INVENTING REALITY

In Inventing Reality, Pawan Bhatia offers an exploration of how humans construct, contest, and inhabit the real. The book begins with a tension: a rock is real whether we believe in it, while a border is real only because we do; both can kill. Reality is neither given nor invented. It is disclosed through perception, language, media, technology, power, and imagination. Bhatia rejects two illusions: pure construction, which ignores the world's resistance, and pure givenness, which treats contingent arrangements as natural and unchangeable. Between them lies "reimagining without illusion." Part I examines realism, idealism, phenomenology, and social constructionism, arguing that each captures something but none everything. The given and made are entangled; wisdom lies in discerning which is which, and asking who benefits from the distinction. Part II traces the mediators of reality. Perception is active, embodied, and predictive, not a passive window. Language and metaphor shape what can be noticed, said, and shared. Media, from oral culture to print, broadcasting, and the internet, are not neutral channels; every medium is a metaphysics that redistributes power, attention, and evidence. Social and political contestation determines whose reality counts. Drawing on Gramsci, Taylor, Fraser, Žižek, Habermas, and Mouffe, Bhatia explores hegemony, recognition, redistribution, ideology, deliberation, and agonistic democracy. Part III turns to imagination, AI, and truth. Imagination is a condition of reality, not an escape from it; utopias and dystopias are laboratories for world-making. Generative AI simulates creativity and produces artificial worlds, raising urgent questions about authorship, bias, authenticity, and who designs the systems that mediate experience. Deepfakes and disinformation create a crisis of evidence and epistemic trust. Truth must become a practice sustained by intellectual virtues, trustworthy institutions, and a rebuilt public sphere. Part IV addresses the ethics of world-making. Every world is designed, by a few, producing a democratic deficit. Regulation, markets, and professional ethics are necessary but insufficient; design must become participatory, accountable, and contestable. Responsibility is answerability, extended by Jonas to future generations, grounded by Levinas in the face of the Other, and recognized by Derrida as never dischargeable. Freedom is situated and begins anew through action. Limits—some given, some made—require humility and ambition. Berlin's value pluralism reminds us that goods conflict and no system can honor all. Bhatia concludes not with a solution but an invitation: inhabit the tension honestly, act with courage, humility, and solidarity, and practice radical hope. Reality is unfinished, made by all of us, and can be remade.