analyze why we act this way

We should not mistake reality for fiction- we should be able to discern, in what we experience as fiction, the hard kernel of the Real which we are able to sustain only if we fictionalize it... But much more difficult than to denounce/ unmask (what appears as) reality as fiction is to recognize the part of fiction in 'real' reality. We seek to escape not simply the the feeling of unreality, of the artificial virtuality of our lifeworld, but the Real itself which explodes in the guise of uncontrolled hallucinations which start to haunt us once we lose our anchoring in reality.

-Slavoj Zizek, Welcome to the Desert of the Real