We talked about the difference between imaginary things and imaginal things a few days ago, and how important our imaginal capacities are. I’d say today that the difference between the two is that imaginal things are those that we create intentionally, whereas imaginary things (such as Easter Bunnies and optical illusions) are those that we don’t consciously choose. For me, imaginal things have intentionality behind them; they have a purpose.
Imaginal things are central to our lives, though we aren’t totally aware of them. And I would say that becoming educated or enlightened is nearly always a process of identifying what is imaginary, what is imaginal, and what is real. Though each tradition takes its own path toward enlightenment, science, philosophy, and spirituality treat the identification of reality as a central activity.
This activity is also central to sociology, which is the study of how groups, cultures, and societies form, create rules and cohesion, and (sometimes) disband. I had the great fortune to study sociology and the social sciences, and it was fascinating to use the tools of sociology to unmask the social “realities” we all take for granted.
Sociology teaches us that we create social reality through reification, or the communal process by which we make things real. For instance, a boundary between residential properties does not exist in the real world. This bit of grass on my side of our shared property line is no different than the bit of grass on your side. There is no actual, physical line of demarcation that exists between our two properties.
We reify this boundary together — not only through the information we got from the assessor’s office, but through continual dedication to the maintenance of this socially-created boundary. I don’t nose my car across your side of the imaginary line, and you don’t let your dog walk on my side of the imaginary line. We treat this non-thing as if it is a real thing, and so does the city, the mortgage company, the police department, the fire department, the utility companies, the postal service … everyone joins us in communally reifying this totally imaginary boundary. And so it becomes socially real. It achieves real-world meaning and real-world consequences because we all agree that it does. However, the boundary between our properties is imaginal. It only exists because we say it does.
