.

It has been proposed that what makes humans different from other animals is that we are rational and thinking beings. But we are not alone in that quality. Numerous animals, some not very closely related to us by the great sifting of evolution appear to rationally solve problems to achieve intended goals.

I think one of the very important ways that humans are unique is that we are narrative animals. We can’t be certain that other animals do not have stories that they pass to one another but the evidence for it is quite slim. It is what humans do, we endlessly craft stories to explain the world. At one time those stories imagined beings of cosmic powers and childish desires to explain the seasons, the weather, and why life at times is glorious and sometimes cruel.

The trouble is that we love stories so much that the inherent attraction they display draws us away from reality. Every con man is a storyteller, every politician is a storyteller, giving stories a far greater consequence than mere entertainment.

Seductive narratives blind us to reality. Once we have accepted a narrative as truth the actual truth becomes less important. Narratives from people we trust, the counter narratives our allies spin about our enemies, and the narrative we tell ourselves all bend and distort our ability to see what is actually there.

It is said that every villain is the hero of their own story and that is true, but it elides an important element, that the story they tell themselves where they are heroic is as fabricated as their heroism.

The NAZI’s vile, evil, and murderous campaign across Europe could not have existed without the false, defamatory and insidious story at the heart of antisemitism. The NAZIs could only see themselves as heroes in a story about an insidious global conspiracy. That is one reason why I despise stories that use deep and vast conspiracies as part of their world building. They are a powerful form of storytelling that makes a random, chaotic world comprehensible but always at the cost of some invented cabal that all too easily can been seen in the ‘real’ world. Neo-Nazis adopted a love for Carpenter’s They Livebecause they saw the vast conspiracy that Carpenter constructed as his satire on capitalism to actually be about their imagined global fight with their imagined foes. The trope of the vast hidden conspiracy used for aliens is all too easily repurposed for any outgroup.

This is the danger of narrative. Narratives can inspire killing. Everyone practices storytelling and every need to be aware of the power that they unwittingly possess.