Gauging reality a problem for us all

Rating: Null/10 (9 September 2002)

OK, I know what you're thinking: it doesn't take much skill to recommend A Beautiful Mind, seeing as how it took the prize for best picture at the academy awards last year, when there were several legitimate contenders. It's a no-brainer, right? But even if you've already seen it, I suggest you take another look. Why? Because it raises a number of fascinating questions about ultimate reality.
Here's the problem, for all of us: if something exists solely in our minds, Can't we say that it is as real as any material object? A famous psychologist (James Hillman) once made the point that, if mental problems are the result of a skewed or misaligned imagination, then mental healing is also a healing of the imagination. And this is no trivial matter, because the human imagination is such a powerful thing. An athlete who practices visualization techniques before competition, for example, is consciously rehearsing his performance in his head. He's not actually doing his event, only thinking through it; but his active imagination produces a measurable difference. He's setting himself up to succeed. So, Isn't this real? We all imagine things that aren't real. Are we all, therefore, crazy? At what point does this healthy practice become destructive?
The life of John Nash, as constructed by this film, gets to the heart of the question, which is particularly relevant these days because of the plethora of `reality' television shows, all of which suggest that ultimate reality is, by necessity, painful, humiliating, and bad  perhaps even evil. John Nash, in his effort to keep his feet on the solid earth of verifiable truth without clipping the wings of his imaginative genius, comes to a different conclusion, modeled both in words and deeds by his wife. She asks him, in a wonderful bedroom scene, `Do you want to know what's real?' And then, placing his hand on her bosom, she answers `this.' Love. It's the perfect setup for the penultimate scene, where, accepting the Nobel Prize, Nash says that `it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logic or reason can be found.' I think it's an excellent answer to the question.