We are a little strange, no?

We are keen minds that can fathom the greatest secrets of the universe by observation and deduction, but we also cry in movie theatres when a highly paid actor pretends to die a fake death. We brave the most frightening natural conditions and fashion habitats for ourselves out of rock and wood and ice, but we also scream in terror when someone puts on a bunch of makeup and pretends to be a ghost or a monster.

Why are we vulnerable before stories? Why do we consume them? What deep need is it that they fulfill?

There is the science of it of course. Fiction syncs our brainwaves and it makes us smarter and happier and it makes us more empathetic. Stories are nutrition for our minds. But what makes them nutritious?

Our needs often define us. The fact that we need to survive makes food a cultural force. Sure, you can survive on bread and butter, but because you can't do without food, you make cooking into an art. You need to be fit, but since it is a need, you make it into sports and adventure activities that get performed and viewed by millions and become literal industries unto themselves.

We take something we cannot do without and we build on top of it. Because we need to enjoy it enough to continue doing it.

So what were stories built on top of? If we strip away all the big budget filmmaking and the highly paid actors and famous authors and the publishing industry sit on top of this basic impulse, what remains? What lies underneath all the hard science fiction and the high fantasy and the thrilling romances that litter our literary landscape?

I think it's survival. Plain old survival.

The things that a story gives us are things that we need to survive.

Once upon a time, two fools ventured into a dark forest. One was brave and stepped bravely into the dark. He got bitten by a snake and then eaten by a lion. The other fool survived because he was afraid. He imagined dangers before he saw them. And because he did, he avoided them. We are all descended from him. And since we no longer have to brave dark forests, we rely on stories about dark forests to provide us with the thing that helped him become a survivor -- fear. We throng to cinema halls to watch monsters in the dark and imagine the worst.

Once upon a time, two fools sat in the rain that fell hard for weeks and threatened to submerge all that they knew to be their world. One of them could not imagine another world and drowned. The other imagined a world beyond this one, where the sun shone and the ground was fertile and where life could begin anew. He wondered where it was and left to look for it. We are all descended from her. Since we mostly no longer have to imagine what the world beyond the mountains looks like, we rely on stories to provide us with the quality that allowed her to survive and thrive -- wonder. We read about worlds that lie beyond the stars so we don't lose the ability to break from the world we are in.

Similar impulses drive us to romance, to thrillers, to entertainment of many varieties expressed in many mediums. The goal, I think, is the same. We are keeping alive the abilities that once allowed our ancestors to survive in a world where they knew very little, could do very little, and were surrounded by the strange and the wild and the unpredictable.

We imagine stranger things than us because we need to stay ahead of the curve. We rebel against the mundane because imagination is a matter of survival. It remains so even today, and manifests as visions of a future where we are not destroying ourselves because of limiting beliefs and a lack of generosity.