Natural Reality & Imagined Reality
Natural Realities are things that exist independently of human beliefs. They are part of objective reality — they don’t care whether you believe in them or not.
Examples:
Gravity
Trees
Mountains
DNA
Animals
Death
Water
The sun
If all humans disappeared tomorrow, natural realities would still exist. They are governed by biology, physics, and chemistry. These are the rules of the physical world, and no story, belief, or economic system can change them.
Imagined Realities are things that exist only in the shared beliefs of human beings. They are not "fake" — they’re powerful, but they exist only in our collective imagination.
Examples:
Money
Nations
Religions
Corporations
Human rights
Laws
Gods
Capitalism
Marriage
Gender roles (not biological sex, but cultural expectations)
If all humans disappeared tomorrow, imagined realities would vanish instantly. They’re inter-subjective: they exist only because many people believe in them together. One person stopping belief doesn’t change anything, but if everyone stopped believing, these concepts would collapse. According to Yuval Noah Harari, imagined realities are what allowed Homo sapiens to dominate the planet. They’re our “superpower.”
Unlike other animals, humans can:
Cooperate in large numbers, beyond family or tribe.
Unite around shared myths, stories, and goals.
Build civilizations, nations, empires, and global systems.
No other species can convince millions of strangers to cooperate based on belief in things that don’t exist physically.
That’s why Harari says: “You could never convince a chimpanzee to give you a banana by promising it infinite bananas in heaven.” But humans? Entire civilizations have been built — and destroyed — based on beliefs about gods, money, ideologies, or nations.
Imagined realities can be used to create amazing things:
Human rights movements
Science and education
Cultural traditions
Justice systems
Art and meaning
But they can also be used to manipulate, divide, and exploit:
Racism
Nationalism
Religious wars
Economic inequality
Corporate power
Because they’re not rooted in nature, imagined realities can be changed — but only through collective shifts in belief.
As Harari wrote in his book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind: “There are no gods in the universe, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings.” This doesn’t mean imagined realities aren’t real in their effects. They shape our behaviour, institutions, and history. But Harari’s core message is that understanding the difference is essential if we want to reshape society rather than be trapped by myths we inherited.