Just take a moment and go through Krister Sundelin's interesting answer that covers not only the Quantum Field Theory, but also every model of our world, responding to the question that finally sums up into "What is reality?" . But there is another question arising here: Would the initial query be valid if not comparing reality to a specific model, according to which our experience fails? Yet would one be able to operate in the world without such a model?
Krister very nicely explains why such a model is necessary in terms of useful and good enough. Nevertheless, he implicitly notes how such a model would bring trouble if instead of identifying its scope, one treats it as identical to reality itself.
Of course, our interest here expands beyond the definition given by science, and into the way this basic question concerning life comes from the human subject who invents science in order to find an answer.
As such, we can say that one's struggle in life is when failing to operate in the way Krister describes, i.e. instead of treating the constructed models as a useful tool of assisting the exploration of the world, the speaking being becomes servant of the very models they made. We construct models of the world navigated by the real of our experience, but then another thing happens: we abuse a model to make hard predictions, treating it as final theory of everything, where the living experience is limited into a pre-constructed framework - this is what in psychoanalysis we call (unconscious) fantasy.
One's task, and the task of psychoanalysis, wouldn’t be to navigate the subject into the construction of a convenient world, because there is no final word/world, but to liberate the process of construction itself which is a constant rebirth: one's body - another name for the place of being - is reformed along with the world. It is magnificent how children are continuously fascinated by “same things” exploring them endlessly, treating them as “new” every time. We grow old precisely when we start considering these things “same old things” i.e. we get old along with them, where we encounter less and less things to be excited about. This is how science should operate and that's why children are the best scientists!
Human desire is about exploration of the world/life that aims at an actual creation/re-creation of it, along with one's place within it, one's own body. It is definitely something that goes beyond what has already been described as fantasy and that's why people who act on their desire never get bored of what they do: they experience this constant rebirth where everything is new.
Happy re-birthday everyone.
