mASF post by "CheMistrY"
posted on: mASF forum: General Discussion newsgroup, July 7, 2003

Hey fellas...hope you all had a great 4th of July weekend.

I was reading this book over the weekend called "The Blank Slate" by Steven
Pinker.

Excellent book as it puts alot of the "Evolutionary Psychology" stuff in
perspective.

Anyways, there was a passage where he talks about the Construction of Social
Reality. It revealed what "Living in Your Own Reality" really means. Here's the
passage:

"When conventions are widely enough entrenched, they can become a kind of
reality even though they exist only in people's minds. In his book "The
Construction of Social Reality" (not to be confused with the social
construction of reality) the philosopher John Searle points out that certain
facts are objectively true just because people act as if they are true. For
example, it is a matter of fact that George W. Bush is the 43 president, that
OJ Simpson was found not guilty of murder, that the Boston Celtics won the NBA
Championship in 1986, etc. But though these are objective facts, they are not
facts about the physical world, like the atomic number of cadmium or the
classification of a whale as a mammal. They conist of shared understanding in
the minds of most members in a community, usually agreements to grant (or deny)
power or status to certain other people.
Life in complex societies is built on social realities, the most obvious being
money and rule of law. But a social fact depends entirely on the willingness of
the people to treat it as fact. It is specific to a community , as we see when
people refuse to honor a foreign currency or fail to recognize the sovereignty
of a self-proclaimed leader....Social reality exists only within a group of
people, but it depends on the cognitive ability present in each individual; the
ability to understand a public agreement to confer power or status, and to
honor it as long as other people do."

So basically what I take from this is that aside from money and rule of law you
can construct your Social Reality to be whatever you want it to be. You don't
have to live by other people's rules only in so much as you can eat, pay your
bills and it doesn't send you jail.
There are many social rules that people subconciously agree to but that are
self-limiting.

Essentially, "living in your own reality" doesn't mean not living in "the
reality", it means rejecting the Social Reality that has been handed to you and
living by your own rules.
The rules of the Social Reality as they are essentially written work against
you (hence the AFC), so it is your best interest to live by your own in so much
as it doesn't send you to jail or cost you your livelihood.

Comments appreciated.

"Recognize that you are 'the prize'."