4: How Do Stories Divide? With Lawrence Scott

You're listening to Mythic Space.

Mythic Space.

Mythic Space.

If this was a story, we would stand at the edge of the forest with trepidation, knowing that if we want to find the truth, we must go forward into the dark and mysterious depths.

The trees would begin to whisper warnings of impending danger.

What is a story? It's part imagination, part memory, part truth, part wish.

Sometimes they're facts, sometimes they aren't facts.

But it's a picture.

It's necessary that there are two people involved in that, at least, you know? So it's like, I can create a story, but unless there is someone to receive my story, it doesn't exist.

It's gone.

It's for nobody.

He says,

Yeah, we are.

We're waking up to stories.

It opens us physiologically, neurologically.

We suddenly become very open, so I suppose we become receiving, receptive.

Yeah, the story's our safe place, isn't it? Story is on so many levels, where we can escape reality, where we can explore reality, where we can take a moment out of reality.

And it's something we've done for our whole existence, really.

Who knows when the first story was told?

especially in hunter-gatherer societies and then also in our modern society, we get a chance to stop and switch off and be together, commune, which was probably really important for establishing bonds as well.

I remember in Sapiens, he talks about in small hunter-gatherer communities of under 150 members or...

It was probably very effective in that.

But then it's kind of interesting how story is also able to hold millions of people together under what he refers to as imagined reality.

So whether it's a faith or maybe following a, what do you call it, like a label, like a fashion label or a car model.

It's kind of interesting how it's a so flexible story if it was seen as its own creature.

You're listening to Mythic Space.

Mythic Space.

Mythic Space.

If this was a story, we would stand at the edge of the forest with trepidation, knowing that if we want to find the truth, we must go forward into the dark and mysterious depths.

The trees would begin to whisper warnings of impending danger.

What is a story? It's part imagination, part memory, part truth, part wish.

Sometimes they're facts, sometimes they aren't facts.

But it's a picture.

It's necessary that there are two people involved in that, at least, you know? So it's like, I can create a story, but unless there is someone to receive my story, it doesn't exist.

It's gone.

It's for nobody.

He says,

Yeah, we are.

We're waking up to stories.

It opens us physiologically, neurologically.

We suddenly become very open, so I suppose we become receiving, receptive.

Yeah, the story's our safe place, isn't it? Story is on so many levels, where we can escape reality, where we can explore reality, where we can take a moment out of reality.

And it's something we've done for our whole existence, really.

Who knows when the first story was told?

especially in hunter-gatherer societies and then also in our modern society, we get a chance to stop and switch off and be together, commune, which was probably really important for establishing bonds as well.

I remember in Sapiens, he talks about in small hunter-gatherer communities of under 150 members or...

It was probably very effective in that.

But then it's kind of interesting how story is also able to hold millions of people together under what he refers to as imagined reality.

So whether it's a faith or maybe following a, what do you call it, like a label, like a fashion label or a car model.

It's kind of interesting how it's a so flexible story if it was seen as its own creature.