New stories for hard times
In a world without dragons to slay, are we destined to just fight windmills?
Humans, as well as all other species, were forged in a fierce battle for existence and survival. Our brain is a machine for solving problems, overcoming difficulties. We spend our whole lives solving problems. And if everything around us is arranged quite well for us and there are few natural difficulties, we will be solving invented ones. It will take no less energy, but it will be of little use.
However, we can, through the power of collective stories, create problems that are difficult and then solve them in the right way. It will make life better. Perhaps not now, but in the future. Not for us personally, but for humanity or even other species too. The right story will help us rejoice in such endeavors for the future now. It turns out our contemporary times lacks big ideals, something to strive for that doesn't feel like everything is fine, but not for the sake of contrived pseudo battles.
Again and again I come back that Don Quixote is a very important book. There's a desire to defeat monsters that translates into fighting windmills and fouling everything you touch. The modern world has become so filled with new stories, books, movies, etc. that important books that reveal deep philosophical dilemmas have been drowned in them. The big cults that eventually overwhelmed the earth in blood and wars were just so contagious because they showed this vector - the construction of a bright future.
But then maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we shouldn't look to that kind of story. Or should we, but more carefully? Or is our whole world now a disembodiment of such a new history? Or is it a struggle for immobility that could become one? Achieving world prosperity with UBI? Or will such global prosperity only make things worse? Or is it necessary to have different phases in life - easy/difficult?
Or am I being silly again?
Tags: philosophy, psychology, human-nature, stories, meaning