According to core-knowledge theories, human brains have the innate capability to learn about physics, numbers and language. Even before children can speak, they display surprise when shown impossible events.
Experiments help children to find out about basic rules of physics, such as gravity and motion. Pushing an object over the edge on a table lets it drop down, and depending on the material of the object it produces specific sounds when it hits the ground.
Just like scientists, children use repetition to validate their ideas about the physical world. When a child has understood a principle, using and applying this principle can become a habit.
The majority of behavioural patterns of adults consists of habits, after a reconditioning in school that transformed the experimental character of spontaneous learning into a monotonous repetition of abstract concepts and factoids.
Most education systems neglect creative and constructive aspects of learning in favour of analytical and logical skills. Social and emotional competence do not belong to the curriculum, the chemical industry fills the void with a variety of drugs to suppress the resulting symptoms.
The indigenous people of Australia provide a good example for a culture without written language. They used stories to perpetuate their culture, and iconic images as densely coded representation of the involved characters.
Stories distinguish human beings from other animals. Stories explained history, skills, social conventions and the metaphysical realm, and helped defining in- and out-groups. Stories provide the glue for any society.
Old people served for a long time as primary story teller. Written language reduced the variation of story elements, bereaving the story teller of the opportunity to adapt the story to his audience while allowing more interpretation.
Media has taken over as primary provider of public myths. Movies, news, documentaries, soaps, talk shows and advertising offer a plethora of stories to weave a common consumer reality.
The immediacy, intimacy and interactivity of storytelling turns into the passive consumption of ideas and concepts. The world seen through the eyes of the media appears inconsistent and contradictory.
The contradictions serve several purposes. They reflect the diversity of opinions and offer easy points of identification. Validation of facts does not belong to the skill set or attitude of average media consumers, who happily trust any presented expert.
The internet increases the number of experts, and the amount of contradictory information. The process of finding a place within society morphs from picking a story line to assembling a range of individually chosen life style options and opinions, depending on the socio economic status.
Constructing and maintaining their life style keeps some but not all people busy, distracted and polarised. This allows myths to enter the public mind, pure repetition does the job. Plausibility checks of presented stories rarely happens, what we hear often enough remains as fact in our minds.
Intellectual laziness leads to a world view that reflects more the virtual world of the media than the physical world surrounding us. Integrating incoherent pieces of knowledge into the mind becomes a habit, repetition wins against reason.
Some but not all people imagine to possess factual knowledge about the world while they have just acquired a random collection of story elements derived from not necessarily trustworthy sources.
Meanwhile, experts try to maintain the myth of the trustworthiness of experts.
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