Why does intersubjectivity work when it's imagined? Why do people believe in stories about things that don't exist? The answer is they were indoctrinated. Then the question is, how do you brainwash people about an imagined order like Christianity, democracy, or the USA?
First, you never admit it's imagined. You always insist that the belief in an objective reality created either by gods or by the laws of nature. "People are unequal, not because Hammurabi said so, but because Enlil and Marduk decreed it. People are equal, not because Thomas Jefferson said so, but because God created them that way. Free markets are the best economic system, not because Adam Smith said so, but because these are the immutable laws of nature."
Second, you educate people intensely from the day they are born. You remind them constantly of the imagined order. You incorporate it in fairy tales, school programs, architecture, songs, movies, politics, church, and so on.
This is the other side of education
Just think about it, since when you can remember, as a child, you were not making conscious decisions. You sort of appeared in an environment surrounded by your culture. Your religion, education, manners, traditions, diets, holidays, beliefs were imposed on you – you've never chosen them. You had no choice but to accept them and you probably haven't questioned them till you were in your late teens. From then, you tried to make your own, rational choices. But, if your mind was molded and shaped by culture, are those choices really yours anyway?
Connect to werid and kin
Yes and no. Culture gave you lenses through which to view the world and it is tough to get rid of them. They are like software you can't uninstall. You can make rational decisions; however, you'll always have a biased view on reality.
On one hand, it's powerful because through education you're absorbing thousands of years of evolution in couple of years and it enables individuals to breakthrough like landing on the moon.
Such institutions ensure stability - Lessons of history religion acts like a preservative.
Other other hand, it's limiting. You're more like an extension of a big organism than an individual. You're never really unbiased elaborate. However would you be
Weird culture gives one of the biggest freedom
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