"in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order"
"there is no way out of the imagined order. when we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison."
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
what a word! i couldn't stop thinking how true it is.
i, myself love order but fail to realize it is often imagined. politic exists when billions of people believe in a shared imagination. we say the words collaboration often - sounds so benevolent, but the truth is people collaborate in order to get what they want, which can turn out to be oppression and exploitation - hooray! the ideal world for politics.
then we trapped ourselves in a "collaborative world", and created layers of power to control and normalize the environment, to feel safe. the famous american declaration of independence wrote:
"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"
which was well translated into biological terms by Yuval:
"all men evolved differently, that they are born with certain mutable characteristics, and that among these are life and pursuit of please" (Yuval, 2011)
we advocate diversity and independence in america, but ironically, human evolution is based on difference, not on an artifically created imagined order, or euqality.
it is interesting to be a human and study history, to try to make sense of the world, i mean the political world.
"hammurabi might have defended this priciple of hierarchy using the same logic:
'i know that superiors, commoners and slaves are not inherently different kinds of people. but if we believe that they are, it will enable us to create a stable and prosperous society.'" (Yuval, 2011)
it feels good to be a dreamer living in a imagined world, but not imagined order. we need free will, not a prison.
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