Our lives are governed by both reality and mythology.

Humans think in stories and contain multiple identity and world stories, but no one can escape the cold, hard reality in front of us. Even if a person genuinely believes they can fly, the law of gravity might have something else to say.

Although we may think that humans are generally rational, their world stories and mythologies need be nothing of the sort. In fact, it's very common to inhabit multiple, entirely contradictory world stories.

For example, Science and Christianity seem to be at odds, but can coexist peacefully within a single person.

If you're ill, going to both a doctor and a priest seems irrational. How does one heal, through medicine or God? However, most people find this totally natural, yet it's not just a hedge against the existence of God or the effectiveness of western medicine.

You go to the doctor to satisfy your Enlightenment world story and heal your body, and you go to the priest to satisfy your religious world story and heal your soul.

Over time, our mythologies and imagined realities have become more and more powerful. Nations, tech companies, and creative fiction take up far more of our time and attention than the applied laws of math and physics.

We can't change the rules of nature, but we can transform our world stories.