A Story of Stories

Not good. So the Johnsons come up with a plan.

Imagination allows you to consider an outlandish conspiracy theory—reason allows you to reject it as truth.

First, their primal motivations are super complex. On top of all the standard animal desires, humans are incentivized by all kinds of weird Snausages and electric fences. They crave self-esteem and want to avoid shame. They yearn for praise and acceptance and detest loneliness or embarrassment. They pine for meaning and fulfillment and they fear re... See more

Primal Motivations + Environment = Behavior

But with humans, things get more complicated.

Values and morals have the power to override a human’s innate drives. Where traits like honesty, integrity, generosity, propriety, respect, loyalty, or kindness are valued, people will behave differently than where they’re not.

So let’s unpack this.

Delusion is what happens when our reason bouncer fails as the gatekeeper to our beliefs—when our imagination is stronger than our judgment. It might be the most universal human quality. And it adds a whole other component to the environment portion of our behavior equation.

When a loose tribe held together by weak glue grows bigger and bigger, it also gets looser and looser until it can’t hold itself together anymore, and it splinters.This imposes a natural ceiling on human giant size—and therefore on human power itself.Except I’m currently sitting in an eight-million-person city that’s inside of a 325-million-person ... See more