For nearly 20 years, I’ve been researching and writing about the human brain as a storyteller. My work has unalterably changed the way I see the human world in general, and myself in particular. It has helped me understand everything from political hatred and religions to cults to the nature of identity and suicidal thought. It has even made sense of my own lifelong struggle with making friends.
Our evolution into Homo narrans, the storytelling animal, is the secret of our success. Like other animals, humans exist in a realm of survival in which we seek sustenance, safety and procreation. But, uniquely, we also live in a second realm, a story world that’s made out of the collective imagination. The human brain has evolved to remix reality and turn it into a narrative. We are made to feel like the underdog heroes of our own lives, surrounded by allies and enemies, pursuing meaningful goals and striving towards imagined happy endings. We have a voice in our head that authors a constantly unfolding autobiography of who we are and what we’re doing. We experience, and remember, the events of our lives in three-act episodes of crisis, struggle, resolution. We think in stories, we talk in stories, we believe in stories, we are stories.
