As students of philosophy and history, when anomalies arise, you have to take note.
In 2004 a senior advisor to President George W. Bush famously told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community.” They believed people could find solutions to problems through careful study of discernible reality. But, the aide continued, Suskind’s worldview was obsolete. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” the aide said. “We are an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality— judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” (--Ron Suskind, “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush,” New York Times Magazine, October 17, 2004, at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17BUSH.html
We appear to be in a moment when the reality-based community is challenging the ability of the MAGA Republicans to create their own reality. (--Letters from an American, September 25, 2024, Heather Cox Richardson, Sep 26)
Reality is a sometime thing.
If you have, by some fluke, garnered power to yourself, there is the temptation to believe in and act on your ability to change reality. It happens to presidents and it happens to assassins. You believe you can change history.
But changing ontological (metaphysical) reality is a deeper task. After all, it is said, reality is reality, a tautology currently morphed into the contemporary allocution "it is what it is."
George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cohorts created the Iraq-United States war. They believed, and successfully, that the American people would affirm their propaganda that Saddam Hussein (not a likable man) was somehow responsible in a roundabout way for the 9/11 attacks on America.
These days, the MAGA creature roams through the land expurgating and secreting lies and exaggerations, blatant lies and false exaggerations, into wide-eyed and remorseless followers.
Creating one's own reality, while sounding like a sound influencer promulgation, is not as useful as advertised.
Ontology seeks reality.
on·tol·o·gy
/änˈtäləjē/
noun
noun: ontology; plural noun: ontologies
- 1. the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being.
- 2. a set of concepts and categories in a subject area or domain that shows their properties and the relations between them. (--Mirriam-Webster)
And then:
As a first approximation, ontology is the study of what there is. Some contest this formulation of what ontology is, so it’s only a first approximation. Many classical philosophical problems are problems in ontology: the question whether or not there is a god, or the problem of the existence of universals, etc.. These are all problems in ontology in the sense that they deal with whether or not a certain thing, or more broadly entity, exists. But ontology is usually also taken to encompass problems about the most general features and relations of the entities which do exist. There are also a number of classic philosophical problems that are problems in ontology understood in this way. For example, the problem of how a universal relates to a particular that has it (assuming there are universals and particulars), or the problem of how an event like John eating a cookie relates to the particulars John and the cookie, and the relation of eating, assuming there are events, particulars and relations. These kinds of problems quickly turn into metaphysics more generally, which is the philosophical discipline that encompasses ontology as one of its parts. The borders here are a little fuzzy. But we have at least two parts to the overall philosophical project of ontology, on our preliminary understanding of it: first, say what there is, what exists, what the stuff of reality is made out of, secondly, say what the most general features and relations of these things are.
(--Stanford Enclyopedia of Philosophy, under Logic and Ontology, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-ontology/#Onto)
We suffer "what there is."
And while we share the same Reality in some absolute sense, we diverge into separate realities in multifarious relative senses.
Bush and Cheney's reality. Donald Trump's reality. Vladimir Putin's reality. The Mayor of New York City's reality. Caitlin Clark's reality. The Boston Red Sox reality.
And into what part of ontological reality does the phrase "Jesus suffered for/with us" fall?
Anyone's opinion of me or you, positive or negative, is not me or you. Perhaps applicable in a relative sense, but more likely not absolutely.
The matter of discovering our own isomorphic interconnection with absolute reality is a worthy inquiry and worthwhile engagement.
Don't let anyone define you. Don't let those puffed up by their personal opinion create the world within which they want you to serve them.
A Koan from the Mumonkan, “Ruiyan Calls His Master,” Case 12.
The Case:
Every day Ruiyan would call to himself, “Master, Master!”
And every day he would respond, “Yes, yes.”
Then he would say, “Be awake! Be alert!”
“Yes!”
“From now on, don’t be fooled by anything.”
“No, I won’t be!”
https://ancientforestzen.wordpress.com/2013/03/31/master-master/
Ha!
Take that!
(Did you just slap me upside my head?)