Imagined Realities
The world around us abounds with myths and stories that are mere figments of our imagination.
Yuval Harari’s Sapiens — A Brief History of Humankind, translated to English in 2015, took the world by storm. It was an international bestseller and has sold more than 23 million copies world-over. The book is filled with intricate details of history — like disclosing that the first known human name is Kushim which belonged to an accountant (alas!). It dives deep into how the Europeans were able to lead scientific discovery by acknowledging their ignorance and why Agricultural Revolution was the biggest fraud in history, as it actually increased our work in exchange for an inferior diet.
But the genius of Sapiens is buried beneath the scientific facts and historical anecdotes. The book identifies what sets humans apart from other species is their unique ability to create and believe in shared myths forming imagined realities, which spur wide-scale cooperation — a feat that no other species can match.
The text picks up two contrasting examples from history, The Code of Hammurabi (1776 BCE) — and The US Declaration of Independence (1776 CE) — to show how the social values of humans varied greatly depending on the shared social sense of the time, whereas factually both can be challenged.
The Code of Hammurabi divided Babylonians into three classes — superiors, commoners, and slaves. As per the code, a superior man could get away with killing a woman of the commoner class against just 30 shekels of silver. Whereas, if a superior man killed a woman of a superior class, they could (conveniently) take revenge from the daughter of the superior man. Can any society get away with such brazen sexism and injustice in today’s world?
Compare this to the universally cherished principles of equality and justice asserted in The American Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” The contrast is blindingly evident. Harari posits that this statement, too, can be factually challenged.
Is it really self-evident that all men are equal? Were we in fact created? What are the bounds of liberty?
This begs questions like, if they got it so wrong in 1776 BCE, could our 1776 BC ideals be trashed a thousand years from now? Should the ‘law of the land’ be unquestionable? What does this tell us about the vulnerability and impermanence of social contracts?
Still, the takeaway here is to appreciate the radically different myths conjured up by human societies and how they will continue.
Sub-imagined realities
A practical example to illustrate the delusion of imagined realities is to look at imagined realities that exist within our own imagined reality through platforms like Metaverse, games and movies. The island nation of Tuvalu will become the first nation to develop its digital replica on Metaverse to preserve its culture and history for future generations amid fears of rising sea levels due to climate change.
This is a matter of shame and wonder in equal measure.
It shows how Metaverse could create a digital 3D space, replicating our physical world and identities — imagine the complexity of a digital replica of today’s world and then link it to humanity’s capacity to imagine a future that is non-existent today. The world we live in today, with all its advances — of Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), AI, 3D printing, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Robotics, the Internet of things, and more — existed only in our imagination a few decades ago.
Our lives on Earth are certainly more consequential than our digital replicas of tomorrow, but the commonalities are hard to ignore.
The real world, too, is not so real after all. It’s encouraging to know that because it implies that what doesn’t serve us can be reimagined for the better.
Challenging stories that don’t serve us
It’s fascinating how we are sold this imagined reality as if this is how it was supposed to be and that it all adds up. Economics, for instance, is presented as hard science, just like Physics, with Newtonian-style charts and graphs. The fallacy of Kuzent’s upside-down U-shaped growth trajectory led us towards trickle-down economics, suggesting that inequality is just a short-term side effect of modern economic growth, which will eventually subside.
Regarding growth, the limitation of GDP (the most important economic metric) is exposed by the mere fact that it can actually “grow” in the books without really improving the lives of the masses. This happens through tools like financialization and stock buy-backs and how high divorce rates can result in improved economic growth.
What good is the story of endless growth if it doesn’t translate into more equitable outcomes for all?
The bigger picture
The surface variables of economy and technology exist within wide-ranging social norms that codify humanity’s collective metacognition, such as language, culture, law, religion, government, nation-states etc. or what Harari calls inter-subjective imagined order. We interact with these social constructs daily but never pause and recognize that these are all constructed by us.
They do not exist outside our imagination.
Nonetheless, these constructs are so powerful that we would happily forsake our life for our country, risk delicate earth systems to ensure ever-increasing economic growth, and annihilate societies to establish the supremacy of our religion or culture.
The dysfunction of our societies is no better depicted than by looking at the defunct dilemmas we encounter in everyday life.
For instance, corporations use the environment as an open sewer and then use greenwashing to fool us. Partners and parents are expected to stay apart for 12 hours (and more) just to be able to raise a family. Women are at the heart of the advertising industry, and similar products for women cost more than men’s? Our food is loaded with sugar to increase our appetite, which has caused a surge in obesity and type 2 diabetes.
Rewriting shared stories for the better
There is no reason why we cannot reimagine these realities of our time and carve out stories and characters that serve us. Our economies can be redistributive by design. The GDP metric can be augmented with other measures of our well-being, such as redistribution of income & wealth, human health etc.
In the new imagined reality, we can reimagine a better, safer, & shared future through:
- Employee-owned companies
- Creative commons licensing
- Open-source designing
- A shift from linear to circular production
- Better design choices
- Randomized control trials (RCTs) for testing out policies before committing resources
We should not accept our existing imagined reality as what it is but as what it could be.
An economic model within the context of planetary boundaries, a harmonious world order, and recalibrated KPIs for governments and policymakers that puts our well-being ahead of GDP is possible!
It’s time that we rid ourselves of the fallacies we are governed by and reimagine a world that works for all. After all, a reality that can be imagined can be actualized.
