How we detach from reality?

How to explain the different “truths” about aspects related to COVID-19? In the same pandemic scenario, it is possible to notice not only health professionals, together with a portion of the population, pleading more stringent measures to control the spread of the virus but also individuals who ignore the seriousness of the situation. Some persons go further, in a demonstration of faith, they indulge ineffective treatments as a way of salvation.

Regardless of the person profile, the number of existing interpretations about the same reality stands out. Many of them are conflicting. Among these and so many other interpretations of the pandemic, is there only a correct one? Are they all correct? In addition to covering a series of other situations existing in society[1], these questions expose a scenario that seems to be deepening: our detachment from reality.

There is no need in making a great effort to verify this relativization of reality. This situation is repeated in different degrees, on different subjects, in many posts from different electronic platforms. A few years ago, similar situations began to occur between representatives of state and political institutions[2] and [3].

These narrated occurrences “un-cover” the fragility of human reason. A finding that calls on all of us, or at least those concerned with a future that is ever more present[4], to seek clarification on how and why this distortion occurs in the way we know the world around us. In other words, it seems important to make the limits of our reason clear, as this could prevent a series of problems and confusions that have occurred, are occurring and are likely to occur.

To open the windows of this dark room, albeit little, so that the light from the outside world illuminates our surroundings, I briefly present Kant’s concept of dialectical illusion, since this, in my interpretation, contemplates the meaning of the title of this text, as well as our current situation: namely, our detachment from reality[5].

To understand the concept of “dialectical illusion”, it is important to note that the reality that presents itself to each of us daily is not seen as pure information captured by our senses — sight, hearing, touch, taste and the sense of smell -, but rather the result of the unification of the data of the sense from the imposition of conceptual schemes coming from our mind. Conceptual schemes, therefore, condition our experience.

It is worth noting that the use of these conceptual schemes, when they occur away from experience — or, in other words, disconnected from non-conceptual aspects — brings a series of problems of understanding. Given the inherently incomplete and unsatisfactory form that empirical knowledge presents to us, human beings tend to depart from reality when using its conceptual schemes. To achieve complete and irrefutable knowledge, our mind “detaches” from empirical limitations. From this movement, marked only by the confrontation of conceptual schemes, that reason becomes dialectical.

Dialectical illusions, therefore, occur as a result of pure reason. When it, irresistibly, is no longer restricted by experience. On the one hand, dropping towards an acceptance of absolute, unquestionable beings and ideas, and, in another direction, towards radical relativization. Based on its own shadow, the reason presents itself as an inexhaustible source of traps that compromise its own functioning. Presenting itself in pure form, without the support of reality, is configured as a source of illusions.

This “seesaw” movement, characteristic of the dialectical illusion, marked by the oscillation between an absolute perception and a radical relativization one, seems to be characteristic today. An emblematic case, in the current context, involves attachment to religious faith as the only way to salvation and relief from the feeling of imminent death imposed by the pandemic and, at the same time, the relativization of the use of the mask, medicines, among others. In this case, the impossibility of changing the way these people understand a specific fact about reality stands out. Invoking science has no effect.

The print below shows an example of a radical relativization of reality by exposing messages “contradicting” the scientific evidence on the use of medicines in the pandemic.

Main post text translation: “American Medical Association declares that it removes restrictions against Hydroxychloroquine and admits its benefits, releasing it for use in early treatments given the number of scientific articles citing its positive results in the correct dose”.

First comment translation: “You and other doctors have always spoken the truth, but the pharmaceutical lobby spoke louder in the @minsaude (meaning Ministry of Health) of the Federal Government since the Sinuqueiro ('liar') Mandetta (Minister of Health) and until now with the Communist General Pazuello (other Minister of Health)”.

Second comment translation: “Now that they have the vaccine, they do it. How many lives could have been saved with hydroxychloroquine; profit from our illnesses, from our deaths, use us as guinea pigs, and we do nothing, dumb humanity!”

Third comment translation: “There is already treatment. There is no need to make or use a vaccine made in a hurry and second-hand!”

Observing our surroundings from the concept of dialectical illusion helps to illuminate the flood of absurd convictions defended lately. The situation of “detachment from reality” that our reason is currently in generates the illusions in which we become entangled daily: instead of noticing our inclination to try, at all costs, to give coherence to the world around us, we prefer to believe that we find the fundamental foundations of the aspects of reality that distress us.

How to deal with these situations where we believe or are inclined to believe that something is true when it is clearly false? Seeking non-conceptual support in the experience that can divert us from this illusory spiral seems important in dealing with these listed situations. The way we must act so that we remain “glued to reality”, establishing limits for our reason, however, is the unknown that so worries the author of this text. Faced with the need for profound changes in different spheres of society, not only because of the pandemic but also due to the global environmental crisis that is intensifying every day, the break with these illusions seems crucial.

Notes:

[1] Recent cases in Brazil can be associated with the Superior Federal Court decision, for example, concerning Federal Deputy Daniel Silveira. While this federal institution decreed his arrest, simultaneously, several Twitter posts, including from deputies, affirmed opposite interpretations about the same fact.

[2] There is no intention to contest the conflicting character that exists in the political sphere. This has an important role. Here, the trivialization of divergences stands out, based on concepts completely detached from reality, as it is developed in the following paragraphs.

[3] This event is present in most countries today. In Brazil, this scenario began to appear with greater intensity in the period when the impeachment of ex-President Dilma Rousseff occurred. Having intensified to the present day.

[4] I am referring here to the planetary environmental crisis.

[5] This text is not intended to highlight the appropriate or inadequate aspects of Kantian philosophy but to bring concepts that contribute to understanding the situation of our reason today.

Bibliography that served as inspiration and support for the text:

FOGELIN, R. Walking the tightrope of reason: The precarious life of a rational animal. Oxford University Press, 2003. (Especially Chapter 3 — Pure Reason and Its Illusions).

KANT, I. Critique of Pure Reason London: Penguin, 2007.