#its less of a post than an incomprehensible infodump but oh well

[godcantstopme]

nobody asked but im gonna let you guys in on a little thing i recently learned that blew my mind:

every single thing thats existence isnt based in the physical world is completely imaginary. corporations? gender? the united states of america? every single one of those things is based upon human mythology and none of them are real outside of our own collective imagination!!!

another fun fact for you before i get back to that last one: these social constructs are at the core of what makes us so different from other animals!

see, the reason that homo sapiens are so complex when compared to other animals is that we have the unique ability to make wild shit up. no other species can create myths or tell stories like we do. other animals can lie and communicate, sure, but they cannot converse about anything that's not based in physical reality. a monkey is able to lie and say that there's a lion around so that it can steal another monkey's food, but is simply unable to tell the other monkey that there's a fruit spirit who will to strike it down if it doesn't share the food. this is because animals aren't able to conceptualize things outside of their physical world. all aspects of their social structure and behavior are based upon their genetic makeup, and these things can only change when their dna does.

humans, on the other hand, have creative abilities that are simply nonexistent in any other species. we can create entire stories about things that have no physical existence. an obvious example of this is any kind of cultural mythology such as the stories of nature spirits, divine entities, or various ideas of an afterlife. but the thing is that all kinds of non-religious entities, such as corporations or countries, are just as mythological.

this post ended up being longer than expected so i put a 'read more' option in lmao- but this is a really cool concept so id encourage you to read through the whole thing!! (there's also a tldr at the end of the post under the cut fyi)

the company Target is a great example of this. you may want to stop me right there and tell me that target obviously isnt a myth of any kind. you can find its stores all over the world, and talk to millions of people who interact with it every day. but let me ask you this: if every target location worldwide was burned down, would the company still exist? of course it would. they would simply build new stores and continue on as usual. similarly, if the hundreds of thousands of people who work for target all vanished off the face of the earth, the company would still exist. the death of the ceo would not equate to the death of the company- the ownership would simply be passed on to someone else, and target would remain in existence. no matter how many of the physical components of target are destroyed, it continues to exist. this is because its existence of corporations isnt dependent on anything physical. they are simply products of complex legal storytelling. every single company's existence began when a lawyer performed all the required rituals, did the necessary spells, and declared it to be real. once this ceremony is complete, every single legal system, politician, and person acts as if something tangible has been changed and that this entity truly exists. and for all intents and purposes, it does. it can only cease to exist if a judge should perform all of the rites and rituals that are required to banish it from existence.

now, how the hell do we differentiate things that "really" exist from things that are just a product of our collective imagination?? you really just have to ask one question- would it still exist if people stopped believing in it?

you see, the legal system only exists as long as a significant amount of people believe in it, along with other myths such as the power of the government, justice, and human rights. without those beliefs, it would crumble. the country of the United States of America exists because people worldwide believe that it does and act accordingly, but gravity and genetics existed long before we were ever consciously aware of them. gravity didn't suddenly pop into existence when Newton's theory of gravity was published in 1687. this is why anything that depends on human belief in order to exist is, essentially, fictional.

but just because these things are a figment of our imagination doesn't mean that they dont matter. human myths are what work together to form our society, whether positively or negatively. myths such as human rights, the legal authority of elected officials, and the importance of empathy are what nearly everything around us is based off of. they are are infinitely important and absolutely exist, just not outside of the human mind.

had we never developed the ability to create myths, we would've remained as other human species did for millions of years and how all other animal species continue to exist today- living in small groups with our worlds consisting only of our physical reality. our ability to create stories and, consequentially, to bond/establish trust with humans outside of our known "tribes" has allowed us to also create mass systems and rules that dictate behavior. this is precisely what makes us so unique. creation and imagination are at the core of humanity.

(plus, when you think about it, the fact that we were able to make up such complex and incredible stuff is really fucking cool)

tldr: if something wouldn't exist without a significant amount of people believing in it, then its a social construct. our ability to create these social constructs through imagination and storytelling is what has enabled us to live so differently from other animals, and this creativity is at the core of everything that makes us so uniquely human!!

note: the majority of the information, concepts, and ideas within this post originate from pages 25-39 of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari, which discusses the anthropological history of humans. i just wanted to share it because it's so fascinating to me and it altered my entire understanding of reality!!