Make-Believe, Villains and Heroes

 Make-believe is an ingrained part of human experience. It is readily observed in the play of young children. It is observed in social conventions; it is expected that in many social interactions we are expected to behave as though something were true, even when everyone knows it is not. Make believe plays a role in how humans cope with misfortune, such as terminal diseases. Given the prevalence of make-believe, it is natural to consider whether it is innate, and more relevantly whether the capacity for make believe is useful, or even essential to human functioning.

As with any phenomenon that pertains to human cognition, one may surmise that make-believe is associated with the human capacity of awareness of the future. One of the ways that humans formulate plans is to mentally simulate processes that allow them to assess things will "play-out" in various scenarios, and this is a form of make-believe. Make-believe is an element of formulating models, which is essential to the human capacity to plan, innovate and anticipate in novel and complex environments.

Make-believe is also an element of mankind's socializing processes. The analogy of humans to actors playing parts is centuries old. It is almost universal that people behave outwardly in a manner to affect the opinions of others, whether or not this behavior is a faithful result of true personality. A lie is simply a species of make-believe. 

Make-believe is a part of the myth-making and narrative maintenance which are central to ideological movements. These types of make-believe tend to become more elaborate and, in many circumstances, more absurd. Social justice warriors, for example, engage in make-believe whereby they cast themselves as combatants in battles long since won, or contrive for themselves straw armies to vanquish anew. This type of make-believe is often found in mass-movements that produced some of history's worst atrocities.

An easy distinction in ideological make-believe separates those plot-lines in which people's pretensions apply to themselves, e.g. that they are heroic, or oppressed, or virtuous, etc., and those in which the make-believe is projected onto other people. The latter phenomenon involves make-believe, i.e. pretending that strangers are oppressors. or racist or backward or hateful, because it fulfills the psychological and ideological needs of the pretender. The former phenomenon, in which people engage in make-believe about themselves is universal, and for the most part, harmless and occasionally even useful. The later, in which people pretend that other people are a certain way because such make-believe is necessary to maintain an ideological myth and supporting narratives leads to discrimination, injustice, genocide and misery. When make-believe becomes indistinguishable from reality it becomes a delusion, and when this make-believe involves the bad character and lack of virtue of others, and affects how those others are treated, it becomes the excuse for great evil.