‘Quixote,’ Colbert and the Reality of Fiction nytimes.com
Take the impact on politics. People in the modern, industrialized world tend to ally their identities with large symbolic bodies called nations, and then within those nations with other more intimate groupings — from religious communities to sexual orientations to nuclear family units. Political leaders have become remarkably adept at manipulating the fictional worldview to rally these various levels of identification to their own ends. But if the fictional worldview allows for such manipulation, it also gives us the tools to fight back — tools Cervantes already developed at the dawn of the modern age.