For years, I have been discussing on this platform the social imagination as the construct for social reality. Largely, that construct (created in the social imagination ) is built on agreement and even through disagreement; because, in that, we agree to disagree... hence, agreement. I always like to find other thinkers/authors who agree with me and here are a couple.
1- Social realities are all around us. Think of cocktail parties, football games, bar mitzvahs, political rallies, and even nations. These are all social realities. And in connection with this sort of thing both parts of that phrase “social reality” are worth focusing on. All the things I just mentioned are things that really and truly exist.
They aren’t figments of anyone’s imagination; they’re real. Really real. Objectively real. But at the same time, they're all made up entities, at least in a sense. Cocktail parties exist only because a group of people get together and say “we're having a party now.” People just sort of decide that these things are going to exist. And so they do exist. Seems kind of like magic.
It isn’t really magic, but it is puzzling. At bottom, social realities are just creations of the human mind. Not individual human minds, but collections of human minds. You can’t all by your little lonesome create a social reality. Try it and you really will end up with something that’s just a figment of your own imagination. But put a bunch of people together, let them exercise their imaginations together; let them agree; and presto, you’ve got a new social reality.
What could, I suppose, make that sound a little like magic still is the fact that it takes at least two minds to make a social reality. If one mind can’t do it, why are two or more minds any better, you might ask. Well the answer is that social realities are, by their very natures, founded on agreement. If a bunch of humans agree to create a club, then there is a club.
If a bunch of humans agree to form a nation, then there exists a nation. And although clubs and nations are nothing but products of human agreement, they're not figments of our imagination. To be sure they are products of our imaginations, but they’re real products, not mere figments. Once we agree that they exist, they are as objectively real as rocks and mountains.
Not only are things like clubs and nations real, they are really important. They have a huge impact on our lives. We’re immersed in a universe of ever changing social realities. And they play an immense role both in determining how we live and how well we live. Our earliest forbears foraged on the savannah and huddled in caves.
Civilizations have risen and fallen and with them, ways of life have come and gone. Throughout these massive changes in the social world, the biological and physical worlds have changed too -- but not as radically, and mostly in ways that are more or less direct consequences of changes in the human social world.
So the social world affects not only the way humans relate to one another, but also how we interact with the rest of the biological and physical world. Science, for example, is really a complex social undertaking by which humans collectively seek to understand the physical, biological, and even the social world itself... [https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/social-reality].
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2- Just as socialization is mostly determined by the world and culture around us, our perception of the world is also influenced by external forces. Consider your own society, for example. A society describes a group of people who live in a defined geographical area, interact with one another, and share a common culture.
How do you think your society was
"constructed"? Who decided upon the appropriate social norms and
behaviors that shape your reality and experience? Sociologists understand that
reality is socially constructed, meaning that people shape their experiences
through social interaction.
In 1966 sociologists Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
wrote a book called The Social Construction of Reality. In it, they
argued that society is created by humans and human interaction, which they
call habitualization.
Habitualization describes how “any action that is repeated frequently becomes cast into a pattern, which can then be … performed again in the future in the same manner and with the same economical effort” (Berger and Luckmann 1966). Not only do we construct our own society but we also accept it as it is because others have created it before us. Society is, in fact, a matter of “habit.”...[https://www.coursehero.com/study-guides/wmopen-introtosociology/reality-as-a-social-construct/].
Commentary ~ I agree! Sadly, the rest of the world, especially those who have power, control and the money, including universities, will never admit that above truth about social reality. Why? They don't want to lose their grip on the wider social imagination and the social reality at hand because if they do... it and they with all they control in it will disintegrate.
You might be wondering why the Salvador Dali painting as my choice of photo (see above). It represents what I just explained. When those who have power, control and the money to retain that power lose their grip on the social imagination, and they lose their grip on social reality and their power/control and money...
The clocks are representative of time. You see time is only 'real' because it is necessary in the social imagination as a means of ordering the social reality. The social imagination 'agreement reality' needs time. It needs time for agreement and once agreement is established, it sets a course (what appears as a way forward) for the agreed upon person/thing/place/event to become real in the social imagination's social reality construct. The more who agree the stronger the construct... at least while it lasts.
Now, how long the agreement (including disagreement) lasts is determined by and determines everything else in the social imagination's construct of social reality.
Keep in mind, in the social imagination, a vicious cycle exists, a strange loop which perpetuates those things which we keep agreeing on and disagreeing on ...because, its a fallen world, a world in a state of decay and which at some point... we should all want to see come to an end. It may look like things have changed, but in the social imagination's social reality they don't and won't or simply can't... Its a fallen world folks!
....until the Creator Returns!
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