us our unprecedented technology, are objectively true. I prove objective reality every time I push the play button on my DVD player; it works no matter what the button-pusher happens to believe about the machine.

Here’s the point: Our success or failure depends on how closely our values, decisions, and actions are aligned with reality. If we fail to correctly discern and identify objective reality, we will also fail to reach our goals.