What is Reality?
Everything we experience is contained within “reality”. Reality is everything. If you can sense it, it’s real. If you can think it, that too is real in that it is an actual thought you are actually having. Metaphysics and Philosophy both deal with explaining reality, and so reality is our first and fundamental question to this series.
Let’s take stock of what we have to work with. Look around you, look out the nearest window. We have bodies. Our bodies come with certain capabilities. Movement. Senses. We can, barring a physiological or material impediment, see and feel and taste and hear and smell the world around us.
We can probably see objects. I’m right now sitting at a computer, I have my phone in front of me. I’m typing and my words are appearing on the screen in front of me. The computer, phone, desk, chair: these are what we commonly refer to as inanimate objects. Outside my window I can see a few more things: trees, squirrels, birds, other animals and people scurry about.
From this, I think we can make a couple conclusions. There are at least three types of thing that populate reality. There are what I will call “objects”[1] – these are things that vary in form or function, and can’t do anything on their own. I’ll even refine it further by saying that objects come in two forms: Natural and Unnatural. Natural objects exist the way they were produced by nature. The dirt, the trees, the rocks, these are natural objects. Unnatural objects are natural objects which have been acted upon. My phone is made of various plastics and metals, its derived from a bunch of natural objects, and remains an object in that it can’t do anything unless acted upon.
The second type of thing I will call “creatures”. Creatures can move around, collect objects, fly or crawl or climb. We, as humans, can do all of these things too. But we can tell that we are of a different kind than these creatures.
The third type of thing is us, and I will refer to us as “Beings”. Beings differ from creatures not in our animal qualities, but in our minds. We can think, discern, and act. We can feel emotions. We can act with force or gentleness, speak intelligibly, plan for the future and contemplate the past.
So what distinguishes all of these types of thing from each other? Objects are material and only material. They are made of stuff, and have no other qualities. Objects just are. Creatures are made of material. But they are full of life. Creatures are endowed with a kind of life-force. This life force enables them to move, to take care of their basic needs. It does not enable them with such a distinction as we have as beings. Their decisions are driven by what I will call “instinct”. Life-force, alone, does not allow life. It needs to be given direction, and instinct is this direction.
Beings are like creatures in that they are made of material and have a kind of life-force. But they have that strange quality that allows them to move and act differently than creatures. In no particular order, emotion is one of the things that defines Beings. Second, the ability to control our instinct and override it, is another thing that defines Beings. This deciding ability, this veto power over our creaturely life-force, is called agency. The emotive ability, the ability to feel things from our experiences, I will call conscience.
What Is Agency?
We have populated Reality with things (objects, creatures, and beings) and we have given them traits (material, instinct, and agency). So lets dig into this a little bit, and better understand the differences of the things within reality.
We’ve made a few claims without questioning the premise, so lets stop and do that now.
Life-force and instinct are the key element to transcending the world of objects and arriving at the world of creatures. Life-force is natural, that is, derived from nature, the same way that objects can be both natural and unnatural. Instinct is implied by the natural occurrence of life-force. Why is this so?
Life-force provides a creature with abilities. A monkey can climb. A horse can gallop. A bird can fly. Life-force is simply the ability. Unguided, a monkey can just climb until it dies. A horse can gallop until it disappears over the horizon. A bird can just keep flapping eternally. How does a creature know when to stop or start? What governs how or why or when it will use any of it’s given abilities? It necessarily must be instinct. A monkey climbs, and then stops when it is too tired. A horse can gallop, and then graze when it becomes hungry. A bird can fly, and then dive when it sees a predator. Life-force and instinct are co-dependent on each other. A creature without instinct cannot act in any meaningful way. An instinct without life force has nothing to steer.
How does agency differ from instinct then? Agency has power over instinct. A being might be hungry, but decide to not eat. A being might fear predators, but continue in spite of that fear. Agency also manifests differently in every being. Some beings decide to write blogs about metaphysics, other beings decide to play outside, while still other beings decide to be crooks and criminals. Agency is different in every being. Instinct is natural, like the life force it governs. Agency, having command over instinct, is supernatural, above and beyond nature. Beings differ also from creatures in the presence of conscience. Conscience is entirely absent from creatures. They do not feel with the depth that beings feel. They can bond, instinctively, into crude creaturely family units. But a creature cannot love it’s family unit the way a being loves it’s parents. Conscience, then, also transcends creaturely impulses. Conscience is also supernatural.
What is Supernatural Reality?
Agency and Conscience are our first hints at a reality above and beyond this one that we looked around at the beginning of this article. These are qualities that are supernatural and therefore must be derived from some kind of supernature. What do we know about it?
In order to answer that, let’s consider what kind of things populate this supernature. Natural things followed an additive order: Objects are made of material, creatures are objects with life-force, beings are creatures with agency. We can imagine that supernature continues this chain. We can imagine a being without a material, object based form. Beings that are pure agency, pure conscience. I will refer to these as “angels”. But what governs agency and conscience when it is removed from natural reality? It no longer has instincts, it no longer has objects. What governs angels use of agency and conscience? Further still, where do angels come from? They cannot be created by beings, because beings are material. So they must come from, and be governed by, something else.
That something else must be over and above angels, because angels must be governed by something, the way life-force is governed by instinct. That something else must be able to create angels out of nothing (out of no thing) because they are beings of pure agency and conscience. So the act of creating angels therefore must not reduce the thing that creates them, because it must be able to create other angels. I will call this something “the Divine”.
The Divine is the perfection of all things, because The Divine is irreducible. The Divine, being capable of creating supernatural beings (angels) out of no thing, what would prevent The Divine from being able to create things out of no thing?
Let us approach this from another direction. All Angels come directly from the Divine. All beings come from other beings. The first beings came from creatures. the first creatures came from objects. the first objects came from The Divine. The Divine is what Thomas Aquinas called the “Prime Mover”, the Uncaused Cause. The Divine is at the root of all things, and at the root of Reality.
[1] – When I give something a label, I am not using the proper metaphysical label. I am using common language, not jargon, for ease of representation. Try to shed any baggage a particular word carries, and consider only my definition for the time being. I hope to get more specific in subsequent articles.
Times-Dispatch of Vichy Earth 