Shared myths - the foundation of society

One of Homo Sapiens’ most powerful skills is our ability to work together and strategize on a larger scale than any other animal. It is believed that this is what helped us edge out our other hominid competitors.

Why are we able to collaborate better than other animals?

It seems we have a unique ability to communicate abstract concepts using specialized language centers in our cerebral cortex. We are able to communicate concepts like possibilities, flow of time. For example “yesterday there was a lion near the river, and I saw it go near the mountain. It is possible you might encounter it near the hill today” vs “lion near river, dont go”. This way we can share more nuanced information and benefit from each other’s knowledge and coordinate better at greater distances and at a larger scale. 

(Thanks to S. Ramachandran’s The Tell Tale Brain for giving me a really interesting primer into the brain, introducing me to Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas their quirks and sharing theories on how they must have evolved)

This ability also extends to creating shared myths. When you reach a scale where you cant see or interact with someone else, where it is impossible for all individuals to have direct access to all other individuals, shared myths can hold them together. We all agree to believe in some stories, so we have a common framework to work together towards a larger goal.

Most of the shared myths I brought up earlier - capitalism, liberalism, democracy, independence, fairness, tolerance, justice, equality, religion - all serve the purpose of enabling unprecedented scale of cooperation. They form the basis for our modern day countries and economies.

So shared myths aren’t just some inconvenient by-product of society we have to deal with, it seems perfectly plausible that they forms the basis of human superiority.

This is a rather sobering thought for me. I place a lot of importance on truth and reality. But if our entire society is based on and flourishes on imagination, what is reality?

I take solace in one of my favourite quotes -
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”