Just so stories

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Just so stories
OP - October 14, 2015, 05:52 PM

Rudyard Kipling wrote several of these, religions also specialise in them, such and such a god created everything or gave a message to an angel to tell a prophet in a cave, or has several arms ....

But why, as in many examples, why do people get so aerated about their just so story that they have huge arguments, throw people out, kill them, have "blasphemy " laws that assert their just so story has more truthiness quotient than someone else's?

What is it really about?

It is very strange behaviour!

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #1 - October 14, 2015, 05:58 PM

Quote
The stories, first published in 1902, are pourquoi (French for "why") or origin stories, fantastic accounts of how various phenomena came about. A forerunner of these stories is Kipling's "How Fear Came," included in his The Second Jungle Book (1895). In it, Mowgli hears the story of how the tiger got his stripes.

The Just So Stories typically have the theme of a particular animal being modified from an original form to its current form by the acts of man, or some magical being. For example, the Whale has a tiny throat because he swallowed a mariner, who tied a raft inside to block the whale from swallowing other men. The Camel has a hump given to him by a djinn as punishment for the camel's refusing to work (the hump allows the camel to work longer between times of eating). The Leopard's spots were painted by an Ethiopian (after the Ethiopian painted himself black). The Kangaroo gets its powerful hind legs, long tail, and hopping gait after being chased all day by a dingo, sent by a minor god responding to the Kangaroo's request to be made different from all other animals.

Wiki

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Reply #2 - October 15, 2015, 02:22 PM

Sometimes I wonder if it's akin to survival instinct.

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
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