Verb: reify
To consider an abstract concept to be real.
None of it is real. Like your cat, for instance. Is it really yours? Just suppose some space aliens were to zoom down, abduct your cat, and take it to a galaxy far, far away. Would they worry about stealing “your” cat. I don’t think so. Nobody owns anything. The courts are just playing an arcane game. Go hang out in the parlor adjoining the courtroom. I keep telling people to do that. Just hang with the plaintiffs and witnesses, and watch them being called aside by their lawyers. It’s very educational. The law system has no interest in who’s guilty at all. It is merely an esoteric process.
The Congress is not a real thing, just an invented process. The president is not the president at all; she or he merely plays a role in a game. That ten dollar bill in your wallet? Merely a piece of paper that people agree has some value. Even gold is worth no more than what people imagine it to be worth. It is mostly good for making reliable electrical contacts, and not too much else.
Let me tell you about a little episode that changed my life in the mid-seventies. I had this crummy job doing the laundry at an large private intuition for the severely feebleminded. The feebleminded folks were issued little strips of colored paper for doing various chores, like sweeping halls and such. One very sweet little feebleminded old woman was tasked with cleaning out a basement. I went down there to get something or other, and found her staring at 8 by 11 sheets of paper right next to a paper cutter! She asked me if it would be alright to just cut the paper into little strips, so she could use them to buy Hershey bars and whatnot. Well, in an odd fit of anarchism, I told her “I don’t see why not.” The next day they fired me for that. But to this day, there is something deep inside me that rebels against people being controlled by their own feeblemindedness. After all, they were only little strips of colored paper. Would I do it again? You bet!
