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Stories have a core role in human cultures and societies. One can say that without stories, we wouldn’t even be human.
Yuval Noah Harari argues in his book Sapiens that human history is inseparable from human-told stories.
Harari says that the most important pillars of a human civilisation are the common stories that make it possible for bigger groups to cooperate. These stories can come in the form of nation states, religions, laws, money, etc.
Stories make it possible for us, to trust and cooperate with people we have no personal experiences with, but we perceive them trustworthy, because we believe in the same stories. Being able to cooperate in large groups had set us aside from other monkeys and put us on a way different trajectory.
Related
- Harari says that a good way to tell apart real things from imaginary things is: can the thing be destroyed? (Source?)
- An example of how we tell different stories about God: 4a1-harari-calls-it-a-magic-trick-how-believers-swap-versions-of-god-so-god-can-serve-their-agenda
- Human thinking is story-based rather than facts-based. 5b1a-humans-think-in-stories-rather-than-in-facts-and-every-group-has-its-own-tales
- Stories can be condensed to labels that can either boost cooperation or create instant distrust, discrimination, disconnect between strangers. 5b1a1-labels-can-help-both-to-connect-and-to-disconnect
- In the Catholic Church, if one wants to be certified as a saint, one needs to have a popular story, a meme about them.
- Probably the most prevalent example of Catholic memes is the legend of Saint Nicholas
- The Devil’s Advocate term comes from the process of a saint being officially acknowledged. The case of the saint needs to be argued, and the one speaking “for the other side” is called the Devil’s Advocate.