Shared Fictions
Define “shared fiction” in one sentence.
What is an "imagined order"? (Collectively believed story that organizes cooperation and institutions).
According to Harari, money is a system of mutual ___.
What is mutual trust?
Empire = rule over more than one ___.
What is a political order?
Harari’s Part III “big trend” is toward global ___.
What is globalization?
Name one institution Harari treats as imagined-but-real.
What is money / religion / nations / laws / human rights?
Explain “universal convertibility” in simple terms.
Money lets you convert different goods/services/values into each other through a common medium.
One way empires unify is by standardizing ___.
What is laws, language, currency, norms, or bureaucracy?
Which unifies strangers faster: money or law? Pick one.
What is money (fast cooperation via exchange)?
What is law (predictable coordination via rules)?
Why can imagined orders be more durable than personal relationships?
They are intersubjective, embedded in institutions, and enable mass cooperation even among strangers.
Explain “universal trust” in simple terms.
Money enables cooperation between people who don’t know or trust each other.
Name one cost of imperial standardization.
What is violence/coercion, cultural suppression, extraction (taxes), slavery, genocide?
When unification increases, what tends to happen to local diversity?
What is local diversity is reduced through standardization?
*Even if new hybrid forms.
Take a side: Are imagined orders mainly liberating or mainly controlling?
What is mainly controlling? Imagined orders often impose hierarchies that privilege some and marginalize others.
What is mainly liberating? Imagined orders promote cooperation and trust, and liberate individuals from the limits of their immediate family to connect them to a larger, more sophisticated network.
Take a side: Is the value of money more “belief” or more “force”?
As "belief," money's power depends on shared trust; without shared belief, paper/coins are just objects.
As "force," money relies on taxation, laws, and the threat of punishment to compel people to accept a particular currency.
Take a side: Do empires spread cooperation or extraction more?
What is "extraction"? Empires use conquest, labor, and coercion to extract resources.
What is "cooperation"? Empires spread common languages, build infrastructure, create legal systems, enable trade, and circulate ideas.
Take a side: Is globalization becoming a “global empire”?
What is yes because globalization spreads dominant institutions and norms widely?
What is no because globalization lacks a single sovereign authority with coercive power?
What would have to happen for an imagined order to collapse on your campus?
What is collapse happens when people stop believing and coordinated compliance breaks?
Design a new campus currency; what makes it trustworthy fast?
What is wide acceptance + institutional backing + guaranteed convertibility?
Argue whether a modern bureaucracy (school, IRS, corporation) functions like an “empire.”
What is yes, because bureaucracies create rules across strangers via standardized procedures and authority?
What is no, because bureaucracies coordinate and regulate, but they don’t absorb diverse peoples by force or claim universal rule?
What should never be universalized (currency, law, culture, religion), and why?
What is don’t universalize culture or religion because it erodes pluralism and local meaning?
What is don't universalize currency or law because it concentrates power?