Is it The Soul of a New/Lost Machine?

Homo Sapiens And Homo Fabulans

Humans ‘are born, bred, live and die within a great sea of stories’ (Szabo, 2013, p. 6) and this fundamental human need demands that they assess, first, what stories they feed on, and second, how they feed on them. This is because narratives intricately weave our weltanschauung which then forms basis for individual and collective action. Schiffrin, De Fina, & Nylund (2010) for instance argue that ‘narratives are fundamental to our lives. We dream, plan, complain, endorse, entertain, teach, learn, and reminisce by telling stories. They provide hopes, enhance or mitigate disappointments, challenge or support moral order, and test out theories of the world at both personal and communal levels’ (p.1). Additionally, it is important an examination is made of how stories are related to by Homo sapiens because their very nature as social animals make stories part of the thread that holds their communities together and in some cases, gives them a social identity. On the flip side, individualism suggests that ‘basic narratives’, as Czarniawska (1998) argues, ‘can carry a load of ambiguity and therefore leave openings for negotiation of meaning’ (Czarniawska, 1998, p. 3), the advantage being a weakening of any hegemony of the narrative (Boje, 2001) where a one-voiced omniscient narrator is behind every line.