Stories & Species

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We owe our success as a species to stories.

So says Yuval Noah Harari, in his book ‘Sapiens’. By way of explanation he points to the curious fact that whilst human beings have existed in their current form - biologically-speaking - for around 70,000 years, it is only in the last few thousand that we have experienced the ‘cognitive revolution’. 

But I don’t think Yuval’s account of stories and civilisation is quite right – or rather, I don’t think he is quite right about why stories are important.

Stories get a bad rap. Often they are synonymous with ‘fiction’. Like the shanty-towns in the shadow of a castle, they proliferate outside the walls of the rationalist edifice. So why are they so important?

‘Climate change’ is a story. ‘Human rights’ are a story and – yes – ‘Hansel & Gretel’ is a story.

Stories allow us to care about things that aren’t right in front of us. For example, climate change is not a fiction – and its effects can be quite tangible – but it is fundamentally an abstract concept, just as are human rights.

Until recently we cared about precisely the same things other creatures cared about – warmth, food, status. Stories enabled us to care about things that were not immediate. These stories endowed our behaviour with new sets of significance – an act could be legal or illegal – and changed our behaviour beyond recognition. The story of a demi-god, come to earth, is why I have a tree covered in small lights in my living room.

So I think Yuval is almost there – he understands that stories enable us to build a culture around things that are fictional or abstract. But this explanation is empty without care. Stories allow us to care about new things – things that are abstract but for which we may even be prepared to lay down our lives. Not merely things that might happen in future – but stories about things more important than ourselves.

Like all creatures, we are caring machines. Stories give us new things to care about.


Post Script:

So why don't animals tell stories? People are inclined to think that it is because storytelling is a complicated thing - but the bee example suggests not. Certainly deceptive stories (the kind of thing Daniel Schmachtenberger worries about) are a more sophisticated trick, requiring a 'theory of mind' - and maybe this provides a clue.

Perhaps storytelling requires unusually high levels of altruism. Bees, for example, regularly sacrifice themselves for the hive, forgoing their opportunity to reproduce for the good of the collective. Humans are sometimes observed doing something similar - for example religious celibacy.

Perhaps storytelling is an act of extra-ordinary altruism. Consider a simple example: 'there is a bear in that cave'. Assuming this is a truthful story, it may well have come at considerable cost. Relaying this story could well mean the difference between life and death for another individual. Only an exceptionally altruistic creature would willingly share this kind of information with non-relatives. And for relatives? There are other ways to share information, such as showing and warning for example.

It may be that Neanderthals were both stronger and smarter than us - but died out because they were less altruistic, and consequently less likely to develop stories. The fossil record suggests they tended to hunt in smaller groups.