Our Myths: Imagined Realities of Homo Sapiens

Every human being has certain myths about which he or she believes despite a lack of proof or scientific data. These myths might also be referred to as imagined realities. Unlike other animals on the planet, we can discuss entire categories of entities that we have never seen, felt, or smelled.

A man in his imagined reality

There have been three revolutions in human history. The Cognitive Revolution, or the First Revolution, began approximately 70,000 years ago. The second revolution, known as the 'Agricultural Revolution,' began roughly 12,000 years ago, and the third, known as the 'Scientific Revolution,' began only about 500 years ago.

Legends, myths, gods, and religions are thought to have originally appeared around the period of the Cognitive Revolution. Although many animals, including early human species, could send signals, they were not as advanced or capable as Homo Sapiens, whose most distinguishing attribute was their ability to form or discuss fictions.

Humans are best at forming fictions

In other words, only Homo Sapiens has the ability to speak about things that do not exist and believe in a variety of inconceivable things. We can never persuade a monkey to give us a banana by promising him unlimited bananas after his death in monkey heaven. But we can do so with humans because practically every religion contains the concept of hell and heaven, which encourages people to do well in order to live a nice life after death.

These imagined realities have affected humans in both positive and negative ways. Someone who no longer believes in these beliefs may point to the consequences of these imagined realities or falsehoods, stating that they can be deceptive, baseless, and distracting. Furthermore, they may claim that there is no need to waste our valuable time praying to non-existent spirits when we could spend it foraging, fighting, and fornicating.

Nonetheless, we must not underestimate the power of these fictions or myths to bring people together and build societal cooperation. We may choreograph common myths such as those about our religion, our great history, and modern state nationalism. These misconceptions allow us to work in huge groups. It enables us to work in incredibly flexible ways with a large number of strangers. Whether we know someone or not, if we share these shared beliefs, we tend to cooperate with that person because we create a warm spot for him or her since he or she believes in the same myths as we do.

Without these imagined realities, cooperation among Homo Sapiens would be impossible. Although gossip enabled Homo sapiens to create larger and more stable groupings following the Cognitive Revolution, it had limitations. According to a sociological study, the maximum "natural" size of a gossiping group is approximately 150 people. More than 150 people are too many for most people to know intimately or gossip about effectively.

Homo Sapiens can cooperate at large

Even today, a key threshold in human organization is somewhere near this magic number. Below this threshold, communities, businesses, social networks, and military units can sustain themselves primarily through close acquaintance and rumour-mongering. A platoon of thirty troops, or even a company of a hundred soldiers, can work well based on intimate interactions, with a minimum of official discipline. However, once the 150-person mark is reached, things cannot continue in the same manner. You cannot run a division of thousands of soldiers in the same way that you would a platoon.

Now the question is, how did Homo Sapiens overcome this vital threshold and establish cities with tens of thousands of people and empires ruling hundreds of millions?

You may have guessed the answer already: the birth of fiction. A large number of strangers can work together successfully if they believe in similar stories. Any large-scale human cooperation, whether in a modern state, a medieval church, an old city, or an archaic tribe, is founded on shared stories that live only in people's collective imaginations. Churches are based on common religious myths. Judicial systems are based on popular legal myths.

However, none of these things exist outside of the stories that people create and share with one another. There are no gods in the cosmos, no nations, no money, no human rights, no laws, and no justice beyond human imagination.

For example, priests and sorcerers have created gods and demons throughout history, and thousands of French curés were still creating Christ’s body every Sunday in the parish churches. It all revolved around telling stories and convincing people to believe them. In the case of the French curés, the crucial story was that of Christ’s life and death as told by the Catholic Church. According to this story, if a Catholic priest dressed in his sacred garments solemnly said the right words at the right moment, mundane bread and wine turned into God’s flesh and blood. The priest exclaimed ‘Hoc est corpus meum!’ (Latin for ‘This is my body!’) and hocus pocus – the bread turned into Christ’s flesh. Seeing that the priest had properly and assiduously observed all the procedures, millions of devout French Catholics behaved as if God really existed in the consecrated bread and wine.

A priest convincing a man

It is not as simple as it may seem to orchestrate and then convey stories. The challenge is not in conveying the story, but in convincing everyone else to believe in it. Much of history revolves around the question of how one convinces millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations. Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals. Consider how difficult it would have been to establish states, churches, or legal systems if we could only talk about things that actually exist, like rivers, trees, and lions.

People have learned to weave myths over time, and as a result, they have created an immensely sophisticated network of stories. Academics refer to the things that individuals generate through this network of stories as "fictions," "social constructions," or "imagined realities."

An imagined reality is not a lie. I lie when I say there is a lion by the river when I know there is not. Unlike lying, an imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this collective conviction endures, the imagined reality has influence in the world. 

A man in his duality

Sapiens have been living in a dual reality since the Cognitive Revolution. On the one hand, rivers, trees, and lions are objectively real; on the other, gods, nations, and corporations are imagined to be real. As time passed, the imagined world grew in power, to the point that the survival of rivers, forests, and lions is now dependent on the grace of imagined entities such as gods, governments, and businesses.

Source: Sapiens By Yuval Noah Harari (Israeli Medievalist & Writer)