"Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" as I understand it is more ambiguous about exactly why Tlön is becoming real in the narrator's world. Although there is a description in the afterword of such a guild having fabricated Tlön and some artifacts from there, the story up to that point seemed to take Tlön's metaphysics (in which the idea of a reality outside of our perceptions is considered absurd and impossible) pretty seriously, and the end of the story presents the situation as though the narrator's world is actually starting to work according to these principles. That could conceivably be for merely social-perception reasons, although according to Tlön's philosophy there couldn't be any such thing as "merely social-perception reasons" because social perception obviously wholly creates the real and only reality.
One could imagine that the guild called up something it then couldn't put down, but necessarily because people will or prefer it so, but somehow because the world, at least in the story, fundamentally could work this way.
The Wikipedia article discusses how confusing it is to understand the exact position of the story with respect to narrative truth, when the entire story is playing with the idea of what is real and what makes it real, as well as explicitly talking about the idea of fiction coming to life:
“The truth is that it longed to yield. Ten years ago any symmetry with a semblance of order — dialectical materialism, anti-Semitism, Nazism — was sufficient to entrance the minds of men. How could one do other than submit to Tlön, to the minute and vast evidence of an orderly planet?”
To me, this suggests rather clearly something similar to the OP’s interpretation. His drawing on of this story as allegory for our future occurs to me also as apt, and what I imagine as what Borges would have envisioned.
I also don’t quite follow your assertion that “social perception obviously wholly creates the real and only reality”, as social perception clearly varies by each persons’ distinct society - and anyhow even if considered on the level of the entire society, such a vast, sprawling perception could hardly be considered a singular “only” reality.
"the real and only reality" would be better stated as ~"the small finite set of realities" (basically, each "tribe's" trained "take" on a given situation)...but even then, it is always possible to point out a trivial, causally unimportant object level difference such that one can miss the point.
Whether it is possible to circumvent this remains to be seen. Science has demonstrated it can to some degree, but it only covers a portion of reality.
Yes, I've always read the story this way as well. Borges may have not been interested in politics, but politics was interested in him, and he clashed with the Peronists (who fired him from the library) and repeatedly criticizes fascism and anti-semites in his nonfiction especially, and when he was writing this in 1939/1940, obviously all of this was quite imminent and topical.
So what I take TUOT as being is an exploration of the Idealism idea, where Borges puts a twist on it: the (dialectical) beliefs of the communalistic idealists of Tlön turn out to be true, on a certain level, because sufficiently compelling ideas and totalizing ideologies make their claims true. In that way, 'perception' becomes 'reality'. Only that which the ideology or state can perceive is real, and everyone is required to see like a state. (As much as he loved Idealism & Platonism, Borges always seemed to accept them only on a literary level, as applying to fiction and literature - there is indeed 'Man' in fiction, but there is not an actual Man in a Platonic region of forms, there is only a term 'man' we nominalistically apply to entities as convenient.)
That is, idealism is correct, in a sense, and the artifacts of Tlön become real because the savants of the conspiracy 'perceive' them (in their minds) and create them. And as Tlön takes over the world and gains power, it gains more realness and more of its artifacts come into existence - or people just lie about them or pretend they exist and falsify documents to accord with the new party line, and doublethink their way to 'seeing' the new labyrinthine reality forged by their fellow humans.
One might say that _hrönir_, especially, are a savage Orwellian parody of how things go in totalitarian dictatorships: the description of the experiments with the prisoners could as easily be set in Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, where the real story is that on the fourth try, after turning up only the equivalent of fishing for a muddy boot, everyone has figured out that, to satisfy the decrees from above, they need to buy or forge some ancient artifacts of unconvincing antiquity (and so no counter-revolutionary skeptics can be permitted near) and that is how _hrönir_ are discovered. The same way Lysenko manufactured agricultural miracles or innumerable falsifications like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learn_from_Dazhai_in_agricultu... became official policy, doubted only on pain of death.
Those who disagree and wish to maintain their integrity, can only retreat into quietism or 'internal exile', and spend their time on topics with as little political relevance as possible and avoid even publishing (except as samizdat), and let "a scattered dynasty of recluses take over", as it is too late to stop the Tlön revolution, and "the [whole] world [will] be Tlön".
I had always thought that the parts where reality was working according to Tlon rules was evidence that the author was being co-opted. Occasionally this happens in real life when political powers get involved in picking and choosing the outcomes of intellectual disputes - everyone's answers come out to corroborate a fiction, and the real guiding hand is never referred to.
The most widely known example is Lysenkoism. No supporter of that theory ever said they were fabricating data to please the apparatus. An example closer to the one in the story was academic support of Nazi "anthropology."
To me Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is about the tendency of philosophers, and other wordcels, to confuse the structure of language with true metaphysical insights (for example in Other Inquisitions Borges describes the history of philosophy as "a vain museum of distractions and word games"). One example of this, IRL, would be how often, in the history of philosophy and theology, "existence" has been used as a proprety rather than a quantifier, and all of the paradoxes this leads to.
The thought experiment about the nine copper coins is completely obvious to us but if you try to imagine what it would sound like in a language that does not have nouns but only verbs it becomes clear why they would find it paradoxical and resist materialism.
This is a mirror image of what goes on in our world, where materialism is a fairly normal way to understand the world and radical idealist notions like Berkeley's subjective idealism (which is named in the text) are weird.
Borges was always fascinated by platonism, it's a theme in much of his work, and in the postscriptum he's imagining that the world finally latches onto it by espousing Tlon's version of it to the point where Tlon's language is taught in school, cementing its way of thinking in the real world such that materialism will be hard to conceive.
I think that trying to read political messages in Borges is wrong and disrespectful: he stated in many interviews that his stories did not have a message and that he would consider such a thing to be a failure on his part, from Seven Voices: "I’ve done my best to prevent these opinions of mine (which are merely opinions, and may well be superficial) from intruding into what may be called my aesthetic output. (...) If a story or a poem of mine is successful, its success springs from a deeper source than my political views, which may be erroneous and are dictated by circumstances. In my case, my knowledge of what is called political reality is very incomplete."
It is a very different attitude, almost unthinkable, from what we commonly see today, where a work of fiction is only judged on the merits of its political message, but I think it is valid and should be respected. Something which the article fails to do, BTW.
Caught my attention as well. Must be neologism assuming it originated from as a variant of incel, but here focused on deriding people getting their jollies out of the written word ( me:P ). Naturally, I might be wrong. Lets see if the author responds.
that’s bonkers. “philosophers and other wordcels” not only insults Borges but the entire world of philosophy. the arrogance and the nonsense in that phrasing are both off the charts.
Because western philosophy is not a place where you can find arrogant nonsense, right? Philosophers are some of the most arrogant people I've ever met. And I say that with great affection.
One could imagine that the guild called up something it then couldn't put down, but necessarily because people will or prefer it so, but somehow because the world, at least in the story, fundamentally could work this way.
The Wikipedia article discusses how confusing it is to understand the exact position of the story with respect to narrative truth, when the entire story is playing with the idea of what is real and what makes it real, as well as explicitly talking about the idea of fiction coming to life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tl%C3%B6n,_Uqbar,_Orbis_Tertiu...