Yes, we are existing in a fake world. One based totally on perceptions formed based on our individual upbringing, education, attitudes, social status and even health. Yes, a well educated and honestly informed population will be far more effective in handling the current or any similar situation we may encounter. However, hoping for such a population feels like an unreachable dream. We, the dominating species on this planet, as you said, also seem to have been blessed with the inherent capability to destroy ourselves, and with us our planet. For instance, I think democracy was formed with the idea that we all could be on the same page. That we could collectively take a call on who our leaders should be, and they would in turn help us get where we want to go together as an economy. However, by the same token, we decided we need an opposition party to do the needful when things didn't go the way planned. Why? 'cos in our "imagined" world as you call it, maybe there was not enough trust to begin with. I think the need of the hour is to get all the real facts, genuinely care for our future generations and try be the change we need to see in our world ourselves. Anyways, I think I went off the topic a bit, sorry, all I wanted to say is I enjoyed reading your post. Good food for thought there. :) Thanks!
Thank you, @sandzat, for such a beautiful response :-) Nothing is unreachable in my opinion even when we won't reach the next step in our evolution during our lifetimes, or that of our children or grandchildren. Humankind's true strength is its ability to cooperate while remaining flexible through our individuality. Our lifes are governed through the stories we've grown up with and those we tell our offspring; those stories are what enables us to cooperate on large scales as they fuel us with a basic set of guidelines we all more or less follow, so we don't have to know each and every person we cooperate with. Our stories are wrong, that's all. With the right stories we create a mental landscape that's not contradicting real life. It's gonna be hard and will take a lot of time. But is it impossible? I don't know, I can only hope. What I refuse to do though, is give up on that possibility :-)