In this episode of "Embrace the void", the host rattles off the names of things and asks the guest Jack Symes whether he considers them to be "real" or "not real". Out of a long list (including "colours", "free will", "genders", "races", "morality", "rights", "God or gods", "society", numbers", "fictional characters", "money" and so on), I think the only time the guest responded "not real" was when the host named "love."
A philosophers' game, of course, but I would have answered "Real" to practically everything.
Does the sky exist? Obelix was wrong to worry about a solid dome over our heads, which could come crashing down at any moment, but the sky certainly can be blue, or overcast, or a "dawn sky" or a "night sky"; the sky can contain birds or storms, or rainbows, though we can never reach the pot of gold at the end of those either.
Do gods exist? Well they certainly make themselves felt through the actions of those who believe in them.
Does "India" exist? It certainly didn't exist when Indosaurus roamed the plains. Nor did it always have the same borders which it does today. Nor will it exist in its present form forever. Neither did it always mean the same thing- a "geographical term" (like Europe), a cultural territory (again like "Europe") with ambiguous boundaries, a colony, an imperial dominion, and a Union are all different things. We may even be a nation today- we certainly were not always that.
Asking whether something is "real" is almost pointless- what is interesting is in just what sense something is real. The "unreal", "illusory" and merely "conventional" make their presence felt through how they bend "reality."
Edit: the worst atrocities follow when these illusions, which can be debated and contested endlessly, infect our minds and turn us into puppets who live and die to protect these illusions, and deny the ordinary pain of the person before them.
The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.
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