There is a game that adults play with small children that contains, in compressed form, one of the deepest insights in moral philosophy. When an adult crouches visibly behind a chair and then feigns complete surprise at being found, they are doing something philosophically remarkable. They are acting as if a fiction is real, and in doing so, they are bringing something into existence. The child who is found, whose finding the adult celebrates with exaggerated astonishment, becomes confident, capable, powerful.

The ritual creates the reality it performs.