Shared Fictions From Birth

We are born with the capacity to learn how to dream, and the humans who live before us teach us how to dream the way society dreams. The outside dream has so many rules that when a new human is born, we hook the child’s attention and introduce these rules into his or her mind. (Location 92)

The secret was probably the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. (Location 466)

Yet none of these things exists outside the stories that people invent and tell one another. There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings. (Location 474)

A shared fiction is a useful delusion that keeps us all from diverging too greatly into a society where harm would be easier to cause amongst individuals. A shared set of values (Values Document) allows for a group of people to work together towards a shared goal. ^ad6869

Some neurotic people, because they are more apprehensive than normal people, are able to see more of certain parts of reality and to see them with more intensity. And many neurotic or psychotic patients are in certain respects in closer touch with the actualities of the unconscious than are normal people. (Location 1817)

Individual neuroses 202301071258 diverge from the shared one

Your whole mind is a fog which the Toltecs called a mitote (pronounced MIH-TOE´-TAY). Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same time, and nobody understands each other. This is the condition of the human mind — a big mitote, and with that big mitote you cannot see what you really are. In India they call the mitote maya, which means illusion. It is the personality’s notion of “I am.” Everything you believe about yourself and the world, all the concepts and programming you have in your mind, are all the mitote. We cannot see who we truly are; we cannot see that we are not free. (Location 201)