EIGHT BILLION/ONE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS

As I did for my work tribunal, in preparation in writing the lyrics for eight billion/one I created a list of questions on the topic and had participants send me there responses. Here is a sample of those interviews.

Define objective reality

-Something that is true, regardless if it is known or people even believe it is true. It lives Totally independent from interaction or observation and is not defined by any one or any thing else. 

-Absolute truth

-expressing or dealing with facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations

-Truths that supercede people's perceptions of them

Define subjective reality

  -A way that they world is view through your particular perspective. Because we all have our own 

Unique lives we see the same things and experience the same things with drastically different reactions. 

Subjective reality leaves the plain of truth and right and wrong and enters the dominion of opinions, taste 

and perspectives

-An individual or group’s experience of reality.

-A state of existence that is at the mercy of personal perception and experience

-I would guess that's everything relating to opinions, feelings and everything we can't prove which is everything

Please list things that you believe fall in each of these categories? 

Objective: God, Morals, human worth, love temperature, measurement, laws of nature, Harms, needs, concretely observable truths, the experience of emotions

-God and his character setting the moral "way" of the universe

Subjective: art, the flavor of food, being drawn or repelled by certain personalities, at times the application of a moral truth, hot/cold, short/tall, high/low, clean/dirty

-my experience of almost every aspect of the world around me, relationships, emotions, preferences, opinions

-Can really list anything in objective as I can't prove anything. I could list my belief and the things I trust to be objective but in all honesty it could all be fake. 

-Everything would fall into subjective. But I think these are honestly very unhelpful definitions and terms really

-Language, personal preferences, cultural judgements, the truth claims made by emotions"

What is an area (or areas) of your life where you feel confused wither it is objective or subjective reality?

How we individually live out “truth” or even the clarity on what truth is. The moral line whether or not theirs a right way to live when

Its not written out or clearly immoral. 

-Beauty

-I’m coming to understand that many aspects of my childhood faith, and the faith of much of American Christianity is cultural rather than Biblical. I am trying to separate the two and it can be challenging

-I don't know if I feel confused about whether things are subjective or objective reality very much

-Religion

Are you open to the possibility that ultimately there is no objective reality, Please explain?

-I do not think I am open to this possibility (does that make me close minded?) I don’t think the world would be the

Way it is with out objective reality. If all that is left is subjective all we are left with is every ones option which is the 

Same as saying there is no truth, and that feels the same as no meaning. Firstly I don’t think the beings in that world 

Could have a capabilities to discover there own meaninglessness, and if they did even care. I find in the human heart,

We all ache for meaning and truth. I think that hunger exists because we have all experiences glimps of things that 

Were transcendet. Also if you actually applied and lived out the idea of no objective reality, I believe every thing would 

Totally fall apart. You could not longer teach your children not to do something or how to share, the court system would

Become irrelevant and the distinction between sane and insane would have to go away.

-Actually what is presently "observed" by human on earth in time and referred to as reality are but shadows of what is real and "objective", and those realities may themselves be shadows of what might be even more real. For what we know as human will need to be totally transformed from a shadow land to have a presence in the real

-I’m open to it but it would probably make me feel like nothing is worthwhile/significant. You'd have to question the credibility of humans' ability to reason, and of our five senses, and that would make nothing make sense anymore. Also, what would that mean, on a practical level? It's hard to imagine

-I would say no, because that would be a postmodern view of the world meaning truth, is what you make it, and I reject that view. I believe that there is objective truth certainly through the lens of God’s word through Scripture

What is something in your life you know is subjective reality, but it is still hard to believe, act, interpret like it is?

-For me the area of aesthetics I find very hard to remember is not objective. This includes interior design, visual art, and music. 

I find my self judging other people like there is an objective truth and they are on the wrong side. I know what is true I know what 

Is good and they do not and they are blind for it. I know this is wrong but it is really hard for me to stop.

-The love that someone has for me

-Anything that I strongly prefer in my pursuit of the "best" could fall into this category

-I don't think there are any. I've been thinking about this since childhood and I'm pretty at peace about it

Do you believe an objective reality could be  possible in a world that is only material (not spiritual) please explain?

No I do not. I feel like for objective truth to be possible there has to be something over all the exist, there has to be something

That is beyond the limits of perspective (you could call it a super perspective) that can really see something for what it truly is. 

So ultamitly what is objective reality is what this something (the thing that is over creation) how it views it, is its true reality

-I can’t even imagine an “only material” world! I guess there would be no humans and no imagination so there would probably ONLY be objective reality in such a world

-No. The nature of objective reality is contingent upon a spiritual state. I don't believe something strictly material is capable of being unchanging and independent of all other things

-Ehhhh I think the world is designed to always have a way in which you can say things aren't true and it's better that way

-I think that would make it more likely to exist. The material world is harder to play definition games with, and it's more objectively verifiable because all beings have it in common. The spiritual world, because we understand it so poorly, can often end up in definition games, which are subjective because language is subjective. AKA: "My negative circumstances are the work of demons." That claim can be understood to be objectively true or false only if you clearly define the term "demons." OR, if the circumstance was objectively the speaker's fault, the claim could still subjectively be true for one person, who simply defines "demons" as "the personification of the spiritual consequences of sin," while being subjectively false for another person, who defines "demons" in a hyper-specific way.

What reinforces your current beliefs (experiences, ideas, etc) on the existence (or non existence) of the objective reality?

-My Christan faith reinforces my belief of an objective reality. Ultimity being a Christian means I believe in God, I believe

He see the truth and I recognize that I don’t. I just see a tiny fraction of reality from my perspective. So it makes sense to

Listen to the person who you believe has the answers when it becomes clear to you that you don’t and never will.

-Existence, experience, faith

-I am in a physical body and so things that are also physically observed easily feel like they would fall into objective reality. If we were living in something similar to the matrix then everything that we can physically see and touch would not exist and not be real objects, but I think they would still fall under objective reality to us, since to all of us we can see and feel them and would not be aware that it was not real

-The way you can't disprove very vague and ethereal theories that would suggest you are already in them

-I think, probably, at the core of my belief in objective reality is my belief that if a person is measurably harmed by someone's behavior, that person has an objective responsibility to cease, make right, and prevent that behavior, regardless of how that person perceives their harm.

-The beauty, variety, and intricacy of creation leads me to believe in the objective reality of a creator God.

-A Tesla car has thousands of parts that were designed by creators on purpose to work together for this thing (the car) to work. Humans are a million times more complicated and it is unfathomable to me that we aren’t designed by a Creator

Do you believe our five sense are experiencing objective or subjective reality, Please explain?

-Yes and no. I do believe the physical reality is real. When we touch the table we really are touching something that exist. But

I believe we can’t help superimpose over the objective reality our personal subjective reality. The other filter that we experience

Life through is the limitations of our senses. Other animals experience color sights sounds differently because there sense

Can be more devoloped. So that takes you back to the question who is right, If I see the flower as red and some one else 

(A person or animal) sees it as blue, who as the authority to judge between the two.

-Both. Life can only be experienced as one whole, which is too integrated to differentiate one type of reality from the other

-Yes, but we experience subjective feeling about reality. Clearly apples are eatable, that’s objective reality, but they may not taste delicious to everyone. A person may say “apples are not eatable” because that person hates the taste or texture, but that is not reality, it is the person’s opinion

-Subjective. Not everyone maybe feelings the same things or at the same level

-I guess on a technical level, they subjectively interpret an objective reality. Because theoretically, we all have acess to the same sensory data, but it seems unlikely to me that we all interpret it the same (eg. I have aphantasia, so I imagine I don't experience visual input as objectively as others do).

-Largely subjective though They can totally come into alignment with a piece of truth but not entirely

EIGHT BILLION/ONE

The other day I was listening to the news and they said “they were sharing there truth”. I know this is phase that has become a cliche recently, but I will still surprised in hearing it again. Firstly this is a erosion of language. It is using the world truth in a way that is not congruent with what the word means. Truth does not mean, perspective, opinions, or ones personal ideas. Truth is not something that can be owned, so there for it can’t be “yours”. Secondly this phrase has huge philosophical, moral, spiritual implications, if you logically follow its chain of thinking. Using the word truth in this new way very directly implies there is no truth in the “old” sense of the word. Because there is no over arching truth (the central idea of post modern philosophy) the only meaningful way to use this word is a replacement for the word perspective. Simply put there is no objective reality. If there is no objective reality all we have is 8 billion subjective realities.

This is the topic of my next composition entitled eight billion/one. It ask the questions, is there both a subjective and objective reality? If so how often do I confuse the two (thinking one is objective when it is really not). If there is a objective reality how do I find it? Can I trust my self to discover it? Can I find a person or source to show me the way?