Reality: A Paradox We Live In
*last updated: July 19, 2025
“...only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible.”
— Carl Jung
We argue about reality all the time—though rarely do we use that word. We debate what’s right and what’s wrong, what really happened, who’s to blame, and what’s true. These arguments often rest on hidden assumptions: that there is a reality “out there,” that humans can comprehend it, and that some of us have access to it while others don’t. But what if these assumptions are flawed? What if reality is, as Jung suggests, a paradox—something inherently incomprehensible to the human brain?
This doesn’t mean that we must give up on truth or live in nihilism. It means that truth and reality deserve more nuanced thinking—especially if we want to understand ourselves, others, and the world more deeply.
In my book Media Is Us, I invoked the classic Indian tale of the three blind men and the elephant. Each man, having touched a different part of the animal, draws wildly different conclusions about what it is. They’re all right in a sense, and all wrong—because each insists his view is the only true one. To understand what the elephant is, they would have needed to acknowledge the validity of each other’s experiences and combine them, however contradictory those seemed to be.
For a time, I thought this metaphor offered a hopeful solution to our conflicts—especially polarization. Everyone sees the world differently, and if we just manage to collect and combine those perspectives, we could understand how things really are. Like assembling a puzzle, each person holds a piece of the ultimate truth.
But something about this metaphor didn’t fully satisfy. How, in practice, do we collect and combine these perspectives? Is it really that simple? What if the pieces don’t add up?
That’s when I turned to a darker metaphor--Rashomon. Kurosawa’s film, based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s In a Grove, presents conflicting accounts of the same event: betrayal, violence, death. The audience longs to uncover what really happened, but the narrative never delivers. The puzzle won’t be solved. There’s no clear, objective truth to be found—only subjective, contradictory accounts.
So which metaphor is more useful—the elephant or Rashomon? Maybe both. The elephant suggests that truth is distributed across multiple perspectives. Rashomon warns us that even when perspectives are shared, they may be so deeply shaped by subjectivity, trauma, or self-justification that no single, coherent truth can emerge.
[I write more on the comparison between the three blind men story and Rashomon here]
Let’s pause to define two concepts that often get muddled:
Reality exists independently. A glass either stands on the table or it doesn’t. The Earth either revolves around the Sun or it doesn’t. You either slapped me or you didn’t.
In these types of cases, reality appears singular, and—at least in theory—it should be knowable. If I have a video recording of a conversation between my kids, I can rewind and determine who said what during an argument; and then I can solve it. But most situations aren’t so clean. We rarely get clear evidence. We rely instead on memory, interpretation, language—and all of these are flawed.
The problem isn’t that reality doesn’t exist. The problem is that our brains, by design, don't reflect it accurately. This isn’t a personal failing. It’s simply how we’re wired.
As an old saying goes, “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” Our minds are shaped by human nature, individual temperament, past experiences, cultural filters, and coping mechanisms. As Robert Wright explains in Why Buddhism Is True,
“There is a pretty uncontroversial sense in which, when we apprehend the world out there, we’re not really apprehending the world out there but rather are 'constructing' it. After all, we don’t have much direct contact with the world... all the brain can do is make inferences based on indirect evidence.”
We interact not with pure reality, but with meanings in our heads—interpretations that help us survive, function, and make decisions. Our truths are functional, not absolute. And even when we perceive reality “correctly,” we still filter it through language—a tool that struggles with ambiguity, paradox, and contradiction.
Here’s another paradox: we need truth. But the truth we need is partial, layered, flexible. We are healthiest when we can live with many coexisting truths.
“Our ability to experience many seemingly oppositional thoughts and feelings at once—to know that you can experience several truths simultaneously—is key to our mental health... We don’t have to choose a single truth. In fact, in most areas of life, we have multiple realities that don’t exactly add up. They simply coexist.”
— Becky Kennedy, Good Inside
So what happens in political polarization, when the subtext becomes: “I’m right, you’re wrong. I know the truth, and you don’t”? This kind of thinking rests on the fantasy of total access to reality. It assumes that one of us holds the elephant—and the other, nothing at all.
This is why a shared understanding of truth is essential for social functioning—in science, in justice, in governance. But shared understanding doesn’t mean absolute truth. It just means workable consensus. We should pursue it while remaining skeptical of our claims to completeness.
Even if we pick one object—say, the Earth—there isn’t a single truth that captures it. Yes, it revolves around the Sun. But it is also home to billions of people, a rock hurtling through space, a sacred entity, a colonized resource. These are all truths, even though they don’t easily collapse into a single sentence.
Truths are, in a sense, meanings. And meanings depend on perspective. That doesn’t mean anything goes. But it does mean that every situation, every object, every memory has many layers—and our grasp of one layer doesn’t negate the existence of others.
When we argue about truth, we must ask:
Are we debating reality itself?
Or are we debating our interpretations of it?
The desire to be “right” is deeply human—but often rooted in hubris. We think we understand reality better than our opponents, just as we think we, as a species, are uniquely equipped to grasp the universe. But do really? Are we really?
This inquiry isn’t meant to depress or paralyze us. Quite the opposite. We should be curious explorers, constantly refining our models, exchanging views, developing better tools, listening across difference. Not because we’ll reach absolute truth, but because the search helps us grow and act wisely.
Truth-seeking is vital—even if truth is ultimately elusive. Acknowledging that limitation doesn’t weaken us. It keeps us honest. Maybe, just maybe, under the chaos and contradiction of our minds, there’s another layer of reality we’ll never quite reach. But we can still live meaningful lives in the spaces between. We should remind ourselves every day that, as Philip Bromberg put it, “Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them.” [I found this quotation in Becky Kennedy's book Good Inside]
SOURCES:
About the Book "Why Buddhism Is True." (n.d.) Simon & Schuster. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-Buddhism-is-True/Robert-Wright/9781439195468
Bromberg, P.M. (1993). Shadow and substance: A relational perspective on clinical process. Psychoanalytic Psychology 10, 147-168.
Friesem, E. (2021). Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving beyond Blame. Roman & Littlefield.
Jung, C. G. (1958–1969). Psychology and Religion: West and East (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 12). Princeton University Press / Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kennedy, B. (2022). Good Inside: A guide to becoming the parent you want to be (1st ed.). Harper Wave.
Rashomon Trailer (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCZ9TguVOIA
About this project: Start page
— Carl Jung
We argue about reality all the time—though rarely do we use that word. We debate what’s right and what’s wrong, what really happened, who’s to blame, and what’s true. These arguments often rest on hidden assumptions: that there is a reality “out there,” that humans can comprehend it, and that some of us have access to it while others don’t. But what if these assumptions are flawed? What if reality is, as Jung suggests, a paradox—something inherently incomprehensible to the human brain?
This doesn’t mean that we must give up on truth or live in nihilism. It means that truth and reality deserve more nuanced thinking—especially if we want to understand ourselves, others, and the world more deeply.
In my book Media Is Us, I invoked the classic Indian tale of the three blind men and the elephant. Each man, having touched a different part of the animal, draws wildly different conclusions about what it is. They’re all right in a sense, and all wrong—because each insists his view is the only true one. To understand what the elephant is, they would have needed to acknowledge the validity of each other’s experiences and combine them, however contradictory those seemed to be.
For a time, I thought this metaphor offered a hopeful solution to our conflicts—especially polarization. Everyone sees the world differently, and if we just manage to collect and combine those perspectives, we could understand how things really are. Like assembling a puzzle, each person holds a piece of the ultimate truth.
But something about this metaphor didn’t fully satisfy. How, in practice, do we collect and combine these perspectives? Is it really that simple? What if the pieces don’t add up?
That’s when I turned to a darker metaphor--Rashomon. Kurosawa’s film, based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s In a Grove, presents conflicting accounts of the same event: betrayal, violence, death. The audience longs to uncover what really happened, but the narrative never delivers. The puzzle won’t be solved. There’s no clear, objective truth to be found—only subjective, contradictory accounts.
So which metaphor is more useful—the elephant or Rashomon? Maybe both. The elephant suggests that truth is distributed across multiple perspectives. Rashomon warns us that even when perspectives are shared, they may be so deeply shaped by subjectivity, trauma, or self-justification that no single, coherent truth can emerge.
[I write more on the comparison between the three blind men story and Rashomon here]
Let’s pause to define two concepts that often get muddled:
- Reality = the way things are.
- Truth = our mental and linguistic reflection of how things are.
Reality exists independently. A glass either stands on the table or it doesn’t. The Earth either revolves around the Sun or it doesn’t. You either slapped me or you didn’t.
In these types of cases, reality appears singular, and—at least in theory—it should be knowable. If I have a video recording of a conversation between my kids, I can rewind and determine who said what during an argument; and then I can solve it. But most situations aren’t so clean. We rarely get clear evidence. We rely instead on memory, interpretation, language—and all of these are flawed.
The problem isn’t that reality doesn’t exist. The problem is that our brains, by design, don't reflect it accurately. This isn’t a personal failing. It’s simply how we’re wired.
As an old saying goes, “We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.” Our minds are shaped by human nature, individual temperament, past experiences, cultural filters, and coping mechanisms. As Robert Wright explains in Why Buddhism Is True,
“There is a pretty uncontroversial sense in which, when we apprehend the world out there, we’re not really apprehending the world out there but rather are 'constructing' it. After all, we don’t have much direct contact with the world... all the brain can do is make inferences based on indirect evidence.”
We interact not with pure reality, but with meanings in our heads—interpretations that help us survive, function, and make decisions. Our truths are functional, not absolute. And even when we perceive reality “correctly,” we still filter it through language—a tool that struggles with ambiguity, paradox, and contradiction.
Here’s another paradox: we need truth. But the truth we need is partial, layered, flexible. We are healthiest when we can live with many coexisting truths.
“Our ability to experience many seemingly oppositional thoughts and feelings at once—to know that you can experience several truths simultaneously—is key to our mental health... We don’t have to choose a single truth. In fact, in most areas of life, we have multiple realities that don’t exactly add up. They simply coexist.”
— Becky Kennedy, Good Inside
So what happens in political polarization, when the subtext becomes: “I’m right, you’re wrong. I know the truth, and you don’t”? This kind of thinking rests on the fantasy of total access to reality. It assumes that one of us holds the elephant—and the other, nothing at all.
This is why a shared understanding of truth is essential for social functioning—in science, in justice, in governance. But shared understanding doesn’t mean absolute truth. It just means workable consensus. We should pursue it while remaining skeptical of our claims to completeness.
Even if we pick one object—say, the Earth—there isn’t a single truth that captures it. Yes, it revolves around the Sun. But it is also home to billions of people, a rock hurtling through space, a sacred entity, a colonized resource. These are all truths, even though they don’t easily collapse into a single sentence.
Truths are, in a sense, meanings. And meanings depend on perspective. That doesn’t mean anything goes. But it does mean that every situation, every object, every memory has many layers—and our grasp of one layer doesn’t negate the existence of others.
When we argue about truth, we must ask:
Are we debating reality itself?
Or are we debating our interpretations of it?
The desire to be “right” is deeply human—but often rooted in hubris. We think we understand reality better than our opponents, just as we think we, as a species, are uniquely equipped to grasp the universe. But do really? Are we really?
This inquiry isn’t meant to depress or paralyze us. Quite the opposite. We should be curious explorers, constantly refining our models, exchanging views, developing better tools, listening across difference. Not because we’ll reach absolute truth, but because the search helps us grow and act wisely.
Truth-seeking is vital—even if truth is ultimately elusive. Acknowledging that limitation doesn’t weaken us. It keeps us honest. Maybe, just maybe, under the chaos and contradiction of our minds, there’s another layer of reality we’ll never quite reach. But we can still live meaningful lives in the spaces between. We should remind ourselves every day that, as Philip Bromberg put it, “Health is the ability to stand in the spaces between realities without losing any of them.” [I found this quotation in Becky Kennedy's book Good Inside]
SOURCES:
About the Book "Why Buddhism Is True." (n.d.) Simon & Schuster. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-Buddhism-is-True/Robert-Wright/9781439195468
Bromberg, P.M. (1993). Shadow and substance: A relational perspective on clinical process. Psychoanalytic Psychology 10, 147-168.
Friesem, E. (2021). Media Is Us: Understanding Communication and Moving beyond Blame. Roman & Littlefield.
Jung, C. G. (1958–1969). Psychology and Religion: West and East (Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 12). Princeton University Press / Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Kennedy, B. (2022). Good Inside: A guide to becoming the parent you want to be (1st ed.). Harper Wave.
Rashomon Trailer (Akira Kurosawa, 1950) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCZ9TguVOIA
About this project: Start page
