Consensual Reality

If enough people believe that something is true, it really doesn't matter whether it is true or not. The important thing is that everyone is on the same page. That's what makes everything work. Being on the same page is what keeps everybody happy, healthy and functional, and that's what's really important. In this life, it is far more important to be effective than it is to be right. And though effectiveness is often contingent on being right, more often it is not. Especially in a complicated social system, where effectiveness of an individual is tied to the effective functioning of the society as a whole, "truth" is what is true for the society as a whole.

So the functional "truth" of a thing is determined by the number of people that agree that it is "true." Likewise, a thing stops being "true" when enough people agree that it is not "true."

This is the essence of Consensual Reality. It is a set of beliefs which form the core of a society, as well as subsets of beliefs which are inferred as logical and natural implications of those core beliefs. This creates very complicated strings of perceptual relationships, and numerous disciplines arise to keep all those perceptual relationships organized, pristine and "true." Out of those disciplines, parameters of thinking and perception arise that keep everybody on the same page and espousing the same, consistent "truths."

If an inconsistent "truth" emerges, the immediate and most devastating consequence of it is the impact it has on the Consensual Reality. Far from anyone being excited about new vistas of understanding being opened up, the thing that gets everybody riled up is the extent to which the new revelation invalidates the existing belief system.

That's when the fireworks start. 

A new "truth" can't be "true" until enough people agree to accept and integrate its "truthfulness" into their system of belief, because that's what really makes it effective. Sadly though, it still doesn't matter if it's really true or not. The connection to reality is almost utterly inconsequential.

Y'see, "truth" is a valuable commodity. If you've got a corner on the "truth" market, then you've got power. You can make people that believe do just about anything to maintain validation of that belief. Politicians, terrorists, cult leaders, con men - they're all about getting a corner on the "truth" market, and they'll go to extreme lengths to leverage their position. 

That's their job. They will deceive, seduce, threaten, beat - even kill if they think it will help expand the acceptance of their "truth" and give them a larger share of the market.

When you get right down to it, it's all bullshit. Some of it works better than some other, and so the world keeps turning. 

But the real, underlying, functional "truth" is that it's all bullshit. You just need to decide which of it that you're going to call your own, and that's what life is really all about.