Kyle’s Reviews > The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 67 of 272
The subtle shift from evolutionary biology to neuroscience is almost imperceptible, and yet the science being performed exclusively on other animals on behalf of human minds still have readers, watchers and listeners lighting up like a Christmas tree when engaged in the protagonist's problem. Gottschall sum it up susinctly with my favourite phrase so far: "Fiction is an ancient virtual reality technology..." (p. 59).
— Jan 11, 2015 12:46AM
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Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is on page 199 of 272
Two comforting conclusions to be drawn from the last chapter: novels will not die out entirely (although it would be a better place with a few less hundred million movie tie-in books) and that the holodeck will eventually become a storytelling machine, unless reality tv somehow gets the technology for Huxley's 'feelies' up and running beforehand. Gottschall celebrates the potential of the virtual world to make it so.
— Jan 15, 2015 11:55AM
Kyle
is on page 176 of 272
This chapter provided about 40% of the sociological insight for the Cracked Podcast and even some innocuous obscenities to match the banter between David Wong and Jack O'Brien. It's all there: false memories, Bush seeing the first 9/11 plane crash, planted ideas about being lost in a mall or riding on a hot air balloon. Did Gottschall get the information out first and Cracked didn't acknowledge him or he listens too?
— Jan 14, 2015 08:50PM
Kyle
is on page 155 of 272
Pop culture maven Adolfus made a political career for himself and most of Europe burned because of his Wagnerian inspiration, but nevertheless he was on to something important about the fictional world: whether it was modelling his moustache after Charlie Chaplin, finding mass media as a nation-wide stage or acting out the operatic heroes, he stumbled his way to infamy when in other multiverses he's simply an artist.
— Jan 13, 2015 06:29PM
Kyle
is on page 138 of 272
Going from Dawkins' virus of the mind to McLuhan's global village, the things that bind a community together is a good story, whether or not they are morally right or wrong. Gottschall gives careful consideration to the evolutionary necessity of religious grouping, adding a line of caution that they tend to separate outsiders in dreadful ways. In the village, however, we are all happy readers, listeners and watchers.
— Jan 13, 2015 03:13PM
Kyle
is on page 116 of 272
Before summing up today's reading, I have an interesting comment about the previous chapter's influence on my dream (a revision of Back to the Future) only to hear later this morning on a podcast that Doc Brown could be an older version of Marty McFly! A confabulation, coincidence or conspiracy? Two of these mind tricks are hard to believe, especially with a Sherlock Holmes working backward in logical loops.
— Jan 12, 2015 10:21PM
Kyle
is on page 86 of 272
Take that, Freud, and those RATs who believe that dreams are just mind garbage! These theories that dreams symbolize something or nothing detract from what dreams actually are. Gottschall takes the upper hand arguing that they are simulations of dangers and risky situations people and animals (those poor kitties operated upon by the jerk Jouvet) face in their waking lives. Bonus points for the nod to virtual reality.
— Jan 11, 2015 09:59PM
Kyle
is on page 44 of 272
Gottschall goes all Vygotskian in relating how story is an important, yet hard to determine why, developmental stage for toddlers all the way up to adulthood. He gets all the grim, lurid details correct: kids are most creative causing trouble for their imaginary play, even stepping into code 46 territory by writing about how gender stereotypes are reinforced through play, and how art helps attract pretty naked women!
— Jan 10, 2015 10:58AM
Kyle
is on page 20 of 272
A great way to start off my narrative inquiry course, as well as launching off from my environmental thought course last term - learning how it has always been part of human nature to tell and listen to stories. Even dreams and especially daydreams (both happening more often than we think) are evidence that the Story People prevailed over the Practical People just as the Golgafrinchans did when they arrived on earth.
— Jan 09, 2015 11:44PM
