reality is as reality does

The extent to which information is tied to a local context determines the extent to which the information is universally true. More things seem big if you are small. More things seem small if you are big.* You can't and don't see the same things from a worm's vs a person's vs a bird's vs God's point of view. Which perspective is absolutely correct? None (possibly God's but let's not go there for now). Which is incorrect? None.

Examples follow: Kilimanjaro is the highest mountain... in Tanzania. For people without telescopes, the Earth is at the center of the cosmos. Food that humans call rotten or spoiled is a banquet for bacteria. Weeds are plants that humans don't like and/or can't use. One person's "terrorist" is another person's "freedom fighter".

Context-free thinking, context-free language, and language-free conversation are all pre-requisites to universal understanding and communication. The higher you stand the further you can see. The higher the level of abstraction (meta) the more can be seen of the nature of reality.

What we think and know of reality, is only an approximation. It is stochastic, uncertain, qantum foamy. Waves, yes but particles too. Nothing is true for all time in all places in every way. Everything is only sometimes true, in some places, in some ways. Only God is always right. The lemma is continuous and discreet. The nature of reality by definition is to encompass all contexts, everywhere, at all times. The less that a truth is context-dependent, the more accurately it reflects reality and the more of reality it reflects.

What types of context are there? The types are too numerous to list, but here are some examples: contexts of person, of culture, of mind, of identity, of family, of paradigm, of shared belief, of species-hood, of genus-hood, of domain-hood, of family-hood, and many more.

How can I understand Everything within the narrow context of my finite mind? Obviously I can't. How can I understand everything within the constrained context of a wholly materialistic culture? Obviously I can't. How can I embrace the All with arms that are not as wide as the All? Obviously, I can't. But if my arms were bigger, I could. So if you want to get closer to understanding the meaning and purpose of life and the true nature of reality, the challenge is to rigorously strip, scrub, abrade, scrape, remove all types and instances of context (and language) from cogitation and elucidation, so that the biggest, purest meaning can emerge.

* This thought is Daniel Dennett's, a leading philospher whose work I admire and respect greatly. Unfortunately, I have forgotten where in Dennett's work I found it, but I think you might find it somewhere in his influential and often controversial book, "Consciousness explained".

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