I can trade with you in good faith a dozen bananas for thirty five rupees, in the order of twenty, ten, and five rupees notes; the same deal wouldn’t go in as good faith with, say, a chimpanzee.
By the above statement, what am I getting at? The incapability of the chimpanzee to comprehend a fair deal, given the current market for bananas? Or at the absurdity of the fact that the human would easily give away a rich source of nutrition for a few pieces of paper? Perhaps both, if we are looking for a single dimensional answer. Although, in less derogatory terms towards the chimp, there might be more to it.
While accounting for the swift rise of humans from monkeys who only ever understood food and procreation (Homo habilis) to the indisputable masters of this world who can wipe out entire civilisations with the stroke of a pen (Homo sapiens), we often forget to consider our almost incomprehensible comprehensibility for fiction, and stories.
Stories, contrary to popular belief, are not confined to children’s fairy tales and thriller novels. Stories are nothing but anything not real- not untrue, but unreal. Objectively speaking, consider the Bible, the Vedas, the Quran, or any other religious text for that matter, and ask yourself: What happens when you stop believing in any one of those? What are they, then, other than mere stories, written by mortal writers, waiting to be believed again by someone else, just like the fairy tales and the novels, which lost their positions of popular interest? Such a bold remark, of course, is not limited to religious texts. The law, the constitution, banks, stocks, corporations, nations; all of them, in the raw, natural and real world, are irrelevant, if not for the belief of people in them. Pakistan was not formed because the earth summoned gigantic cracks upon its face that separated the landmass of the Indian subcontinent forming the current Line of Control; it did because a guy named Jinnah effectively radicalised a huge group of people into not believing in the idea, or the story, of a unified Islamic-Hinduist state, with Islam and Hinduism being, as discussed above, stories in themselves.
The effects of the partition, stemmed from layers upon layers of stories, need not be discussed. If tomorrow a group of very wealthy shareholders begin to distrust the story told by a huge corporation in regards to its release of a product, and the corporation goes bankrupt with thousands of lay-offs, the mere upliftment of belief in the story will be quite prominent in the real lives of the employees, as they struggle to get food on the table. If a ruling political party makes questionable decisions in policy making and backs it up with unconvincing reasons- stories people no longer want to believe in, the government changes the next term, and so do the policy structures that directly or indirectly affect the lives of people. Believing in the innovative story of a start-up entrepreneur might convince us into buying a stake in the company, and, by chance if that company were to succeed, we would become quite wealthy ourselves, without even realising that ‘wealth’ in itself is a story told by the bank to compensate for the management of actual resources, being produced by the company! Therefore, it is quite believable that stories that we do believe in have a fairly recognisable effect on our lives.
The chimpanzee might be superior to the Homo sapiens in sheer strength, but it certainly doesn’t understand how bargaining works, and how the thirty five rupees could buy a larger number of bananas in a less posh area. Now, after all that being stated bare, how do we now define stories, and more importantly, are we ready to believe my story about stories? The truth is, it doesn’t matter. As I see it, stories evolved along with human consciousness, as a tool, along with the real tools, for survival and advancement towards higher degrees of sustainability.
A single Homo sapiens does not stand a chance against a lion. A group of five Homo sapiens does not stand a chance against a pride of five lions, either. But a tribe of hundred Homo sapiens against a pride of- nope, a pride of hundred lions, naturally, cannot sustain. They simply cannot do away with slaughtering each other after the population reaches a certain number.
A tribe is, by all accounts, a story. A story agreed upon and adopted by a large number of people, and practised daily in accordance.Imagine this: Ramu and Dev are part of a tribe. Ramu is a farmer, he farms. If Dev steals Ramu’s wheat, it’s a crime. The crime is analysed by the landowner, whose word on it is final. The idea of the identity of the farmer, the morality of the crime, and the authority of the landlord, all comes from stories of hunger, chaos, and order, passed onto generations through generations over the years of evolution. The fact that these ideas didn’t become a part of the tribe member’s mere instinct but stayed in their head as a separate judgement for the real world, indicates how strong human consciousness is in comparison to any other species.
Such tribes evolve into towns, towns into cities, cities into kingdoms, and kingdoms, if given enough time, into nations. The ideals of identity, morality, and authority grow more complex, intricate, and dense. A misunderstanding of such ideals, or stories, may cause oppression within the tribe, and a newfound understanding may cause rebellions and wars- examples need not be given; history is nothing but that- a man, or a group, understanding flawed ideals, and overthrowing authority, and rewriting the stories on which morality and identity revolve- Hitler did it, and so does the ruling government, maybe with different intentions.
Nations further construct more intricate stories of parliaments, banks, et cetera, to further smoothen the functioning of society, built on other, broader stories. Israel has the broader story of Judaism, the Vatican is all about Roman Catholicism, the United States follows capitalism, while Russia still cannot get over pseudo-communism. Within these nations, these broader ideas cement themselves into solid values; values worth war and lives. Much of Shylock’s hatred for Antonio stemmed not from Antonio spitting on him in real life, but from the difference of stories, stories of Christianity and Judaism, that they believed in.
To imagine such nations to exist at the helm of other species, say, chimpanzees, or lions, and it sounds like something out of a fantasy. Animals, in the simplest terms, are not capable of coordinating the way Homo sapiens do. That’s how we beat them to the Agricultural Revolution, and that is how the chimp who wouldn’t trade the banana isn’t even remotely close to starting something like Google or the Internet.
We define our stories, and our stories define us. We stop believing in them, and they hold no weight. We can live by them, we may live against some of them. But it is at the moment when humanity loses its grasp on its stories, when the dominant order of Homo sapiens breaks down.
Now that we know what stories on a more evolutionary, economic, political, and philosophical scale are, how does it affect you? Well, it doesn’t. You have at least completed eight years of education if you are able to read this (such a statement can only be invalidated if you, the reader, is gifted; good for you!), and already believe in enough stories, sustainable ones for that matter, that you have quite an edge over a chimpanzee or a lion or a whale of your age, at least when it comes to coordination. Therefore, there is no use in bickering now over a fictional barter system of currency being used over providing you with life long training which wouldn’t even help you win a one-on-one with a kangaroo- but don’t complain yet, for kangaroos are not very noisy in the Australian Parliament!
What you do know now is that much of your life isn’t the absolute truth, predetermined and set in stone. You choose which stories to believe in, and which to adopt.
