Imaginary things can help us understand reality and rapidly inform what we believe is true.
Think of the things that guide society at large and people in particular. Religion, money, countries, politics, culture. Even mathematics. These are all concepts. Absent the human brain, they do not exist. They are fictions we tell and mutually agree upon to achieve consensus. They are templates.
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Distances are real, miles are fiction.
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Land exists, countries are fiction.
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Dollar bills and banks exist, economies are fiction.
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God exists (up to you), scripture is fiction.
As ever, the map ain’t the territory, but we’re good at pretending it is.
Don’t get carried away with this. This can be an appealing personal zeitgeist, but boy can it devolve into an insufferable worldview. When the dinner bill arrives, you don’t want to be sitting next to the beard/ponytail combo claiming money isn’t real.
What’s important here is to realize that we all choose to instill meaning into many concepts and systems that are fictional. You shouldn’t necessarily try to untangle these fictions from your life. But keeping this perspective can help you decide where to inject meaning and emotion (for example, caring about wealth generation, but not about the stock market).
If you’re an avid reader (or into movies, etc.), you know there is something in fiction that is unattainable in life. Stories can do more than entertain. They’re like bouillon cubes for reality, concentrated doses of what we may experience in life.
And fuck snobbery. Some movie about a fictional football game has probably been more influential than everything Virginia Woolf has ever written. For some people, The Stand by Stephen King imparts more meaning than the Bible. That’s fine. Really.
What moves you doesn’t matter so long as it moves you to appreciate this miracle of existence.