What's True, What's False, What's Simply Blind: The Pleasure and Dangers of Stories

The stories we tell ourselves are what keep us going--and sometimes that stories can be either amusing, or outraging.

In the first category put "The Ten Most Important Events of the Last 4.5 Billion Years," courtesy of The Onion. The too-good-to-be true publication gives the Number One spot to: "Evolution Going Great, Reports Trilobite"

The story begins: "Slowly inching his segmented exoskeleton across the sea floor, a local marine arthropod, class Trilobita, reported that Earth's natural evolution was "progressing quite nicely."

"Things are looking mighty fine," announced the prehistoric invertebrate, taking measure of his surroundings through a series of small, hexagonal eyelets located at the tip of his thorax. "Sulfurous gas seems to be bubbling up to the surface pretty good, and several single-cell organisms appear to be mutating at a rather steady pace. Also, just today, I developed the ability to roll into a small protective shell in order to avoid predators...."

We all know that The Onion is just joking, but story-telling has other sides. In this video (pointed out to me by Bimol Thambyah) Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talks about the dangers of getting stories from only one view point.