The Stories We Tell
Our behaviors shape our tales and our tales shape our behaviors
We, the human race, are a group primate species. For something like 96% of our evolutionary history we lived in small hunter-gatherer groups practicing very limited skills we acquired by copying those around us. The biggest technical challenges we faced were all to do with memorization: where to find the fruits and vegetables as each season rolled around, how to hunt animals, and how to nap flint. The biggest cognitive challenges we faced were all to do with competing with each other: who was likely to try to cheat or harm us, who would be a useful ally, who we should placate and who could we bully without fear of retaliation.
When you look at a tribe of baboons you see human nature encapsulated, only minus the clever tools.
As we’re evolved to conform automatically to group norms whatever they happen to be, and as we’ve also evolved to avoid thinking whenever possible because thinking burns precious calories that for most of our evolutionary history were needed to power muscles instead, it’s obvious that the norms of the group will always play the largest role in all of our endeavors.
In fact, we can define civilization as a set of group norms that attempts to mitigate some of the worst effects of our cognitive limitations and…
