Where and What is the Real World?

In our age the answers are not simple

Author made image with Image Creator

Many of us remember a popular show on MTV called The Real World. It was a pioneer in the “put strangers in a house with full time cameras,” genre. I cannot remember a show like that before The Real World entered my awareness.

In case you did not know, reality shows once held the promise of reality and an exciting “anything can happen” vibe. I recall that Survivor caused worry and some protests due to this idea that people would actually be competing with one another to live or die. Now we know better.

My main point here is: The Real World represents a moment in time where ultra-reality entertainment appeared as a possibility. I am talking about a Truman Show style of truth-telling about people where nothing was hidden and all warts were on display. This was controversial, and it never happened.

Real World became just another edited and heavily-produced offering on our television screens. So the program advertised as simply turning on a camera and showing people in raw form was not real at all.

The question I find interesting, and that represents the whole of this story, is: What is now the real world? Where do we look for it, and what are people doing who are part of it? It must exist given that there are so many unreal environments part of life on this planet in its present form.

That MTV staple long ago (is it still on?) captured a human impulse to tear away every artifice and put hardcore truth in front of the public’s eyes. This has been tried in many forms. We want to remove the fake and look at, and talk about, life without any facades. Seeking the real world supposes that people get caught up in something that is not the real world, and they need some splash of cold-water awakening to be alerted back toward the authentic.

The more inauthentic the world becomes, the louder people demand realness. The Internet and video games have become our masters and influence almost every thought and each word that leaves our mouths. The Internet is the sharpest double-edge sword ever produced by mankind. The world wide web, and the video game culture it allows to flourish, has the power to take us both toward and away from reality.

The artificiality of online games comes in a package that places the player squarely in the middle of war, death, and all kinds of dangerous scenarios. They allow someone to simulate the real while feeling and imagining being part of some violent scenario, while protecting the gamer with the comforts of home. Thus, no matter how advanced the game, one is never far removed from quitting the game and going to get a snack, or a warm blanket, or etc.

Do phones with Internet access make us more of less part of the real world? I mean, the information is always there, and that includes news about wars, the stock market, politics, and any other happenings that are indeed important. Yet, someone could argue that having all answers to everything all the time, as reachable as our pocket, is not real at all. Certainly, easy access to information is not representative at all of most of mankind’s history. Historical precedent does not necessarily translate to realness, though.

The opposite of gamers might be Henry David Thoreau and countless others who since followed his example. The great writer and thinker decided to leave civilization and live in a cabin in the woods. He desired to know life at its meanest, or one might say its simplest form, but is this realness? He had to purposely eschew the lifestyle of most nineteenth-century Americans in order to conduct his experiment. This does not seem like the real world to me—at least not in the way I am considering the term.

Ascetic living is fine and dandy, but I am dismissing all the wilderness dwellers, including the “survivalists,” from providing a satisfactory answer to our question. Thoreau’s mission had merit but appears to me as pretending that civilization does not exist.

We must examine the real word as a catchphrase, as well, that has been used endlessly in television and film. People coopt the term and include it as part of some preachment to someone, especially from an older person to a younger one, about what it means to be part of life on the gritty, ground level.

Generally, those who do not partake in realness are soft, coddled, and naive. At least, this has been the point of view. How many times have dads lectured their sons about getting a job and stopping involvement in some online or in-person hobby?

In the film Gran Torino, the elderly Walt tries to toughen up his son-figure (but not actually) Thao through a humorous and sometimes exasperating series of interactions and trials. Thao is untested compared to the world-weary, macho, army veteran, and Walt instructs him on tools, how to talk to other men, and helps him get a job at a construction site. All of Walt’s teachings are based on the idea that the young man must learn about the real world.

Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash

These scenes are fine as long as they stay on the big screen. Personally, I do not enjoy what they teach us about men and what makes a boy into one. I have felt the sting of “macho rituals,” and they are definitely still out there. Although, we honor the sensitivity of males much more than in the past. Am I wrong?

In this way, the real world is places of employment but especially those that are physically taxing with some male or female bonding over a shared dislike of work. The strain of striving to meet the needs of a family, pay the bills, raise kids, and all the rest then might be what is most authentic.

This is the real world as one of compromises, distress, repetition, and struggle. Plenty of folks see life as necessarily hard and therefore character-building. We must experience life in its severity to claim membership as part of humanity.

One must “get his hands dirty” even if that means working in a fast-paced office situation. Furthermore, immersion into the working lifestyle is akin to a rite of passage where girls become women and boys become men. We must sign up for this life or face forever remaining as a child.

Though, in my opinion human beings are not designed to withstand arduous work for extended periods. Our minds and bodies break down. The longer we toil away at some job, the more vacation time is needed and the less that off-time is enough to recharge the old batteries. This is not natural.

Showing up for work at some place away from home has become increasingly scarce. So working in the traditional way is less prevalent and, for this reason, might not be as real as in the past. Simply put, many people are not part of the early-morning, rush-hour, dragging one’s body to work at some business.

Sometimes, a person remarks how a person in college will graduate and soon face real life. This is something I have heard or thought about a great deal due to my many years of schooling. When I hear education compared to something fake, my first reaction is agreement.

Almost every university is an island. Certain things are welcome on the island that may be restricted or controversial once off of it. The college life is one of open-mindedness, respect for all ethnicities, political correctness, sensitivity to lifestyle choices, an appreciation for almost any hobby or interest, and stuff I am surely leaving out. This is good. I definitely approve.

Our society is not nearly as giving and benevolent. On campus, we take for granted that equality and complete freedom of speech are common and protected. Which is the real world in this scenario? By the way, I love college and would never leave it if that were feasible.

This space you and I occupy, at the present, confronts us with un-reality. But to what degree is this true?

I am talking about online communities that are comparable to the college milieu, where self-help is always welcomed and any politically incorrect words bring scorn to their author.

Positivity is found in surplus. There is a “can-do” spirit that is easy to spot among the stories and Notes. We expect friendliness and sharing here. Or, that is what must be advertised as true, but we know all kinds of darkness lurks in the hearts of men. So, competition is here but must be downplayed.

Well, I am not describing anything that reminds of the real world, right? It does not sound like it. I mean, my inclination is that people are not as nice as they appear. Feel free to agree, disagree, and let me know in the comments.

One could say that peaceful interactions are what we crave despite what happens in the flesh-and-blood world, and so our self-help-loving communities signify the behavior of man as we had rather live. There is realness there somewhere, then.

This reminds me of the Enlightenment’s argument about the “natural” state of man as one of either civility or conflict. Basically, in this context natural means humanity as we would exist without government to coerce us to do one thing or another. Thomas Hobbes had much to say on this topic.

The seventeenth-century thinker famously argued that in the state of nature human existence was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” In other words, people would be at one another’s throats in constant conflicts without some powerful entity to control the masses and force them to obey rules. So, if we want to think this way, the real world is a warring place that is not pretty at all.

Many Enlightenment philosophers disagreed and said that, left alone, people will do more good things than bad. Without government to lead us astray, this real world would exist based on fairness and good will.

Well Hobbes and his contemporaries had no conception of the Internet and its revolutionary changes. There is an argument to be made that at places like Facecrook and others, petty arguing and vicious name-calling is more representative of what humans do. On message boards and such, people revert to Hobbes’ state of conflict and rabid competition.

With that being said, a new query has popped into my head: When compared, is Substack or Facebook more symbolic of the real world? I hope you think about this and offer your two cents or however many cents you wish. It definitely cannot be both, so there can be no fence-sitting.

Now back to the primary question: Where do we find the real world? Right now, my best guess is that we should not look for a particular part of life as constituting the most “realness.” So, I am not talking about a place or activity.

No, each of us might have a real world of our own creation. Or, we can fail to make a reality for ourselves and live by the standards and priorities of someone else’s creation. Let’s not do that.

This is a do-gooder, super-duper happy, self-help approved, Substack influenced, answer. It might be a poor, non-resolution to the subject, I admit. If so, I apologize (But this is a fake apology). Hopefully, you have a better spin on where we can find the real world. It must exist. If fakery is out there, and it surely is, then we must define its counterpoint in some way.

Here is the positive for you to take away from this story. No one gets to decide what is the real world for you, or for me. Do not let someone instruct you that your chosen path in life is unreal and unworthy of your time (unless you have totally detached from life). No, your dreams are good ones. Ignore those who say your dreams are less real than doing some other work deemed more tangible. Understand? If you do not, please let me know.

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THANKS FOR READING. EVERY STORY I WRITE IS INTENDED TO BE ABOUT YOU AND ME. I DO NOT LIKE TO WASTE TIME ON STUFF THAT IS FLUFF. I BELIEVE THIS TOPIC MATTERS. I INVITE DISCUSSION, ALWAYS. PLEASE CONSIDER SUPPORTING MY EFFORTS SO THEY MAY CONTINUE. SUBSCRIBE BELOW.