How Fiction Built/Builds Our World
Part 1
Stories… fiction… drama and entertainment. Maybe a spot of education too.
These are the things that we superficially get from the storytellers of our species.
In truth though… we get a whole more than that.
Indeed, it is the imagineers of who built the world we live in with the ideas that they sold us.
We find ourselves at a juncture in history when the very future of our planet belongs to the stories we will tell ourselves about reality.
Prepare to see yourself and the world rather differently.
We’re not sure when… but something extraordinary occurred in our human origins… we developed language. Not mere communication, but complex thoughts expressed from one brain into another.
Ours was not the first language – even insects use complex chemistry to communicate; all animals are able to provide levels of warning, encouragement and direction to their fellows using visual cues or chirps; and ours was not the most complex language either – birds and marine mammals (dolphins and whales) have immensely complex songs and clicks – by some measures, more complex than our own.
But human language hit upon deriving complex meanings from relatively few sounds strung together in countless combinations. It was a breakthrough echoed much later again when writing finally developed; when the less flexible pictogram hieroglyphs of later human history gave way to alphabets that, rather than using pictures of words to capture ideas, devised an infinitely more flexible system that strung letters together to make vastly more words than mere pictures could convey.
To show what effect complex articulate language provided to us, let us consider our closest surviving Great Ape cousins, the Chimpanzees. Like humans, Chimps are social animals; relying on group dynamics and cooperation to survive. But, in this, chimps have a problem. In order to cooperate and avoid conflict, each chimp needs to keep track of all the relationships within their group; how each other member ranks in hierarchy, and what alliances are at play at any one time.
Mathematical models show that in a group of 50 individuals, there are 1,250 potential relationships. And, because chimp language can only communicate elementary information, each chimp must personally see what has occurred between other members with his or her own eyes; the chimp that is absent for a short time during which, say, the leader is ousted, cannot know how or why it occurred or who was involved in the coup – so that the potential for group instability or ostracization (of the absent-returning member in this case) is rife.
For this reason; chimp groups (and, presumably, those of our non-talking hominid ancestors or cousins) rarely grow more populous than 50 members. Above 50 members, the group becomes unstable and fractures into 2 new groups.
But complex language introduced a new group dynamic – gossip.
To this day, our human existence is dogged by gossip. But the need for gossip in ancient times gave us the first of many pushes up the mountain from which we now dominate our environment.
Gossip is, generally, negative story sharing of the deeds of others. It is the policeman in an age where no police exist. Gossip can destroy reputations; it can warn everyone as to who in the group is unreliable, dishonest, or otherwise dangerous. Gossip undermines reputation – and, especially in small groups adrift in the wilds, a loss of reputation can be a death sentence; in this regard, gossip can be viewed as a force or tool of natural selection!
But, gossip too has its limits. Mathematical models and correlating or corroborating observational anthropological evidence puts that limit at around 150 individuals.
Even today we see it in our own organizations; a small family business can grow unhindered until it approaches 150 staff – at which time, a crisis occurs: There is simply not enough time and human attention available to rely on chatter to keep tabs of the various hierarchies and necessary flow of relationship information.
Either the group must fracture or something else must give.
In the military, we see an amplified version of what that ‘something’ might be: authoritative structure and ranking hierarchy. Layers of structure: Squads, platoons, companies and battalions – each level of individuals within its number and its superiors who report up a chain to the next level comprising no more than a few dozen individuals; who can easily keep track of and interact with one another within their close-knit group.
So – we see groups of our ancestors from 70,000 or so years ago increasing in size as their ability to manage and organize themselves internally improved through more competent and complex communication language.
When we get to around 30,000 years ago – a date that tantalizingly coincides with the obliteration of the last Neanderthals – we see the evidence that language has reached a level of competence and nuance that includes ‘fictious language’.
Yes… fictious language… that’s not a typo; it’s a thought, a thought that Part 2 (22 Feb) of this essay will reveal.
Stay tuned.