On Reality Principle

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The inspiration for writing this article came from a comment I saw in one of the Telegram groups I am part of. A woman was complaining that her parents would not allow her to travel alone at night. According to her, the reason was “internalized misogyny.” Keep in mind that this was an English-educated, young, urban, middle-class working woman.

Was this really an example of internalized misogyny on the part of her parents? I do not know, and I do not pretend to.

However, there may be another, more plausible explanation: perhaps her parents were simply acting in accordance with the reality principle.

The reality principle is a simple idea. It states that your actions should be based on reality as it actually exists. The closer your decisions are aligned with reality rather than your ideals, wishes, emotions, or fantasies, the more effective and successful you are likely to be. The opposite is also true: if your decisions are detached from reality, failure becomes far more likely.

Examples of people violating the reality principle and getting punished for it are everywhere:

• Students wasting years preparing for ultra-competitive exams like the IAS, where the probability of success is extremely small.
• People investing excessive time, money, and emotional energy into celebrities or influencers who neither know nor care that they exist.
• Local party workers assuming that years of loyalty will automatically earn them a government post or election ticket, when politics is actually driven by caste equations, money, influence, and electability.
• Devotees attending dangerously overcrowded pilgrimages or temple festivals under the belief that faith alone guarantees safety, despite repeated stampedes every year.
• Parents forcing their children into engineering or medicine based on outdated assumptions about career security, even as job markets change and produce large numbers of unhappy, unemployable graduates.

The logical conclusion of this principle is that one must constantly strive to understand reality as accurately as possible, so as not to waste time, energy, or resources. Success in any endeavor depends on how closely one’s actions align with truth or at least with the closest possible approximation of it.

Returning to the example of our heroine and her parents: they may simply have been acting according to the reality principle, even if they were not consciously aware of it. The reality of India is that it remains unsafe for women in many situations, especially at night. Her parents may have been responding to that reality rather than acting out of hatred or prejudice.

I am not claiming this is a good thing. I cerainly want to see my country improving in these matters. But what I want is not the reality.