Reality is Built from Fiction

by Shaili Shah

Today I wanted to discuss on of the ideas presented in Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus. The idea that we are each living in this reality built on the “fictions” that we subscribe to. In the book, Harai writes, “humans think they make history, but history actually revolves around a web of stories.”  We act according to our beliefs, but these beliefs are shaped by stories or social constructs. For some people it may be a religion that governs what they value, or maybe it is the consumer culture that they are born into. These stories are not a direct representation of reality, but one of many understandings of reality. Similar to what Saunders said in the “Braindead Megaphone”, “representations of the world are never the world itself.” Our representations are just one person’s understanding of reality is. In Homo Deus the pharaoh was discussed. Though the pharaoh didn’t actually do anything, they were the face of the brand. Because this was the narrative that people chose to believe, they credited the pharaoh to developments in their society when in actuality it was their collective belief in the pharaoh that enable them to organize the change themselves.

Due to the volume of different fictions and infinite combinations of fictions that someone can believe this further complicates our understanding of the world. Aristotle says that “every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good.” Everyone lives their truth and does what they feel is best for themselves and their community, however that is defined. I believe that everyone is acting for the “greater good”, but the issue is that we all define “good” differently. Someone who I may think is morally wrong may believe that their actions are morally correct and take steps to fit reality to their fiction. An extreme of this is the example Harari brought up about the rice production in 1958 China. Mao Zedong willed his fantasy of doubling production into reality when the local official produced a false report after being unable to fulfill this impossible task. Because no one wanted to verify these claims, the whole system conspired to make this false story true, and in the end the people of China suffered. This is why it is important to understand which ideals we are buying into and if these are values that we actually believe or if they are what we are taught to blindly believe.

This ties back to Plato’s cave allegory. We believe the version of reality that we are given, until we are able to become enlightened. The more narratives that we are able to understand, the broader our world view is. Additionally, we shouldn’t be following the narrative of those who stand to gain something from their fiction, but the many narratives of people who have humanity in mind.