Imagine for a moment that the world ceases to exist when you shut your eyes. It sounds absurd right? Or does it? The Nobel prize in Physics 2022 proves the Universe is not locally real, mirroring wisdom traditions such as Buddhism. The Buddha said "The world, indeed, is like a dream and the treasures of the world are an alluring mirage. Like the apparent distances in a picture, things have no reality in themselves but are like a heat haze." Would this radically change our perception of the nature of the universe, ourselves, and our place in it? Can it help heal our global polycrisis? Let me attempt to address these questions and explain why it is and isn’t crazy.
From Certainty to Uncertainty
The common-sense idea that there is a physical universe separate from, and independent of, our perceptions of it has been deeply ingrained since the Enlightenment. Treating nature like a machine has driven breathtaking scientific and technological advances, resting on the idea that the universe is completely understandable, follows fixed eternal laws and is fully knowable using reason alone.
However, advances in science deeply question these assumptions. The universe is constantly evolving; quantum mechanics suggests that chance and randomness are factors in nature and complexity theory suggests that perfect knowledge and accurate prediction of the world’s behaviour is not possible.
Importantly, quantum mechanics proposes that the observer and the observed arise together, recognising that the observed has no standalone existence from its own side.
So, There Is No Objective Reality? – The Crazy Part
This is such an important question. The counterculture movement of the 60s and, as a result, postmodern philosophy, has focused on the idea that “we create our own reality” to such an extent that objective truth, being the metaphorical baby, has been “thrown out with the bathwater” as exemplified in the popular press: A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality
These interpretations result in a “no-truth” world, with catastrophic implications for morality, leadership and a mistrust in objective science, exemplified by Rudi Guliani’s comment on NBC’s “Meet the press” in 2018 where he said, “Truth isn’t Truth” and where Donald Trump can claim that the truth is anything that he says that has enough personal conviction.
“No Objective Reality” Is Partially True! – The Not Crazy Part
Despite our volitions, we can’t directly bring into being anything we desire by “thinking it”. We see a world, with regular patterns of behaviour independent of our ordinary volitions. Most of us would not want to bring into being a world full of conflict and suffering, and yet that is what is happening.
If the world ceases to exist when I shut my eyes, then I create the world! - Yes, but this is only partially true! The visual world is gone, the world of tables and chairs (and in the Matrix film the spoon of the spoon boy – “See the spoon, there is no spoon”), but the underlying deeper reality remains, which from our perspective as beings in time and space appears as objective.
The same is true for the worlds of touch, hearing, smell and taste, they arise for us as appearance when interacting indirectly with a deeper reality that is inaccessible through the senses.
Tables And Chairs Are Just Icons
Consider the icon for an email on a Personal Computer. The icon is not the thing. An email is essentially a pattern of data on an electronic device. Almost everyone can drag that email to the dustbin icon to get rid of the email, but most would struggle if told to “find the pattern of bits on a device and change them.”
We can consider the objects of our perceptions in this way. The objects arise through our perceptual apparatus as we engage indirectly with a deeper more complex world, when we are done with them, they are gone. The complexity of the world is so great that direct perception would not favour survival, indeed we would likely melt into “hot entropic soup”.
Donald Hoffman's interface theory argues for this position, and Bernardo Kastrup’s Analytic Idealism aligns suggesting the deeper reality is mental in nature, not physical.
The Systems View of Life
The systems view of life agrees that we bring forth a world through the act of living also suggesting a deeper integrated and whole reality beyond appearances.
Truth can be grounded in the stable emergent patterns of nature, and the wholeness of our being. Combining multiple perspectives gives more truth, not no truth.
As we grapple with the nature of reality, perhaps the key lies in embracing uncertainty but not throwing out objectivity. What do you think?
References
Capra, F. and Luisi, P. (2016). The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Essentia Foundation. (2020). What Does Quantum Entanglement Reveal About Reality? Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59dWdQuSMnk (Accessed: 29 March 2024).
Hoffman, D. (2022) User Interface Theory Explained. Chasing Consciousness Podcast. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNo-oWS8VUo / (Accessed: 29 March 2024).
Jost, S. (2024). Beyond Physics: Exploring Consciousness with Bernardo Kastrup’s Analytical Idealism. OPEN Foundation. Available at: https://open-foundation.org/beyond-physics-exploring-consciousness-with-bernardo-kastrups-analytical-idealism/ (Accessed: 29 March 2024).
Lent, J. (2021). Nature Is Not a Machine-We Treat It So at Our Peril. Resilience Available at: https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-08-03/nature-is-not-a-machine-we-treat-it-so-at-our-peril/ (Accessed: 29 March 2025)
NBC News (2018). Giuliani: 'Truth isn't truth'. Available at: https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/giuliani-truth-isn-t-truth-1302113347986 (Accessed: 29 March 2025).
Nobel Prize Outreach (2025). The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022. Available at: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/summary/ (Accessed: 29 March 2025).