📚Why Do We Need Fictional Stories to Understand the Real World

The world never presents itself in complete form; memory is also fragmented. What we see are fragments: a historical anecdote, a breaking news item, an exposé, a debate, a string of data, a sigh. They lie scattered, refusing to be assembled into a coherent, continuous picture. We can't even recount all the details of a single day, we can only choose what is worth remembering. So… we construct narratives. Narratives do not explain the world—they demonstrate how to weave temporary internal order out of chaos. When reason fails, we tell stories, using imagined realities to resist experiential fragmentation, using indomitable souls to resist existential emptiness, using deeply meaningful silences to resist meaninglessness. —— Bring a book you've read, come and share it with others, whether you believe it to be true or fictional, we simply gather together, to exchange our fragments.