Reality and the mind

Individual perceptions of reality are not necessarily representative of the collective perception of reality from millions/billions of people interacting with the same physical environment. The collective perception, where it is agreement, is a far more compelling baseline.

And beyond that, humanity has scientific tools, both physical and logical which expand our perceptions beyond mere experience.

Thus, if you tell me that you saw a Coyote in your back yard I might believe you. But if you told me you saw a Dragon, I wouldn't. Or I would ask you do define "Dragon" in far more detail until I understood exactly what you think you saw.

Perception, individual and/or shared, is just an impression of whatever it is that is communicating with the senses and soul/consciousness.

If you smell something, for example, there is certainly something happening somewhere within your neural architecture that corresponds with that experience. It could be due to an actual odor affecting your taste/smell buds or it could be imagined, but either way there is some corresponding neural event or else you would not experience the perception of the scent.

We use the senses to ascertain what we can about realities beyond our senses, just as we use social communication to corroborate things we perceive in order to gain more data regarding what we perceive.

Sadly, humans are capable of lies, misperceptions, misinterpretations, etc. and then they also argue of the existence of abstract realities beyond what's directly accessible by means of sensory perception.

Despite all the intricacies of perception and reality, there remains the possibility of true and false perception, analysis, extrapolation, interpolation, inference, etc.

And yet because of this possibility of getting things right and wrong, there also remains the possibility of power struggles in which truth claims and accusations of falsity are undertaken for various reason in various ways and according to different interests.

There is a 'Matrix like' aspect to this life but not like the movie or New Age religions see it. An important aspect to any good game is persistence of environment, in other words, things are predictable and repeatable. We couldn’t learn anything if it wasn’t. And life would be hard if our house could not be found in the same place every time.

You might say that is true only in the physical realm but not in the spiritual. But is that true? Would we treat each other better if for example, we never knew how or why our friend was going to feel about us the next time we meet? Sadly, that is often the case. There is value in the persistence of reality.

We have learned to take advantage of this persistence in physical reality in amazing ways. We invent these amazing machines with which to communicate, send men to the moon, etc.

But here is where I agree with you - We as a society have made no progress in the realm of human relations in all of recorded history. Same stupid mistakes, over and over. If we took advantage of this persistence of reality and learned from it, I think we could treat ourselves and others much much better. I’m not holding my breath though.

It's an old philosophical question. What is really real as opposed to what one thinks is real, and how could one know the difference. The movie "Inception" was about going into dreams to steal ideas, but later, plant an idea. It became difficult to tell what was the dream and what was the reality.

One problem is when one's beliefs do not conform with reality. There are people that believe the Earth is flat. There are others that believe it is spherical. If these are the only two options, then one idea/belief conforms with reality and other does not. Attempting to reconcile two opposing views can lead to conflict.

I think recognizing that people do not control what they believe might help people be more tolerant of someone else's belief, initially, but frustration can creep back into discussion when a person is judged as being unreasonable about maintaining their original position in the face of contradictory evidence.