Using terms like delusion or collective psychosis, I don't suggesting that political institutions or structures are not real. Of course I recognize the materiality or actuality of these things.

I suggest, however, that we pay attention to the relationship between these "real" structures--and the delusions that give rise to them. The pyramids are physical structures. Egyptians built them; everyone saw them and continues to see them.

Yet these material structure grew out of a delusion. The pyramids were built as tombs for the Pharaohs; to ensure the immortality of the Pharaoh; the delusion of his never-ending existence. 

Where are Pharaoh now? All of that material wealth and human effort (to the detriment of the well-being of the Egyptian people) devoted to a fantasy. (Although one Pharaoh is vaguely recalled through Steve Martin's song: "King Tut, how'd you get so funky, King Tut, can you do the monkey)."

Monumental energy, effort and wealth--an entire civilization--devoted to building gigantic material objects in support of a delusion. The dialectic between forms of reality on the one hand and delusions that are the source of these forms of reality on the other.

Richard Koenigsberg

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From PBS: Pyramid: David Macaulay's extraordinary documentary: The Pharaoh Khufu giving instructions to his Scribe: “You will build me the greatest pyramid of all. So that no one who sees it can doubt the power and the glory of the King of Egypt. From now until the end of time.”