Stories have always been our primary means of transmitting culture.

No kid remembers “ten things children should never do,” but they all remember the story of Hansel and Gretel.

Religion is a storytelling operating system for how to live and recruit people into a culture.

A mistake the west made is that it dismantled its religious operating system instead of intentionally replacing or reforming it.

Most people won’t systematically develop their own stories to fill the void that a lack of religion has left.

This leaves them wide-open to indoctrination with religion-like ideas. Minds don’t stay empty for long.

Many political and activist causes essentially are religion-like narratives that fill a void.

The lesson to be learned: if you have a cohesive worldview that you want to share, even if not religious, share it in story form so that people can absorb, understand, and retell it.

Ayn Rand has had an outsize impact because she turned her worldview into a nigh-religious story.

So did Al Gore (Global Warming), and Paul Ehrlich (The Population Bomb), although more narrowly so.

Save the details for your disciples. You win the masses by telling stories.