"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

**~~revealman~~** · 10-04-2016, 11:39 PM

Philip K. Dick on what is reality and facing change/death as part of life experience

What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing. It is my job to create universes, as the basis of one novel after another. And I have to build them in such a way that they do not fall apart two days later. Or at least that is what my editors hope. However, I will reveal a secret to you: I like to build universes which do fall apart. I like to see them come unglued, and I like to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem. I have a secret love of chaos. There should be more of it. Do not believe—and I am dead serious when I say this—do not assume that order and stability are always good, in a society or in a universe. The old, the ossified, must always give way to new life and the birth of new things. Before the new things can be born the old must perish. This is a dangerous realization, because it tells us that we must eventually part with much of what is familiar to us. And that hurts. But that is part of the script of life. Unless we can psychologically accommodate change, we ourselves begin to die, inwardly. What I am saying is that objects, customs, habits, and ways of life must perish so that the authentic human being can live. And it is the authentic human being who matters most, the viable, elastic organism which can bounce back, absorb, and deal with the new.

Of course, I would say this, because I live near Disneyland, and they are always adding new rides and destroying old ones. Disneyland is an evolving organism. For years they had the Lincoln Simulacrum, like Lincoln himself, was only a temporary form which matter and energy take and then lose. The same is true of each of us, like it or not.

http://io9.gizmodo.com/philip-k-dick...pot-1688043158

**~~revealman~~** · 10-04-2016, 11:44 PM

i think the biggest problem of humans is their denial of reality and the fear of change and death, thats why we create fictious worlds of escapism like entertainment and religions which distract us from facing the reality of life and give us false fellings of security and infinity. few people have a sober perception of reality and life. most people create a bubble of positivity and deny the dark side of life. facing the shadows of light and embracing both sides of the coin(yin(yang) are necessary for balanced psyche and to avoid falling into utopic beliefs which only lead to dissapointments, depression and unrealistic expectations from life...

denial of death, constant change, temporary nature of things, uncertainty etc. leads only to self deception and dissapointment, fear and anxiety. accepting both sides of life leads to more inner freedom
and appreciating what we have

if more people would face the reality instead of escaping into fictious worlds, they would appreciate the prescious moment of life more intensely because they would accept the fact that all is temporary, in a constant state of change and nothing is certain.. without darkness we would not appreciate light

those who cling to light will burn themselves like moths

**~~revealman~~** · 10-04-2016, 11:56 PM

**sean** · 03-13-2022, 10:15 AM

Philip K. Dick was obsessed with the idea that reality could be false, his stories often question what is reality, a common theme among his books only sometimes noticed; the world around it wasn't always as it is, and one day will not be again, and if we could perceive reality as it truly is it would drive us mad.

Anyway, he was a schizophrenic and in turn, some of his books were inspired by completely crazy visions (he also used amphetamine). In a lot of Philip K. Dick's stories, you see ideas that a lot of people with schizophrenia experience - the everyday world is an illusion and that reality isn't what it appears to be, paranoia, the world is populated by other beings or robots masquerading as human, etc. Basically their inability to distinguish reality from psychosis.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is an good example. It was written in 1965 and shows a future where people escape into virtual reality worlds as a form of entertainment after taking a hallucinatory drug.

On an interesting note, most of the influential dystopian novels were actually inspired by authoritarian left-wing governments, namely communist/socialist states like the USSR (1984 by George Orwell and We by Yevgeny Zamyatin being the major ones). The only influential sci-fi authors I can think of that wrote about futuristic right-wing governments were Philip K. Dick (wrote about both futuristic left-wing and right-wing authoritarian scenarios in the US, with his conspiracy theories alternating between secret police, the CIA, and fringe political groups) and Heinlein (who actually wrote in favour of right-wing militarism).