Chapter 3: Superorganism
Will Storr, award-winning journalist and author of The Science of Storytelling and A Story is a Deal, has spent decades researching the links between storytelling, the human condition and our identities. In our new interview series, we speak to him to uncover how we can harness the power of our storytelling brains and unlock the full power of the story – in changing beliefs, driving action and achieving extraordinary results. Here, he discusses the notion of the superorganism.
Never Miss A Story
Read the transcript of the film:
The core function of storytelling is to create a sense of shared reality. Humans are these highly cooperative apes – we’re almost part ape, part ant.
Because we still have those tribal, collective brains, story is a persuasive technology that sucks individual minds into it and persuades them to become a functional member of a human group.
“Everywhere we go in the modern world, we create modern versions of tribes. A political movement, a football team, a religion, a cult – all human collectives are superorganisms.”
Will Storr on storytelling
Story fuses individual human brains together into one superorganism. Imagine lots of individuals going into a cinema: they stop thinking about their own story, their own lives, their own self, and instead they all tune into the same narrative that they’re seeing on the cinema screen.
The hunter-gatherer tribe is the original superorganism. Everywhere we go in the modern world, we create modern versions of tribes. A political movement, a football team, a religion, a cult – all human collectives are superorganisms. A business is an archetypal example of a human collective – all focused on the same goals, the same obstacles, the same happy ending.
In order to make that superorganism work, you have to have a compelling story that everybody can sign up to, tune into, and that can motivate everyone who has individual parts to play in pursuing the same goal as one.
Get Will Storr’s new book A Story is a Deal here.
