Recently I came across the word “intersubjective.” The dictionary defines it as “existing between conscious minds; shared by more than one conscious mind,” but I like to think of it as “existing because (and possibly only because) people agree that it exists.”

The black coffee table that I’m writing on exists objectively. I can knock on it, rest my feet on it, sweep the dust on it away with a flick of my physical fingers. I can summon other people as witnesses to my apartment, and they can feel it with their own hands and independently testify to themselves, “Yup, that coffee table sure does exist objectively, and how!” But crucially, even if I and every other human disappeared from the face of the earth, the table would continue to exist and catch dust in a very objective way.

My imaginary friend Christina exists subjectively. She exists only in the sense that I can imagine her to exist. I cannot see her, but only in my mind’s eye. You can not see her regardless. If I were to drop dead of a respiratory disease it would be as if she never existed at all.

What exists intersubjectively? I think companies fit the bill. Pucker & Clench Theatre Company is an entity that exists, but only as an agreement among a group of people that they are working under the name of “Pucker & Clench Theatre Company”. Unlike my objectively-existing black coffee table, there is no one physical thing or group of things that you can point to and say, “That’s Pucker & Clench Theatre Company!” You could gather the director, producer, actors, stage managers, and various designers in a room and point at that, but that’s just a group of people. Pucker & Clench could be operating with entirely different personnel in ten or twenty years. Or it could decide to disband and thus cease to exist as a company, but that doesn’t cause all of its members to stop existing as people. P&C exists only because a group of people agrees that it exists.

What else exists intersubjectively? Countries, governments. Money, as a bearer of value. Cultures, languages, norms. Art, as art. Gods, to be controversial.

I wonder what it would be like to exist intersubjectively. As an intersubjectively existing person, I would only exist so long as other people believe me to exist. If all my dinner table-mates suddenly agreed that I did not exist, then I would go poof! So it would be in my best interest to assert loudly and clearly, at regular intervals during the meal, the fact of my being, if only to preserve my own existence.

In essence, I would be a fictional character.

A lot of people feel ignored by society, like they have no voice.

It could be said that we each have two selves, one physical self and one social self. The physical self eats and sleeps and lumbers around and pushes elevator buttons, and it exists objectively. The social self exchanges information and goodwill and love with other social selves, and it exists intersubjectively. When all the other social selves decide to cut off contact with me, they will have agreed that my social self no longer exists, and poof it goes!

This process goes by many names: ostracism, excommunication, cancellation. And if part of being a human means having both a physical self and a social self, it is a process of dehumanisation. Whoa this got scary very quickly.