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STORIES_DIVERGE

                                             June 21, 2018


Neil Gaiman likes to tell the story that
the great stories always return to their
true form.

He tells stories about tales persisting over
millenia...

            http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/jun/09/how-stories-last/

    This ignores the large body of work studying the
    way stories change-- a popular folk tale is likely
    to vary across regions and ages.  If we think we
    know about The Greek Myths, it's because of later
    standardization on a single version, of which there
    have been many... the presumption that the one that
    survived must be the True Story is just a presumption,
    a kind of social darwinism that writes out of the
    story the possibility of accident.

    Things evolve over time, but the idea that the
    products of evolution that we see at present are
    necessarily in a stable state, and the idea that
    evolution has converged on the best possible thing--
    that remains very dubious.



Gaiman regards stories as carriers for
important information, mnemonic devices for
entire cultures.

    They also might be regarded as filters:

      The truth that doesn't fit the
      tale must be discarded.



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