Just a few thoughts on reality, myth, and culture

What do we mean when we use the word 'reality'? Often we mean to indicate a limitation (not a specific one, we all have our own preferred limitations) we are well aware of, but of which we think the behavior of the person we say 'reality' to does not an awareness ("Sorry to drag you back to reality, but..."). These limitations are 'mysterious' in their origin; be they laws of reality 'or' the result of accidents of experience? Surely it is beyond our inductive license to claim, more than that a particular method, some relevant factors of which we are aware, and perhaps some we are not, does not lead to the desired result, that the desired result cannot be achieved given sufficiently understanding (or, precursorily, accidental or random) alteration to method, requiring perhaps the awareness of factors previously unobserved or unknown to be relevant.

These limitations might serve us better attributed to our understanding than to reality. However, because we confuse the map for the territory, this word often means 'all that is as we think we know it' including all the limitations we attribute to it, rather than 'all that underlies the world of experiences,' unknowable but referentiable.

Noting that reality is experienced differently by its differing constituents (varying by situation as well as by entity), we might liken reality to a multifaceted gemstone. Noting that though various eventualities seem possible, only some occur, and that though specificity varies, tendency reigns, we might compare it to a double-slit experiment. We can 'learn' about aspects of reality through comparison of the unbroken totality thereof to any constituent within it, but we must remember that 'learning' occurs through acts of interpretation, which are subject to "microcosmic turbulence" (a catch-all for the various expectancy effects based on previous experience that play a role in the process of interpretation).

Thus we arrive at a basic principle of mythic analogy: elements of 'reality' reflect principles of reality. 'Reflect' upon the verb in this sentence's independent clause to see what kind of reflection I am talking about. Of course, these elements too are in many ways chiselings of distinction, and thus the principles they depict carry about themselves an odor of omission - but if your nose is too sensitive to that scent, why use words at all?

Surely we can find a relation between the relevance of whatever element and that of the principles it is purported to reflect (realizing that no element will be exhaustively interpreted [nor can be, says the inductive immortalist], we note that, within parameters related to the element and how it can be perceived, individual interpretations vary [again, like the double-slit experiment]). In thinking of elements as tools used, we might consider whether societal attitudes vary with the tools those societies weild. In a more general sense from the perspective of what we call consciousness, might it be that the elements of reality to which we give our attention reflect principles relevant to our lives? Looking through the lens of the conscious-unconscious spectrum, we might wonder, perish the thought, whether the tacit, implicit elements of all we consider (more from what we consider more) come by this consideration without explication to function in us as elements guiding our thoughts and actions as a gust guides a golf ball (to the golfer's surprise, and beyond his control)? As in the metaphor, by sufficient to and understanding of this drift of assumptions, might we guide our balls to the hole?