Beware The Easy Narrative

Fairy stories are for children. Reality requires a more adult mindset

Image credit: Learnmodo Newtonic

All the horrors of the world have been created by people convinced they are acting righteously. History is full of barbarisms and inhumanities, all perpetrated by those who imagined themselves to be a force for good.

Although fiction presents us with scheming villains in underground lairs, stroking felines while dreaming up nefarious schemes of evil, reality is far simpler and also far more complex. The human brain is not evolved to handle more than the most rudimentary cognitive tasks and so we reliably fail to understand the world around us, and equally never grasp the probable consequences of our actions. The world is therefore not full of Iagos and Richard IIIs, self-consciously devoting themselves to villainy. The world is full of inadequate halfwits blustering and bumbling incoherently, utterly unconscious of the import of their words and deeds.

And practically every single one of them thinks themselves the hero of the tale.

In the real world, we are not conveniently divided into good and bad. There are no useful conventions such as spandex superhero costumes or even white versus black hats. Each person is a confused admixture of impulses, capabilities, and idiocies, and for the most part people simply…