There have been many creative and interesting ways Subjective Reality has been explained, portrayed, and demonstrated.
The Matrix, The Truman Show, Inception, & Vanilla Sky all have fascinatingly portrayed the protagonist attempting to navigate the environment while taking a leap of faith to and from the known objective world to a subjective dreamlike, computer-simulation world.
What is Subjective Reality?
Subjective Reality is the lens for which you experience the world based on your own interpretations of reality. The reality is one and all-inclusive in the sense that it’s made up of your interpretation and your’s alone.
The other people in your life are story characters in the sense that how you experience them is predicated on your interpretation.
Another way that I’ve heard subjective reality being explained is through the model of the world being a computer simulation or a dream. There is only ONE perspective and that is “your” perspective.
Even the fact that you’re reading me describe the characteristics of my subjective reality, it’s still through the lens of YOUR subjective experience.
What makes the existence of subjective reality interesting is it’s a model that can neither be proven nor disapproved.
Subjective Reality vs Objective Reality
Objective reality says “rejection signals access to fewer resources.”
Subjective reality says “rejection doesn’t exist since every interaction with another person is a reflection of yourself.”
Objective reality says “achieving financial security is how you achieve social status, and access to materials things that will bring more value to your life.”
In Subjective reality, status symbols and approval-seeking behaviors are silly in a story where you’re the one involved mainly with how the story ends.
Within the subjective experience, seeking safety like financial security and approval is boring. Subjective reality insists you continue to ask, “and then what?” You achieve wealth, and then what?”
In the objective world, what’s known is known and the status quo is sufficient.
In the subjective world, the limits are less obvious, and what is known can be repurposed – the status quo only represents the beginning of a story.
It’s Neo before escaping the Matrix or Luke Skywalker before leaving Tatooine with Obi-Wan.
It would make zero sense to not move the story passed the status quo since that is the only reason why you’d begin the game or story in the first place.
In the objective world, the consequences are universally agreed upon, and a lot seems to be at stake. You learn at an early age not to rock the boat less you end up with less than what you started with. It’s safer to fit in.
In the subjective world, consequences are less apparent. You’re more concerned with testing your limits and discovering the unknown since the unfolding of the story and discovering the purpose of why it being told is the main priority.
Is Reality Subjective or Objective?
Reality could be subjective, it could be both, or it could be neither. For example, you could be having a purely subjective experience that acts as though “reality” is objective.
The Benefits of Having a Subjective Reality
Adopting subjective reality in many ways is the process of flipping the survival instinct on its head.
In the objective world, we’re more inclined to adopt a survival instinct. Avoid pain, pursue pleasure, and survive.
In the objective world, we’re more inclined to see instant gratification as a distraction, and pain as a useful tool.
What makes the sci-fi movie The Matrix or an open-world game like Red Dead Redemption or the simulation video game The Sims, resonate with people is its promise of freedom and low-stakes thinking.
In other words – there’s little to no consequences of the decisions you make. So you are free to be uninhibited from exploring parts of yourselves without the fear of rejection, failure, setback or harm.
Though you may not have infinite lives or be able to hit the restart button – begging again at the most recent checkpoint, at any moment, you can choose to re-customize your character, choose a new ability or skill to learn.
Through the objective lens, it’s clear that what’s prioritized is security and social approval.
The consequences of the objective model value system is the existential promise of herd-mentality, group-thinking. Soulless work in exchange for financial security.
The objective world has its own model with its own rules. Unfortunately, the objective lens with its objective rules tends to be much less fun, and the rules much more strict.
Fortunately, within the subjective lens, those rules don’t exist.
In fact from the subjective reality model, the objective rules seem like a joke.
Subjective Reality & Other People.
You may have heard the popular saying from Orson Wells “You live alone, you die alone”.
One less bleak way of looking at this is that we never really truly share the life experience or first-person-perspective reality of anyone else but ours.
We’ll never know what it’s like to truly be in someone else shoes, though we could imagine it, we’ll never know how accurate our image of it is compared to the actual experience.
Through this lens, we don’t even know if anyone else actually does exist or if it’s just a reflection, illusion, or manifestation of our own personal conscious experience.
Like a video game, other people could be non-playable characters whose only function is to help your story move forward as you play out your main and side quests.
This model may sound like a sure way to experience a disconnect with the people around you, fostering a lack of empathy for others and a sense of superiority, but not quite, and here’s why.
One main benefit of adopting a subjective lens is to transcend the social limitations and petty expectations we may develop when we’re living in scarcity and viewing the world as a zero-sum game.
People do things, and we judge them as right or wrong. This perspective would be more aligned with an objective view.
Seeing people as a reflection of or own consciousness, or dream characters in our own dream state, we are better able to take negative interactions less personally.
When you see everyone as a reflection of yourself, you stop giving your power away to people who you’re growing co-dependent with.
As your expectations shift to what you can control, you’re free to be empathetic while setting higher standards for the type of people you’d actually want in your life.
If every character is a dream character, what’s the point of settling for sub-par actors. You can treat the characters who you feel gives you an opportunity to grow as the main protagonist in your story with patience and a sense of curiosity.
You’re able to finally let go of any characters where that purpose doesn’t seem to align.
Either way, within the subjective model, you have a choice of who you’d like to keep in your story without the fear of being alone the same way a character in an open world video game can move through various parts of the world map, meeting new people and saying goodbye to others.
There’s less at stake, which makes it less likely that you make fear-based decisions.
Subjective Reality & Goal Setting
The beginning parts of practicing a subjective model perspective began with replacing objective perspective goals to subjective, character sculpting goals.
It didn’t take very long to realize how odd it would be to seek validation or security in a world that is purely subjective.
If my own subjective experience is the only perspective that will dictate my life experience, why would I waste energy on the good or bad opinions of others? Seeking approval and status doesn’t work in a simulated world.
Seeing the world as a dream world makes setting external objective goals like higher status, fear of failure or the unknown seem like playing it safe in a game meant to be exciting.
If you were an avatar, maybe you would do all the things that were pleasurable and fun at first, but then eventually you’d want to move the story forward.
You’d start asking “why am I really here?”. “What does the narrative really have to offer?”. Most importantly, “how can I level up?”.
Eventually, you’d realize that objective goals like security, social expectance, short term gratifications, and material possessions, though exciting and possibly worthwhile in the beginning, are ultimately behaviors that represent a lack of trust or fear.
In a world where anything is possible, eventually, you’d replace the pursuit of wealth and status with the pursuit of exploring the unknown, and sculpting your character in ways that make wealth and status inevitable as an indirect outcome, but never the main intent.
Subjective Reality & The R.A.S
With enough openness to the subjective model, what you may notice occurring more often are sudden coincidences or happenstances that look like omens or signs.
Almost as if the creator of the dream world, the programmer of the simulation, the universe, or God, is trying to tell you something important.
Within the objective world, what could very well be happening is that you’re activating your Reticular Activation System.
It’s the part of the brain that builds arousal and is primed to detect what’s important while filtering out what’s not.
For example, if I suggest to you that people have been wearing a lot of red lately, you may begin to notice the color red more often.
This is why your belief system is so important. It shapes your reality because it molds the lens from which you see the world, priming you with confirmation biases.
In other words, what you focus on expands.
This seems to be true both in the subjective and objective model.
Another example of the R.A.S. is hearing someone say your name in a crowd.
There could be dozens of people talking around you, and you would still be able to pick up any word that even rhymes with your name because it’s a relevant queue.
Part of adopting a subjective model is becoming primed to existence having a specific intent.
If we’re in a dream world, or a simulation, what would the purpose of the dream or simulation be?
There seems to be some sort of co-creation that I think in many ways, religion has done a good job of trying to communicate.
- What is seen is not all there is.
- You’re being guided as part of something much larger than you.
- Except the will go God.
- Ask and it shall be received.
These are all spiritual values that work very well within the subjective lens.
They’re mental models that help you to see the world in ways that allow you to identify what you can control, and surrender to what you can not.
Subjective Reality & Making Money
For almost everyone, achieving financial stability is a priority.
In the objective world, you earn money to pay your bills, to purchase things that you can enjoy, to provide for your loved ones, to contribute, and to create a sense of financial security.
In a subjective world, you earn money because it’s a feature in the simulation.
When you collect enough coins you do it to upgrade weapons, to further your character customizations, and to access loot boxes while continuing the iterative process of leveling up your character.
It seems like the main difference between the objective and subjective world is the intent.
Much of our motivation to pursue wealth in the objective world, is fear-based. The goal is to avoid pain and uncertainty with an intent to achieve status and avoid rejection.
In the subjective world, it’s not so much that we collect coin or Gil so that we can avoid anything bad happening to our avatar or get the non-playable characters to respect us more – it’s so that we can progress to slay bigger, faster, and stronger dragons. So we can yield and use rare weapons and discover unexplored territories of the gaming map.
Acquiring wealth is an indirect result of showing up to play the character each day to level up.
When it comes to wealth building, the mistake is having an objective perspective that enforces a scarcity mindset.
The path to wealth is less about working hard, having the right plan or being patient, and more about becoming more heart-centered while taking massive action.
This is why seeing the world as a simulation is a model that falls right in line with this approach.
When you see the world as a story unfolding, with you as the main character, you begin asking questions that go beyond collecting financial security, and as a result, you end up achieving wealth as a byproduct.
Being The Director Of Your Subjective Reality
One effective approach to experiencing subjective reality is as a character in a movie. The purpose of living the story is to experience the conflict and desire. To face fears, foster growth, be part of something bigger than yourself, and to learn how to make real sacrifices.
What the purpose is not is to play it safe. The journey only begins when the main character decides to answer the call of action. To venture forth and take the first step into the unknown.
In Joseph Campbells Hero’s Journey framework, he describes a common phase of the hero’s journey as the “refusal of the call”.
In an objective lens where we tend to gravitate towards certainty and security – seeking approval and acquiring wealth is a common pitfall.
Through the subjective lens, it’s easier to lead from trust.
Realizing that less is at stake, when the whole purpose of everything that exists in the world, could just be the result of your own specific interpretation.
Better Subjective Motivations
Chasing security and approval is silly.
Imagine a story where the only motivation in all three acts is the main character trying to win the approval of others and achieving wealth.
What we would want to see is the character’s core values change.
Whether by force or by conscious choice. We want to see them change subjectively on the inside, instead of achieving basic objective goals.
In the hero journey story arch, the journey doesn’t end until they’ve experienced a death (symbolic or literal), rebirth, and a sharing of the reward with the people.
The problem with the objective model is it feels like we don’t have very much say in what goes on in this reality.
The weather shifts day-to-day, we are who we are, capable of what we are capable of, stuck within the social groups we were placed in.
Within the subjective model, the limits are almost non-existent.
Similar to an open-world video game or a story we’re in the process of laying out.
So within the Subjective Model, an important question to address is, how do we make the open-world experience or story we’re telling, meaningful, excited, and one that leads to growth.
A good place to start is by identifying what you don’t want or no longer need. As an avatar, you would only choose the skill-sets you feel resonate with you.
You’d design your character in a way that best expresses you. You wouldn’t worry about how you would be perceived, and you wouldn’t worry about breaking any rules since they don’t exist or if they do, you’re the one creating them to make the story exciting.
Making the story better begins with being able to express what would make the story better.
As the main character in a subjective world, anything that’s a misalignment is a chance to grow. If you don’t like the current narrative, you may not be able to change the entire plot or current theme, but, maybe you can change the tone or music score.
Maybe there’s parts of the set and setting that you can interchange. As the co-creator of the story, maybe there are a few recurring characters that you need to kill off or actors that need to be replaced.
Most importantly, you can change from which perspective the story is being told from, and that’s huge. It means we have a say in how the story ends.
Subjective Reality & Building Relationship
A clear benefit of the subjective reality model when it comes to relationships is the problem of attachments and expectations.
When we learn to see other people as characters with they’re own script or conditioning, we begin to see them as characters to help bring context to the purpose of our own subjective experience.
We stop being offended. We take things less personally and we become more curious about people, which ultimately leads to tolerance and compassion.
When To Be Objective
It doesn’t seem like major objective questions can be currently answered. Questions like:
- does anything happen after you die?
- was there anything before the big bang?
- what is beyond the universe?
- is there such a thing as free will?
- what is consciousness?
These are all questions that exist within an objective world.
Are there mechanisms that exist beyond conscious observation?
This idea is akin to the philosophical quantum physics question, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”
The question stands – are there any useful or practical applications to having an objective perspective on the world?
I think an obvious one is projecting your mind into someone else’s experience. When we tend to lean toward a personal bias. We see our perspective as the only relevant one.
Questions To Ask While Exploring Subjective Reality
As we begin our approach to exploring the world through a subjective lens, a good place to begin is with relevant questions related to this model.
Here are a few examples.
What would the main character in a simulated world do next?
What parts of your reality seem to be recurring, and what can you learn from it?
How could you invite more co-creation?
In what ways are the characters in your story expressed they need from you?
Is there anything that needs an upgrade to help explore more efficiently?
What sounds more exciting at this moment? Starting a side quest or continue the main quest?
Are there parts of your story that you don’t like? What would something better look like?
How could you begin exploring something new even if you don’t know how?
What’s the most direct path to what you want to explore next?
What are some signs that may be telling you where the story may want to go?
How would you like to see your avatar/character develop?
Where is the heart-centered path pointing you towards?
In Co-creation
For me, the subjective reality model is less about bending spoons and seeing the world from a perspective that places me at the center as some sort of demi-god.
I think the main benefit of practicing a subjective model is playing with the idea that you’re in a sort of co-creation with the dream world or simulation.
You’re not here to say where the story goes.
You’re here to see where the story wants to go while asking what are the best ways you can show up to tell an interesting story as well as it can be told.
In a way, you’re in collaboration with the creator of the simulation or the dream weaver. Whatever you want to call it. Whatever words resonate with you.
The idea is to let loose the reigns so that you can allow the subjective lens to take over our objective thinking patterns like control and expectation.
It’s the red pill and the blue pill.
It’s a decision you make. Choose wisely.