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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 ignores any possibility of         
    random 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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