🟡 INTRODUCTION

Human societies are not sustained by law or force alone.
They are sustained by the stories we tell...
and by the stories we were told before we could choose.

You don't need an army to control the world.
You just need a good story.

Stories that tell us who we are. What is right. What is wrong. Who we should fear... and who we should obey.

Your way of living, of loving, of working, of consuming... was not decided by you. It was written before. By others. In the name of something bigger.

And you were just born into the story.

💬 "A story that, the more it is repeated, the more real it seems... even though it is not."

We are not talking about stories or movies.
We are talking about the most powerful weapon humans have ever used to organize, influence... and dominate:
stories.

🔷 The human being is a narrative animal.

Our brain is not designed to process data. It is designed to understand stories.

From cave paintings to creation myths, storytelling was the way we found to make sense of chaos.

Before we could read, we knew how to imagine.
Before laws, we already had stories that explained why some things were right... and others were wrong.

🧠 "It wasn't strength that brought us together as a species. It was the ability to imagine together."

Believing in things that do not physically exist: gods, homelands, money or the future.

📌 Featured Quote

"Shared fictions allow us to cooperate in large numbers."
- Yuval Noah Harari

Every human group needs a story.
Without a story, there is no direction.
Without a story, there is no meaning.
Without a story, there is no "we".

Stories are not a cultural ornament.
They are the invisible glue of any civilization.

🔷 The layers of the story: how power manufactures reality.

Reality, as we perceive it, is not a firm ground.
It is an onion of narrative layers, laid one after the other throughout the story.

Every era, every system, every power group has told its own story.
And those stories are not erased: they overlap.

From shamans who talked to spirits, to kings who claimed to have divine blood,
every power group has used stories to legitimize their position.

Empires not only raised armies:
erected monuments, wrote maps, dictated laws.

All of that supported a narrative:
"This is the normal thing to do. This is the right thing to do. This is the real thing."

Over time, new fictions emerged: science, the nation, progress...
And later: the market, productivity, personal success as a measure of human value.

As the ruling classes evolved, so did the complexity of the narrative.

Today, understanding reality requires going through many overlapping layers.
Almost all of them are designed to hide, justify or normalize power structures.

💸 And in the midst of it all, one story stands out above the rest: that of money.

Money doesn't just buy things.
It buys time, attention, prestige, truth.
It conditions which stories are heard... and which are not.

What does not generate profit rarely has a voice.

🔷 The Story of Democracy

For centuries, the dominant stories were told by a few: priests, monarchs, printers.

The rest could only listen. Or obey.

But then a new narrative emerged:
A story that asserted that we could all be part of the story.
That power did not come from above, but from the people.
That every voice counted.

That was democracy.
A powerful fiction that, for the first time, proposed that the collective story should be written by everyone.

Changed the world:
→ Constitutions
→ Civil rights
→ Elections
→ Parliaments....

But, like all history, it also evolved.
And not always in the expected direction.

💸 Although democracy promised participation, money - increasingly - began to dictate the rules of the game.

🔷 The illusion of choice.

Today, many of the stories we think we choose are already prefabricated:

  • By media funded by corporations.
  • By political parties that answer to vested interests.
  • By algorithms trained to give us what we think we want…

…which is exactly what they want us to want.

The media don’t just inform — they select.
Social networks don’t just connect — they shape.
Movies don’t just entertain — they program.

And while you think you're choosing what to watch, what to think, what to buy…
by the time you realize it, you're already inside a story written for you.

🔷 Stepping out of someone else’s narrative

We were taught to believe that reality is too complex.
That it can’t be changed.
That the best we can do is adapt, compete, and survive.

But...

❓ What if that complexity were part of the trick?

A smokescreen, so that power stays right where it’s always been:
above, scattered, invisible.

Meanwhile, down here…
We divide. We clash.
We defend the interests of people who couldn’t care less about us.

In the face of all this, we don’t need more certainties.
We need clarity, humility, and common sense.

To accept that understanding the world takes effort.
That truth doesn’t shout — it’s sought, and it’s heard.

And above all, that we are not enemies to one another.

📌 Featured Quote

True resistance is understanding.
The will to look beyond the story we were given.
To think slowly.
And to make room for doubt — without fear.
Only then… will we begin to live, without someone else thinking for us.

Stories have always held power.
From the founding myths that held entire tribes together,
to the grand religious and political narratives that shaped empires.

But what has radically changed isn’t just the content of the stories,
but the speed, the volume, and the intent behind how they spread..

There used to be time to contemplate.
Today, stories have been industrialized.

We no longer live the stories.
The stories live us.

And in the midst of all that noise,
telling what’s real becomes an act of resistance.

Because maybe true freedom doesn’t lie in inventing a prettier narrative,
but in something far more difficult:

See reality as it is.
No filters. No frills. Without someone else thinking for you.

And yes…
All this talk about the power of stories, manipulation, and the narratives that control you…
has reached you through a social network.
Filtered by an algorithm that doesn’t even know if you’re here looking for answers…
or just because you watched a cat video one second too long.

🐾 But hey…
If the system still lets me slip through a crack…
maybe there’s still hope.

(Published by URBAWAKE - urbawake.com)