Science fiction writer Phillip K. Dick said that, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, still exists.”
This aphorism can work as a good rubric for sifting through the noise of modern symbolic culture. Civilization demands that we inhabit symbolic worlds, that we embed our lives inside abstract ideas and surround ourselves with imaginary beings that have no material existence. That in and of itself wouldn’t be a problem if it were not for the fact that this causes us to act in ways that have real consequences.
What would happen if everyone suddenly recognized the truth—the untruth—of these beings that populate our symbolic menagerie? What would happen if everyone suddenly saw these things as the imaginary entities they are, entities with no abiding reality behind them? Consider corporations as a case in point. Corporations are abstract legal fictions. They are not real things in the world, and should everyone simply stop acknowledging them, they would immediately cease to exist.
What would happen if everyone suddenly stopped recognizing Walmart, for instance, as a real entity? There are buildings all over the place with Walmart signs on them that are filled with material goods. But since Walmart is not anything real, since corporations have no real agency, there is no one with any actual claim to the items on the shelves inside these buildings. If everyone suddenly recognized the unreality of Walmart, then there would be nothing preventing people from just going inside and taking what they wanted and walking out. And, no doubt, that is exactly what would happen.
Of course, if it was only a handful of people who recognized Walmart’s unreality, they would be arrested. And, ironically, this very fact is indisputable evidence that Walmart is not real. It is necessary to enforce actions that comport with belief in civilization’s fictions. You are entirely free to acknowledge the truth that Walmart is not real, but you are not allowed to act on that truth. Notice that it is not necessary to enforce actions consistent with actual reality, with actual features of the real world. There are no gravity police, for example. If you want to stop believing in gravity, that’s absolutely fine, go ahead and walk off the roof of that Walmart building and see what happens. But it is necessary to manufacture consequences in order to enforce the “reality” of Walmart and the deeply tangled mass of blatant lies in which the idea of Walmart is embedded.
