Fictitious reality

I just had a very nice conversation with Lowa Bebee. I would describe her as an indigenous, Native American, First Nation advocate. I have obtained a wealth of information and news since I discovered her on Twitter (1) and I know I can go to her when I have a question.


We were talking about Derek Nepinak, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, being disappointed in some media headlines (2) They had missed his point that the oil company wanting to expand across the prairies is just a symptom of a greater disease. Native American tribes in the US are facing similar issues and we are all facing the same deadly disease.

After I said 'good-night' I began thinking. I wonder whether greed is actually not the core problem, as many of us hypothesize, but perhaps it is a manifestation of the problem. I wonder if the problem isn't actually a mind-set based upon what Dr. Yusal Noah Harari(3) calls "fictitious" reality. A fictitious reality is one which has been created for a particular purpose (control people, justify inappropriate action) and has no basis in objective reality. Everything from religion to law fall into this category of reality. Those people who claim that things like increasing the flow of tar sand oil are necessary for our survival may believe what they say but they are obviously claiming a fictitious reality. It is a reality that is created for purpose; viz. to support a specific life-style that just happens to be very destructive to all of nature. The life-style is not only destructive but very greedy and self-centered.

Those of us who fall under the labels environmentalists and conservationists along with the leaders of indigenous peoples like Lowa Bebee and Chief Derek Nepinak find this type of thinking totally foreign. It is incomprehensible. To us it is rather like the line from the movie Star Trek IV where a very confused Spock says "To hunt species to extinction is illogical." To continue to do those things which are killing us even when we know the results of our actions is unfathomable. But it is fictitious reality and is very deeply embedded. The one thing, however, that we must accept because I believe that it is a testable, quantifiable, objective reality is that most public media will not challenge fictitious reality. This is what caused Chief Nepinak some disappointment.

Perhaps we must change our tactics, or at least alter them slightly, to deal with the existence of fictitious reality.


FOOT NOTES.

(1) You can also follow her at http://lowabeebe.com/
(2) http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/manitoba/first-nations-speak-against-oil-pipeline-expansion-across-prairies-1.3343488 (3) Dr. Yusal Noah Harari, professor of history at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. TED Talk 7/24/2015.