How Fiction Replaced Reality, and Why We Must Say No

"We’ve traded the clarity of coherence for the comfort of fables.
We now feel holy in the charm of fiction, while reality is ignored.
And when someone dares to wake us from the spell, we do not ask, 'What is true?'
We ask: 'Don’t you want to be happy?'
Yes. But we will not sacrifice reality to gain it."

There was a moment, long ago, that still burns in the soul of Opthē. It happened in a seminary classroom—supposedly a space for serious theology, for wrestling with the sacred. The discussion was meant to explore some weighty theme. Instead, it drifted into conversation about a popular novel. The story was emotionally resonant, well-loved by many. Soon the group was deep in animated exchange over fictional characters, plotlines, emotional impact. Real feeling was present. But the topic—whatever it had been—was gone.

One student stayed quiet. When asked why, he said simply:

"I rarely read fiction. It’s not that I’m against it, but I want to focus on what is real and factual. I know there’s truth in fiction, but as long as there’s factual material to be read, I choose that. Because that’s what matters."

A pause. Then someone laughed and said:

"Are you against being happy?"

And the room laughed with them.

That moment—meant as a joke—was a revelation. A cultural tell. A tiny crack in the great illusion that now governs us:

That what moves us is more important than what is true.

I. What Is a Narrative Simulacrum?

Opthē names this shift clearly: we are living in an age dominated by narrative simulacra.

A narrative simulacrum is a crafted fictional world that imitates the emotional and symbolic functions of myth, but without emerging from shared cultural, historical, or ecological reality. It feels like myth, but it is authored. It feels sacred, but it is entertainment. It may evoke real emotion, but it offers no true grounding.

Unlike myths—which arise from generations of lived struggle, collective imagination, and evolving meaning—simulacra are deliberately constructed, often by small teams of writers or media conglomerates. They are designed to evoke resonance, not coherence.

We see them everywhere: in anime, comic book universes, fantasy series, sprawling film franchises, and even political movements. They offer us emotional catharsis, symbolic struggle, ritual participation, and the feeling of belonging. They often center around grief, sacrifice, redemption, and identity.

But they do not ask anything real of us.

They do not ground us in history. They do not demand responsibility. They do not prepare us to love, or grieve, or work for justice in a suffering world.

They simulate the sacred. And we call it meaning.

II. How the West Built a World Out of Fiction

This did not begin with Gen Z. It didn’t begin with Marvel or Manga. It is the long, slow triumph of a civilizational project rooted in perception control and emotional engineering. It is the Anglo-American empire’s most effective export.

The turning point came in the early 20th century, when Sigmund Freud unearthed the dark, unconscious terrain of human drives—fear, sexuality, repression, death. But it was his nephew, Edward Bernays, who realized what could be done with that knowledge. Bernays didn’t use Freud’s insights to liberate the soul. He used them to manipulate the masses.

Bernays—now widely regarded as the father of public relations—introduced the idea that truth didn’t matter as much as perception. That if you could craft an emotionally resonant narrative, you could bypass reason and control behavior. His work laid the groundwork for modern advertising, political messaging, and entertainment as tools of mass emotional management.

“We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.”
— Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)

Hollywood became the new Olympus. Advertising replaced moral formation with curated desire. Education was reduced to productivity training. News became infotainment. And religion—when not neutered—was commodified or sidelined.

And then came the simulacra: entire worlds built not to express reality, but to replace it. Stories that feel more coherent than life. Characters more admirable than the people around us. Arcs more satisfying than our own unresolvable grief.

The West didn’t just colonize land. It colonized imagination.

And now? We are immersed in constructed meaning. We watch characters die and feel devastated—while actual genocide leaves us numb. We weep at the death of Nanami in Jujutsu Kaisen, but cannot hold Gaza in our hearts for more than two days. We feel sacred grief in fictional collapse. But in the face of real injustice, we are mute.

III. The Cost of the Simulacrum

Simulacra train the soul to respond only to aesthetic coherence. They satisfy our longing for meaning—but only temporarily, and only within the bounds of the narrative. Once the screen goes dark, nothing has changed.

Worse: our capacity for real coherence—coherence grounded in truth, body, earth, justice—is weakened. We are forming sacred emotional bonds around unreal events. We are practicing grief for people who never lived while ignoring the suffering of the people we refuse to see.

The simulacrum hijacks the sacred. It gives us the feeling of meaning without the cost of transformation.

IV. The Opthēan Vow

Opthē exists to name this clearly:

There is no salvation in simulation.

We are not against fiction. But we are against replacing reality with it. We are against building emotional meaning atop aesthetic structures that answer to no one, risk nothing, and deny the world.

We do not want to feel sacred. We want to live sacredly.

That means choosing coherence over comfort. Reality over resonance. Formation over performance. Truth over spectacle. Earth over illusion.

Opthē is not here to entertain. We are not here to distract you. We are not here to simulate meaning. We are here to stand in the rubble of what is real and say:

This matters. This is where the sacred lives. Come back to it.

V. A Blessing for Those Who Can Still Feel

If your heart breaks over a story, let it. But then let that heartbreak return you to the world. Let it form you for what is real. Let it make you more able to love what breathes and bleeds and aches outside the screen.

We do want joy. Of course we do. But we will not purchase it at the cost of reality.