Consensual realities
The first time I became aware of the term "consensual reality" was, probably, some William Gibson novel and likely in reference to "cyberspace". It's not really science fiction though -- we live with all kinds of consensual realities today. These are things -- often critical things -- that only exist because we all choose to agree that they do. If a critical mass of people (let's use "entities", actually, because it's not always people that are involved) choose to disbelieve in the consensual reality then it ceases to have any force. Let's look at some and see just how dangerous this is.



The obvious one is cash. Little bits of green paper, as one wag put it, that have nowhere near the value printed on them (with the likely exception of the American one dollar bill). All of the power vested in these notes is there because we all agree to honour them. If we all decided they were essentially valueless (or, back when it was technically feasible, demanded our silver of equivalent value from the guarantor) then they would be. Nothing really holds them together except consensus. If the mint stopped printing them and the Bank of America said it would no longer honour them, what could you do about it? It's not real, it's just an unwritten agreement amongst us all. An implicit contract, if you will.

How about the United Nations? Plenty of folks lately have blathered on about how it has no essential power, and yet the power it derives is solely from the associated nations agreeing to be bound by its rulings. A large number of member nations have the power to simply ignore it, at least because they can veto any ruling it makes, but also because it hasn't the political or military power to actually make good on any threats it might make. It is essential to maintenance of the consensual reality that it can govern international affairs that member nations obey its edicts. That is, if they choose to ignore the laws it dictates, then the consensual reality of its authority is shattered. We've already seen this recently with the United States deciding to ignore UN rulings and behave on its own, even at cross purposes to the UN. This exposes the illusion for what it is and makes it that much easier for detractors to tear it down. And yet, when whole, it has value. The consensus makes the consensual reality real and not illusion. You really can buy things with cash.

Law. You knew I was heading here. As with these other ideas, order is not actually kept by threat of force (though many governments perceive a need to head in this direction). Rather it is kept because enough people believe in the abstract ideal of order and choose to obey the law even when it would be to their advantage not to. This comes back to honour and duty and I won't rehash my ideas there. The crux of this piece is consensus making illusion reality, and the same thing happens here. When enough people decide that there is no duty towards the law, then it ceases to exist. Will concrete mechanisms of enforcement be better? It always strikes me as odd in the extreme that opponents of government control are also big fans of individual freedoms to the extent that they happily break laws when it is to their advantage. This behaviour requires governments to make the illusion concrete in order to sustain order. If we cannot carry out our "consensus" part of the bargain, then governments necessarily must add weight to the "reality" side. I would put forth that it is to our advantage to uphold the consensus instead.

And finally democracy. In fact, democracy isn't so much a consensual reality, though. What's consensual is our peaceful, bickering method with no gunfire. It has been said that all nations are essentially democracies, but that not all give equal weight to everyones vote, and in some cases you vote with bullets and high explosive. This kind of democracy, where a significant percentage of weapon owners decide to shoot everyone who disagrees, is the concrete form. As with law, the consensual form is much nicer -- it's where we all agree to vote intelligently and select a leader, and where the existing leadership agrees to step down if the vote doesn't go his way. There are all kinds of things implicit in here that may or may not be true -- the existing government won't rig the election. No one will try to buy votes. And so on. But again, as with law, the more we choose to ignore our duties, the more the system must lean towards the concrete in order to continue functioning. If we don't uphold the consensual reality of deciding our leadership -- however ridiculous we know it to be (money is just paper and ink folks) -- then we must fall back on the concrete. And in these things, the concrete is usually at best Machiavellian. At worst it's Hobbesian.

Civilization is only there because we agree it is.