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Understand the true nature of reality
Tuesday, 26 July 2005
Your life will never be perfect, but you can certainly make it better than it is now. The first step to achieving this is learning to understand the true nature of reality. It’s only by understanding the situation we find ourselves in, that we can do something about it. In fact, many of the great scientific and technical achievements of humanity prove this point.
For example, for most of the history of civilization, people believed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe, with the sun the moon and the planets orbiting it. It was Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish mathematician, whose finding in the 16th century that the sun lay at the centre of the solar system that turned previous knowledge on its head. This discovery was one of the key events in modern science, and led us directly to the modern world.
It is humanity’s understanding of physics, chemistry, biology and other scientific disciplines that allow us to have such mastery over our existence. Without this background understanding, we could have no cars, aeroplanes or electricity. It was by understanding the nature of reality through science that we improved our existence. We looked past what appeared to be or what we hoped was the truth (the Earth was the centre of the universe) to see what actually was.
You can use this same technique to improve your own life. I’m not suggesting that you conduct scientific experiments on yourself, instead always do your best to understand the true nature of reality. For it is only with this knowledge that you can make good decisions.
Most people already think they have a pretty good idea of what’s going on around them, but in many ways they’re like those that believed the Earth was at the centre of the universe. They’re unwilling to face up to the fact that what they believe to be the truth may be wrong. Through wishful thinking, delusional despair, or just plain laziness, people give up on enquiring into the nature of things. They already think they know it all, so why bother re-examining their beliefs?
This attitude can lead to frustration, anger and misery when reality fails to behave in the way we expect it to. I can’t possibly be wrong, people think, so it’s the world that’s faulty. Don’t you make the same mistake.
The first step to becoming educated is realizing that you know nothing.
The world around us is complex beyond belief. You will never even come close to understanding everything that affects your life. Experts in any particular field soon discover that the more they know about something, the less they realize they know. You are ignorant about virtually everything and will remain so throughout your life. But the less ignorant you are, the better decisions you can make and the more power you will have over your existence.
So keep an open mind. A great many of the things you hold as sacrosanct truth are probably incorrect. When you hear an opinion or a finding that disagrees with your beliefs, stop yourself from dismissing it out of hand. If the world doesn’t behave in the way you expect it to, you’re probably the one that’s wrong. Rather than resigning yourself to despair, re-examine your beliefs – can you learn something from this that will help you in the future?
Read everything you can get your hands on, and do so with an open mind. Challenge yourself with views that you find stupid, boring, or possibly even offensive. What can these views teach you about the world?
As the old saying goes, with knowledge comes power. So gain a little more knowledge, and with it a lot more power.
 | Six simple ways to get more out of life | | We all sometimes feel a bit drab and down, when everything seems a bit pointless and empty. If you're feeling that way, here are some suggestions of simple things to do to get more out of life. |  | Work on your weaknesses first | | We all know somebody who's excellent in some parts of their lives, but performs poorly at others. You might be such a person yourself. It's so much easier to spend time improving what we're already good at, than to concentrate on our weaknesses. | | Don't waste your life tied up in petty squabbles | | There's a guy I know who always seems to be involved in some kind of dispute. He'll spend months fighting the council over a parking ticket, the tax office over his income tax, and his workmates over the volume of their phone's ring. No matter how small the disagreement, he just can't seem to let himself back down or drop it. |  | Get control of your auto-pilot | | The world is a complicated and chaotic place. There's much too much going on for any of us ever to be able to come to grips with it all. But humans have developed a way to cope with this overwhelming complexity. It's called routine. | | Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions | | Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist and one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century, was a great believer in asking dumb questions. In fact, his autobiography Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman, goes into great detail about his habit of asking the most basic of questions. | | A good anger management trick | | We all get angry sometimes and “lose it”. Good things rarely come from such episodes. Wouldn’t it be better if we could deal with the world more rationally, and keep negative emotions out of it all? Here’s a good trick for doing just that. |  | How to deal with many of the world's troublemakers | | Nobody lives on planet Earth for long without discovering that it's full of troublemakers - people who delight in making life difficult for others. Almost immediately most of us start our interactions with other people as young children, we come across some kid who wants to stir things up for no good reason. | | Work hard to give yourself lots of options and opportunities | | Always finish what you start, is an adage that many people try to follow. And it's a good one in a lot of ways. But it probably focusses too much on the importance of the entire process towards achieving a goal. Generally, it's the earlier part that's most important, in my view. | | Face some moments of truth | | What leads us to want to improve ourselves? Where is it that we can even find out how such an improvement can occur? The answer, generally is in moments of truth. | | Five simple memory tricks | | Here are a few really simple tricks for remembering things that I've found useful. None of them are going to revolutionize your life, but I think you’ll see they come in handy. |
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