René Descartes on the reality of consciousness

"The only immediately credible reality is the reality of consciousness."

reNÉ Descartes

Can we trust reality? Is it credible? That it exists is not even so certain and has already been dealt with in a number of films and books. We can only be sure - as we learned from the above quote - that our consciousness is real.

But I can deduce even more from this quote. Over and over again throughout history, various philosophers have taught that we determine our own reality. This may sound a little overconfident or even like complete nonsense. It wouldn't be surprising, but if we take a moment, it becomes clear how this should be understood.

Actually, we should not assume that the general reality is real and really exists; instead, we should assume that it is an artificial construct. For the sake of simplicity, however, we assume that there are irrefutable events and things in the external world - i.e. everything outside of us - and that there is therefore an existence outside of our consciousness. These events and things therefore apply not only to us, but to everyone, but we never perceive them completely objectively. Even if we want to make ourselves believe this from time to time. Instead, we always perceive reality in the way that our abilities, perspective and values allow. 

In other words: We know that we cannot be sure that reality outside our thoughts is as we perceive it. Instead, it is only possible for us to be certain that our individual reality is as we perceive it.

How things really and truly are or how others perceive them is vague and something we cannot judge.

Reality is therefore subjective. It is much more likely that we will meet with agreement with this statement. Early on in our childhood, we usually notice that not everyone perceives everything in the same way. Whether it's something simple, such as the different assessment of what is good weather or the best time of year, or something more complicated, such as missing lessons before a class test. While the students who are already doing well in the subject may see this as a gift, for those with catching up to do, this news may mean that they will not have the last opportunity to ask any remaining questions. 

To put it more abstractly: Good or bad are two categories into which we classify events and things in our own reality accordingly.

Consequently, there is no such thing as good and bad, as Shakespeare so aptly observed:

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." 

William Shakespeare in Hamlet (Act II, Scene 2)

Accordingly, we should always be aware that we never know the true reality. The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius already warned us: "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth" and, furthermore, "Our life is what our thinking makes it". This is a fundamental basic understanding that can be enormously helpful to us in not succumbing to the fallacy that we know reality - although the reality of our consciousness is the only directly credible reality.

All of this should encourage us to consciously shape our reality and see things as positively as possible.