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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I can touch fiat currency, and exchange goods with it, but race is immaterial inasmuch as one's own self-perception is the extent of its "reality" in this day and age where merit-based treatment is the norm.

You can touch the object we call "dollar bills" or "coins", but the idea that these things hold value is an "illusion" or "folklore" as you put it. Do you consider the idea of fiat currency to be a religion? You seem to have it out for redneg in particular, when, as you say in your post, there are a number of things on my list you consider "all in one's mind", yet you don't seem to consider these "religions" the same way you do "redneg."

I'm also impervious to some of those things in the list, social hierarchies which too fall under the "it is all in your mind, bro" bucket unless of course the authority is real (president of the country, for instance).

I would argue you're not thinking very clearly about this. What you call "real authority" of a president is on just as shaky a ground as redneg. I think there are pragmatic arguments why having a president is useful, and there are descriptive statements one can make about what will likely happen if a president gives a particular person an order, but the idea that either of these means that a president has something that could be called "real authority" is a bit separate. Don't confuse your oughts and your is'es - a president is just a collective illusion, but that doesn't mean that a president isn't very important to everyday life or worth factoring into your decision making process.

My overall point is that many collective illusions are absolutely central to how people think about their lives and navigate the world. They might not be "real", but I would contend that they are often (not always) useful abstractions.