from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban
cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse
with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid
in the first place.
c. The imagined order is inter-subjective
. Even if by some superhuman e ort I
succeed in freeing my personal desires from the grip of the imagined order, I am
just one person. In order to change the imagined order I must convince millions of
strangers to cooperate with me. For the imagined order is not a subjective order
existing in my own imagination – it is rather an inter-subjective order, existing in
the shared imagination of thousands and millions of people.
In
order to understand this, we need to understand the di erence between
‘objective’, ‘subjective’, and ‘inter-subjective’.
A n
objective
phenomenon exists independently
of human consciousness and
human beliefs.
Radioactivity, for example, is not a myth.
Radioactive emissions
occurred long before people discovered them, and they are dangerous even when
people do not believe in them. Marie Curie, one of the discoverers of radioactivity,
did not know, during her long years of studying radioactive materials, that they
could harm her body. While she did not believe that radioactivity could kill her,
she nevertheless
died of aplastic anaemia, a disease
caused by overexposure to
radioactive materials.
The
subjective
is something that exists depending
on the consciousness and
beliefs of a single individual. It disappears or changes if that particular individual
changes his or her beliefs. Many a child believes in the existence of an imaginary
friend who is invisible and inaudible to the rest of the world. The imaginary friend
exists solely in the child’s subjective consciousness, and when the child grows up
and ceases to believe in it, the imaginary friend fades away.
T h e
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