Reality Revisited: Questioning and Redefining Reality

Reality…what we know to be real and true. This word reality has a comfort, a stability, a fixed feeling to it.

Unfortunately, the perception that there is some comfort in the traditional concepts of reality defies the very existence of our modern civilisations. Man is defined by constantly questioning the true, the possible, the real, and modifying the boundaries of this concept.

Now, this may sound like existential mumbo jumbo, until you begin to look at some of our past ‘realities’ and how revisiting them changed human history.

Before agriculture rose in the fertile crescent, our ecological reality was that of hunting and gathering, just another organism hiding from saber toothed cats, and rummaging for berries in the brush.

Before Nicholas Copernicus, it was a ‘reality’ that the sun orbited the earth, and that we were the centre of the universe.

Before the discovery of germs by Louis Pasteur, it was a ‘truth’ that human sickness was caused by poisonous vapours and mists of decomposed matter called ‘bad air’.

Before the fall of pseudo-scientific racism, the ‘small brains’ of African peoples provided the ‘truth’ of their inferiority. Segregation was the reality of Rosa Parks and slavery was the reality of Toussaint L’Ouverture’s Haiti, before he revisited it.

History shows that holding on to a current reality means we sacrifice the possibility of a better one.

The women and men, who question reality, can redefine it permanently. Unfortunately we as societies fight many forces that resist the revisiting of reality. Licensing offices fear computerisation, police forces fear oversight, judiciaries fear reform and politicians fear everything that doesn’t increase their power. These systems tend to stay rooted in their current reality.

Individually as well, we stifle change with each uttering of “ Don’t study it” or “God is a Trini”. These words may seem harmless, but in many cases they are used to fix ourselves in the status quo, and suppress solutions that come from revisiting reality.

Our Islands, including T&T are facing greater challenges than ever, rising seas, rising murder rates, drained foreign exchange reserves, and economies easily swayed by global economic trends and commodity prices. The answer “That’s just the reality” is simply not enough.

We must constantly probe, question and discuss how we can change our realities, how we shift our societies to more peaceful ones, how we adapt to the current and future impacts of climate change, and how we create meaningful economies that will last for our children.

Platforms such as TEDxPortofSpain are critical spaces for the revisiting of our ‘truths’, and charting a new path towards a better T&T and wider Caribbean. The speakers are chosen for this very purpose, with igniting change in mind. Please join us at Reality Revisited.

By Alexander Girvan
2015 TEDxPOS Speaker