Believing in Fictional Narratives

From the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari.

I’ve understood this idea of fictional agreements for a while now. ie that money is an agreement. Even Dong, the currency for Vietnam is a derivative of “dong y” meaning to agree.

And the creation of our agreements for treating each other etc. but the problem with fictional abilities is that we can create false narratives that are not agreeable. So all our institutions were set up to counter these false narratives.

Personally having the skills to expose these false and non-agreeable narratives is what everyone should aspire to cultivate. It is the conversation skill of making sure, I believe.

So it is almost like we developed two skills at the same time, some 50,000-100,000 years ago, to have this ability of making sure and to making unsure, agreeing to believe a narrative and and outright lying.

But what Yuval Noah Harari seems to have left out so far is what society has created from fictional is now true and legal.

Just try go to the USA boarder and explain you don’t need a passport because boarders are only fictional concept. You cannot!

Look how hard we struggle to believe in the fictional value of  cryptocurrency now.
It is a very volatile currency and belief.

I think we need to practice being fictional and practice exposing or objecting to fictional narratives.

“What if” being the biggest phrase in the English language and “we can’t “ being the biggest lie.