The Fabrication of Social Reality

Remarks on normativity, Iran's Green movement, and the Islamic Republic's made-up facts

John Searle in his influential book The Construction of Social Reality tries to show how the social reality, as distinct from physical reality, is shaped. Searle aims to demonstrate how we can ground our ontology of social facts (or objects) on the ontology of brute facts (or objects). Social facts are those which are observer-dependent and their existence depends on the existence of human institutions, and brute facts are those which exist independently. Mountains, rivers, and electrons are among brute objects; and governments, money, and marriages are among social objects. So Searle wants to demonstrate how one can move from that level of reality which is described by electrons, atoms, and chemical reactions, to another level of reality which is described by governmental laws, agreements, and transactions.

The core idea of Searle’s The Construction of Social Reality, in simple terms, is that social reality is built through conventions of individuals and their intentional ascriptions of meanings and functions to physical objects. For instance, these rectangular pieces of paper that people keep in their wallets and pockets have certain values in society and are called “money”. Physically, bills are somehow like any other piece of paper. You can burn them, if you are cold, or you can make airplanes with them, if you want to entertain kids. But socially speaking, people assign certain values to these papers and these values let people buy fuel with their bills and burn the fuel, if they are cold, or buy some toys and play with the toys, if they want to entertain kids. The important point here is that it is not simply the physical characteristics of bills that let them play an economic role in people´s lives; rather, these papers have given this function through social tacit agreements that transcend bills’ physicality. This very point shows that the functions assigned to bills are relative to the society in which bills are used, and this relativity proves that one cannot talk about “the social facts”, because social facts are just made-up facts. This relativity could go to the extent that in some societies, next to their economic functions, bills might serve for other purposes as well. These days in Iran, for instance, Green people, due to their lack of mass media, use paper money and banknotes also as a medium to write their slogans and/or promote their future plans. So paper money has gained another meaning in Iran.

Still note that although the social meaning of bills is not causally related to their physical properties, their physical properties do matter, at least to some extent. That is why bills are not newspaper size, or they are not made too heavy, rather they are small and light enough to be carried easily. Back to Iran’s Green movement example, it is the substance by which the bills are made that lets Greens use paper money as a movable medium. If bills were made of steel, probably Iranian dissidents would have a big challenge writing slogans on them. It is noteworthy to mention that there were rumors spreading around that Iran’s government actually did think about replacing all paper money with coins to impede Greens’ plans and prevent them from constructing their “social reality”.

However, Iran’s government does not only passively respond to people’s tactics, rather it has also actively tried to construct its own social reality. A short glance at the state media in Iran (including TV, Radio, Newspapers, etc.) proves that the government broadcasts its own version of stories, in a bid to present them as “the social facts” and make others believe them. For instance, the government refers to protesters as the traitors, or as moharebs (enemies of God). But the point about such imputations is that they seem to be difficult to falsify, because whatever Greens do, the government still calls them traitors, and you might start wondering whether the regime knows what the word “traitor” actually means. Then again, one cannot talk about “the meaning” of the word traitor (or any other word), because that is also relative to the society in which the word is used. In the vocabulary of the Islamic Republic, anyone who criticizes the government is both a traitor and against God. And that is how Iranian government is "fabricating" its own reality. Since language is a social phenomenon, and the meaning of words is not intrinsic to the signs we use for them, a special group of people can start using words differently and by doing so fabricates reality. So the question is “Why should one choose Greens’ version of social reality and not that of the government?” Why do I refer to Green’s construction of social reality but the government’s fabrication of social reality? After all, this “fabrication”, however conflicting with our common sense and/or ethical principles, is perfectly consistent with Searle’s ideas. What is happening is a group of people constructing specific social facts/objects and assigning specific meanings to them. Searle never tells us when we should and when we should not accept a social fact or how to choose between two conflicting social realities. In other words, Searle does not provide any criterion to differentiate between the construction of social reality and the fabrication of social reality. So it seems Iranian government is winning against Searle’s philosophy. Our common sense would tell us what Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and their allies are doing is wrong, but Searle’s book would see it as constructing one special reality. In a nutshell, Searle’s philosophy lacks a normative stance. There is no standard to criticize a specific social reality, and any kind of social reality is allowed to be constructed.

To save philosophy against the Islamic Republic, I need to refer to good old Ludwig Wittgenstein and his idea of ‘meaning as use’. Wittgenstein teaches us that any change in the usage of a specific linguistic term or phrase would change the meaning assigned to that term or phrase. There is no magical link between a linguistic sign and its meaning, and it is simply the way speakers use the sign in the society that counts. This way, the Islamic Republic’s novel usage of the linguistic terms that Iranians were already familiar with (e.g., mohareb, traitor, etc.) in fact changes the meanings of these terms. And that is why I call what the Iranian regime is doing “fabrication of social reality”, instead of “the construction of social reality”. The point is that although the Islamic Republic uses words differently, but it intends their old meanings. So when Ahmadinejad calls people a bunch of goats, or when Khamenei refers to the protestors as traitors, they do not intend to change the meaning of these terms, rather they want to convince their audience that protestors are actually goats, traitors, etc. But that is not how language functions. When millions of Green protestors look at themselves and don’t find any sign of goat-ness or treason, they automatically assign new meanings to the insulting words that Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, and the rest of their gang use. We saw this phenomenon happening in the case of I-Am-Majid protest, in solidarity with Majid Tavakoli. The government thought wearing women’s clothes on Majid Tavakoli, a student political activist arrested on 16 Azar, would humiliate him. However, after Majid Tavakoli’s arrest, many male Green activists dressed up with scarves on their head, not to humiliate themselves, but to stand in solidarity with Majid and to show their protest against Islamic Republic’s law of obligatory hijab for women and defend women’s rights. The same goes with the I-Am-Mohareb protest, in solidarity with political prisoners accused of being mohareb. While the Iranian regime thought labeling protesters as moharebs would justify its brutality and human rights abuse on the one hand, and weaken the Greens on the other, many Greens started calling themselves moharbs, not to say they are against God, but to publicly mock the government’s usage of the word which deviates from the meaning the word “mohareb” often bears in Farsi.

Thus, the Iranian government’s reality is not constructed but fabricated. Khamenei thinks if he calls ordinary people mohareb, they would turn into moharebs (enemies of God). What he doesn’t notice is the fact that giving a new usage to the term “mohareb” simply changes the meaning of the word. The word “mohareb” in Farsi does not mean against God anymore, in the same way that in Farsi the word traitor does not mean against the country anymore. These words only mean against the current government that runs Iran, and the negative connotations of these words have become positive.