What is real?

What is real in this world? Is what we see, hear, touch, taste, feel, and experience is real? Is this so call "Earth" that we have been living is even real? After learning about Descrates' methodological skepticism, I start to question about the meaning of "truth". How often we just blindly believe things, until it becomes impossible to believe them? 


The answer is, yes, we do do that quite often. For instance, if few strangers have been telling you that the person you have been in a long term relationship with is cheating on you, the chances of you to go right ahead to believe them is, well..., I would have to say it is not that high. Why? Because just like what Jack Nicholson said in the movie, A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth." To know learn about the truth, we have to accept all the ending outcome, even the worst possibility. It is our human instinct to deny what we don't know/don't want to know. So that we can live on with our "happy" daily life, at least not until when we have all the reasonable resources that left us no choice but to believe what is really right in front of us, which is the "truth". 


Some people may say to deny the truth could be a foolish act, but is it? To be able to understand and accept the truth knowledge, we must first admit that all we have learned before the truth is false and the knowledge we already have is unreliable. For religious people, they must first believe that there is no such thing as God. For children, they must first acknowledge that their parents are not necessary their biological parents. A happy married couple, they would have to accept the possibility that his/her mate has been cheating on him/her. Or for a government, they must first admit to the whole country and themselves that what they have been doing for the nation is only causing damages. 


The thing is, people do want to learn about the truth, just that we worry what we learn may not be what we like to learn. Therefore, majority of the time we choose not to learn about it, so that we can protect our feelings.