Facts & Realities

Let’s return for a moment to the void.

Let’s embrace the nothingness yet again and presume nothing — no beliefs, no universal truths, no responsibilities even. Nothing at all. Just a rhetorical void.

Within that empty void, let’s consider first and only that we live in a four-dimensional world, the three dimensions of Space, plus Time. Let’s further consider that we only ever live at a single point in Time, the Present, constantly moving towards the Future, and the Past is therefore filled with all the moments that were once the Present.

Using that limited concept of Time and nothing else, let’s define a Fact as something that has already happened in the Past. It is not the memory or recollection of the thing, but exactly what happened with complete accuracy. This is obviously a construct for a number of reasons, but let’s define it as such nonetheless — as something that has happened, and its happening is all that’s required to make it a Fact.

By this definition it is a Fact whether it’s known or unknown. If a tree had fallen in the forest, that would be a Fact whether anybody heard it or not. In this case, Schrodinger’s cat is either in the box or it is not and our knowledge of either is not relevant, because in this construct it is defined purely by its own existence, irrelevant of any consciousness being aware of it.

As we progress forward in Time, we encroach moment-by-moment onto the Future, and that progression turns each gained moment into the Present only to leave it behind a moment later in the Past, creating more and more Facts along the way.

So if a Fact is a pure truth irrelevant of any consciousness, then what happens if it were witnessed in some way? What happens if somebody is made aware of it? Well, one can reasonably assume that the moment a consciousness is made aware of something, it will immediately alter some detail — no matter how small. Some detail or important element may have been altered in the way the Fact was related. If it was witnessed, what angle was it witnessed from, and was the entire moment witnessed without distractions or obstructions or was a vital moment left unseen? Even if multiple angles were witnessed over the entirety of the moment, people still tend to add context. They make assumptions and take sides. As they later recall it to others they might alter things in the telling to support their assumptions or agenda, perhaps even at each recollection.

We’ll call these “facts” with quotation marks to differentiate them from the pure Facts that are true things that actually happened in the Past. Here is the Schrodinger’s cat that we all know of and the tree that fell in the forest — because according to this definition of reality, if we’re not aware of it, it didn’t happen, it doesn’t exist.

In truth “facts” needn’t even be based on Facts at all. They could be pure fabrications from whole cloth without any connection to reality, which brings us to our third definition, Reality. We’ll define a Reality as a collection of “facts” that must disseminate and grow, and has some purpose or purposes. The purposes of a Reality are key to its survival, but its need to spread is even more fundamental, because spreading validates its existence.

Since a Fact is a construct, an unattainable ideal which is automatically altered the moment it is absorbed or witnessed by a consciousness, then no Reality contains a single Fact, but their altered cousins instead. That’s not to say that all “facts” are equal. By no means do all “facts” diverge from their pure original versions to the same degree. Since a “fact” is meant to support the purposes of a Reality, then details from actual events that might oppose the purposes of a Reality could be altered, ignored or even omitted entirely to help support that Reality. On the other hand, a major factor in a Reality being able to spread is how recognizable its “facts” are, and very little is more recognizable than evidence of its existence.

So while there’s an innate drive for truth in one’s “facts” due to the recognizable quality of true events — especially when there’s strong, easily-available evidence of their existence and details — , it’s the recognizability that’s most important, and if something is repeated enough, it can be recognizable with or without evidence. The repetition becomes the evidence.

Isa Blagden is perhaps the first person to have dedicated this concept into English in her 1869 piece, The Crown Of A Life. In it she wrote, ‘If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma, and men will die for it.’ Conspiracy theories abound these days, many have driven people to ignore scientifically proven protection measures in the midst of a global pandemic and have arguably caused the deaths of hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, so Isa’s statement has proven both truth and timeless.

Putting Reality back into our limited concept of Time, let’s refine our definition of Reality as a collection of “facts” from the Past, designed to govern or justify our words, behaviors and actions in the Present to help create or bring about a particular Future.

Why start here as we reconstruct our universe from an empty void? Even in a world devoid of universal truths, there are still simple truths. The truth of something that happened, separate from any corruption or error or failing in the witnessing or the telling. One can still have faith in an individual event. Even if that faith cannot extend to the people who relate or analyze those events, since people have their own failings and agendas, one can still have faith in the event itself. And if you can have faith in one Fact, you can have faith in all Facts. You can have faith that things happen.

Facts exist, things happened and they happened in a particular way and order. So let’s use that as a single light illuminating the darkness of our void.

Things happen. Facts exist.