Chapter Content
Okay, so, like, this is about... how we're all storytelling animals, basically. And it starts with this crazy story about a cow. Seriously.
So, there's this cow, right? Born in Israel, and get this – she was completely red. Like, bright red. Now, you might be thinking, "Okay, cute cow, so what?" But, hold on, because this cow, named Melody, could have, like, started a whole war in the Middle East. I know, it sounds totally bonkers, right?
See, in Orthodox Judaism, there's this thing about rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. It's a huge deal, like, end-of-days, Messiah-coming kind of deal. But, uh, the Temple Mount where it's supposed to be built? It's got, um, Muslim holy sites on it. So, some people think those sites have to be, you know, gone before the Temple can be rebuilt. Which, obviously, would be a massive problem.
But here's the really weird part. To even *start* building, they need to purify themselves, right? And the way to do that? A red heifer. A perfectly red cow, without a single blemish, who has never been, like, yoked. And this cow, Melody, seemed to be it. If she stayed red until she was three, boom, time to start building and, potentially, blowing things up.
So, naturally, everyone got super excited. But then, ugh, a little white spot appeared on her tail. Just like that, dream over. But imagine if it hadn’t! Imagine if that tail had stayed red. Someone, somewhere, probably would’ve tried to ignite the whole thing. Seriously, we might have avoided a global religious war by a *hair*!
And the crazy thing is, this whole red heifer thing might be based on a, like, mistranslation. Some scholars think they should be looking for a yellow or brown cow instead!
But anyway, so why this crazy cow story? Well, it shows how much we rely on beliefs, and how, like, random things can influence those beliefs and, therefore, our actions. We like to think we're all rational, making decisions based on facts, right? But really, we're driven by, you know, the “why” – our beliefs.
And those beliefs are, like, constantly swayed by the arbitrary, the accidental. Think about it. You know, like, rational choice theory, which tries to explain how we make decisions, it just doesn't really capture how messy humans are. It imagines us as, like, these bipedal calculators, weighing pros and cons perfectly.
But, come on! We're impulsive! We're emotional! We're swayed by, like, irrationality, faith, and, you know, belief. And we often act against our own self-interest. Like, there are people who spend, you know, fortunes on elaborate tombs for their families, even when they don't have much money. But it makes sense within their, like, belief system.
It is why a more moderate version of rational choice theory, called "bounded rational choice theory," has become more prominent. This theory suggests that our decision-making is not perfect and that we do not know all of the information. So, instead of being optimized, we find one that is "good enough".
Even modern neuroscience makes it clear that only, like, a tiny bit of our decisions are conscious. Most of it's autopilot, right? And it can be impacted by not just our brains, but even by the microbes in our guts.
And this is why it is important to analyze thought that goes beyond, like, empirical rationality and enters the realm of mysticism. Mystical belief drives a significant amount of human behavior.
We’re, you know, the storytelling animal. Our brains are wired for narrative. We automatically fill in gaps and create stories, even when they're not really there. It's called narrative bias. And, you know, it's so automatic that writers can exploit it. You know, that whole story about Hemingway supposedly writing a novel in just six words? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Boom.
So, like, these stories aren't just entertainment. They drive us to act. Sometimes, they're even the difference between life and death. Remember the tsunami in 2004? The Moken people, who are ocean nomads, they survived because they had a story passed down through generations about a wave that eats people. They knew the signs, like the cicadas going silent, and they got to higher ground.
So, yeah, stories shape events. We pretend that they're separate from, you know, reality, but they're not. Humans are the economy, humans navigate the world through narratives. Narrative shapes the world.
But the trick is measuring it creates narratives!
And, as Kurt Vonnegut, the author, showed, most human stories follow certain patterns. Good or bad things happen to the character, and their narrative moves, often, from bad to good.
And this shows that we crave narrative. We like expectations in the stories. One study found that shows that produce narrative moral justice, where the good people triumph, have higher TV ratings.
Conspiracy theories use narrative bias, too, by taking unrelated data and making it seem as though there is a story.
So what does all this mean? Well, it means that understanding the world is way messier than we think. Beliefs are very important. And, you know, that's a good thing. Because a world with uniform beliefs would be, like, boring and, you know, probably dystopian. So while, yeah, I hope that the ashes of another red heifer don't start a war, I'm glad to live in this wild, unpredictable universe where stories shape our lives. It’s just the way we are.