Interesting. I don't think I follow your examples, but here's my attempt to read it: It sounds like you may be using the term "real" to be mean specifically something like "tangible." Like, Santa isn't tangible because he's a fictitious character. Courage isn't tangible, it is a term that refers to an idea. It can't be isolated, bottled. And likewise, society isn't tangible either. To reference my earlier example "emergent properties" isn't tangible. Like "courage," it is a term that refers to an idea. Many things can be described by it. And the specific issue you (maybe?) take is with ascribing causality to non-tangible things, in some sense. For example, "emergent properties" didn't knock me over at the beach, a wave did. Or, the answer to "how did you defeat the dragon?" isn't "You had courage," -- it is "You stuck your sword through it's heart which ceased blood circulation and killed it." Those are the tangible actions that led to the outcome.
And that is true and a useful analysis in a lot of circumstances, like when you're asking questions of "how?" To take this back to the ancestor comment, if you're looking at "how did this wheelchair ramp get built?" you can describe the chain of events from the creation of a law to the construction of the ramp and all the individuals involved along the way making decisions and doing actions. And that is a good and useful analysis. Some tangible entity called "society" is not involved in that chain. And I think that might be your original point. And yes, that's accurate, in that kind of analysis.
So now, take that chain of events, and multiply it by, I dunno, a very large number; hell, infinity. Every outcome and the chain of individuals and actions that led up to it. How do we study this? How to we increase our understanding without having to treat every single outcome and every chain of events completely independently? You probably see where this is going already... :) We could treat every possible combination of coin tosses as an infinite set of independent events. What someone flipping a coin 10 times has to do with someone flipping a coin 1000 times isn't anything tangible - the flips, the individuals who make them, and the outcomes are independent. So... shrug and move on? Nope. We study probability. It helps us describe WHY - if 1000 people each flip a coin 1000 times, most will have a near 50/50 split heads/tails. Probability isn't tangible, but it certainly is real.
My revised argument then is: society is a concept like probability. It is like probability distributions that come from an ever-changing sea of individual opinions, predispositions, and actions. We can measure certain parts of it at points in time and review historical outcomes, and develop theories about why certain patterns are more common, certain outcomes more likely, and use this to enhance our decision making and understanding of the behaviors and tendencies of large groups of people. So to say "society isn't real" is true in the sense of tangibility, but also myopic - and like saying "probability isn't real, there are only outcomes."
And that is true and a useful analysis in a lot of circumstances, like when you're asking questions of "how?" To take this back to the ancestor comment, if you're looking at "how did this wheelchair ramp get built?" you can describe the chain of events from the creation of a law to the construction of the ramp and all the individuals involved along the way making decisions and doing actions. And that is a good and useful analysis. Some tangible entity called "society" is not involved in that chain. And I think that might be your original point. And yes, that's accurate, in that kind of analysis.
So now, take that chain of events, and multiply it by, I dunno, a very large number; hell, infinity. Every outcome and the chain of individuals and actions that led up to it. How do we study this? How to we increase our understanding without having to treat every single outcome and every chain of events completely independently? You probably see where this is going already... :) We could treat every possible combination of coin tosses as an infinite set of independent events. What someone flipping a coin 10 times has to do with someone flipping a coin 1000 times isn't anything tangible - the flips, the individuals who make them, and the outcomes are independent. So... shrug and move on? Nope. We study probability. It helps us describe WHY - if 1000 people each flip a coin 1000 times, most will have a near 50/50 split heads/tails. Probability isn't tangible, but it certainly is real.
My revised argument then is: society is a concept like probability. It is like probability distributions that come from an ever-changing sea of individual opinions, predispositions, and actions. We can measure certain parts of it at points in time and review historical outcomes, and develop theories about why certain patterns are more common, certain outcomes more likely, and use this to enhance our decision making and understanding of the behaviors and tendencies of large groups of people. So to say "society isn't real" is true in the sense of tangibility, but also myopic - and like saying "probability isn't real, there are only outcomes."
Hows that?