[Robert]

Hello Kirian. I'd also like to welcome you to our community. Glad you found us and I'm happy you're sharing your perspective with us.

Regarding perceptions and reality, one thing I'd like to offer for discussion is that we do not perceive a true objective reality. Rather, we perceive reality indirectly through our senses, and then we interpret our senses based on structures created in our brain that were formed by genetics and our environment. Our subjective reality, as reflection in our brain (the map), may be quite different from objective reality (the territory).

The philosopher Immanuel Kant has offered a viewpoint that I find very illuminating. He has explained that there is the reality we perceive, called the observed phenomena, and then there is the true reality that exists behind the reality that is observed. Kant refers to this as the noumenon or thing-in-itself. So the act of perceiving an object will change the appearance of the object (thing-in-itself). There is a lucid introduction to Kant here that may be helpful.

Regards,
--Robert