Simulated Mindset
The philosophy of phenomenology says that you cannot know for sure what’s real. All you really have is your experience and your perceptions. Your best hope is working to make your perceptions better account for your experiences. What you don’t experience might as well not exist. On the other hand, your perceptions will get better as you seek to experience things more widely.
The idea is not to worry about things you cannot verify yourself. Don’t take anyone’s word for it except in a provisional sense. Deception is nearly universal. While the context may require you to bend to some fraudulent demands, don’t actually buy into it unless you know for sure yourself.
Even the very notion of scientific inquiry is suspect. Read about the various controversies, how the scientists involved could be so petty and bombastic toward each other. A good example would be the story of how DNA was discovered, and how two primary teams were putting more energy into embarrassing each other than into the research. The high sounding premise that you can trust those who went before you in researching general knowledge of the world because they were somehow selflessly seeking knowledge alone is one of the biggest lies of all. The most hateful and oppressive orthodoxy comes from those who promote scientific knowledge.
This puts you close to the philosophical proposition that we are all living in a simulation. The people who promulgate this idea don’t assert it as real; the whole point is that you cannot know what’s real. You dare not put full trust in your own perceptions. Everything is just a temporary working hypothesis. Be prepared for something totally outside your sense of what’s ordinary.
It’s no different from some of the better role playing games you find for computers and game consoles. “Game Theory” is being prepared to observe what happens and work out a theory of how the game operates. It’s always different from what most people assume is real, so you have to approach it with flexible expectations. You explore the virtual world in the game. You enter the game world knowing there will be some surprises and limitations, and you play through the first time just trying to figure out the game’s version of reality, so you can go back and play through it again with greater expertise in what to expect.
By maintaining a Game Theory mentality in the real world, you’ll experience far less conflict. You don’t demand that everyone think and act like you. The game plan is not to correct others, to convince them your version of reality is the right one, but to play along with theirs to achieve your own objectives. You stop worrying about what’s “real” and simply look for what works in any given context.
God’s Word says that this fallen existence is not real; it’s one massive deception. It sounds like the idea that our current reality is just a simulation. The Bible asserts that certain things are quite real, and do work in a discernible pattern, but the whole world rejects those claims. Instead, it proceeds along a path that assumes a quite different reality. They are stuck inside the game and have no experience with a higher reality.
We’ve already discussed how living in your heart instead of your head makes possible the perception of life all around you in Creation, life that celebrates the glory of our Creator. This is not a common perception in our world. Being able to touch a tree limb and feel the thrill of life would strike most people as lunacy. Yet the Bible asserts that this is precisely what should happen. The mountains and the hills break forth in shouting His praises, the trees clap their hands, etc. Jesus commanded the storms to be still and invisible demons to come out of people. You don’t get these perceptions from your head, only your heart.
You are the only one who can do this for you: Decide that this reality is just a simulation. Our Western world is blind, and doesn’t play by God’s rules. Ultimate reality is something quite different, and you have to keep a hand on that reality, not completely lose yourself in the simulation. Stop trying to nail down a definition of what is real that satisfies your intellect. Your intellect itself is part of the false reality; it cannot know what’s real.
I had a prof who was big into phenomenology. He said it’s the most practical of western philosophical disciplines, because it’s “what everyone from philosophers to the man on the street do when they’re living real life” (from a book or essay he wrote). Everything else is just theory.