72 Things That Are Real

John Spacey, October 29, 2022

Real things are elements of the world or universe that aren't imagined, hypothetical, supposed or illusionary. This would include physical things that can be documented with observation and elements of the human experience that are widely observed and reported such that they can be considered intangible realities. The following are examples of things that can be considered real.

Air	Animals
Art	Artificial Intelligence
Atoms	Beauty
Body Language	Capitalism
Cities	Code
Color	Competition
Culture	DNA
Earthquakes	Economies
Electromagnetic Force	Electromagnetic Radiation
Emotion	Engineering (e.g. a bridge that doesn't fall in the wind)
Entropy (e.g. aging)	Eye Contact
Fashion	Fire
Food	Freedom
Gravity	Humans
Humor	Identity
Ideology - in the sense that they exist, not that they are necessarily correct	Inertia
Institutions	Languages
Laws	Life
Light (i.e. visible light)	Love
Material Strength (e.g. you can't break a thick metal bar with your hands)	Math
Molecules	Momentum
Money	Music
Myths - as myths not that they are true in themselves	Nations
Norms	Numbers
Pain	Personality
Politics	Poverty
Reputation	Respect
Risk / Risk Taking	Rites of Passage
Rocks	Roles
Shortages	Social Constructs
Speed	Stories
Stress	Style / Aesthetic Sense
Subjective Reality - real for the person, mostly meaningless for society	Thinking
Time	Traditions
Values	Water
Wood	Words

The list above adopts a pragmatic approach whereby something is real if it is real for all practical purposes. From the perspective of skepticism, few things can be said to be real. For example, your senses that you use to measure the physical world could be purely imaginary. In a strictly skeptical sense, the only thing that can be said to be real is you -- whoever is reading this now based on the logical assertion I think therefore I am.

Many of the items above are elements of the human experience that are only real in the sense that humans experience it.

Reality has a context. For example, subjective reality is real for the person but this reality doesn't necessarily extend beyond the person. If you put your foot in cold water -- it does feel cold for you. However, this isn't necessarily relevant to the universe or society in general.

Just because time is relative doesn't mean it isn't real. It is certainly real but can move relatively slower or faster depending on physics such as gravity and speed. Saying that time isn't real is like saying that a boat isn't real because it moves at different speeds due to conditions.

Things like stories and imagination are real in that they exist. The content of stories or imagination is often not real.