Myths

01/20/2026

Dan Carlin (the historian) claims that myths matter because belief moves humans at least as much as truth, and when belief is shared at scale it becomes a material force in history. He calls it the “Tinkerbell Effect”.

Until recently, people have always organised their behaviour around gods, destinies, origin stories, chosen peoples, heroic archetypes and cosmic struggles.

Those beliefs changed what risks were acceptable, who could be killed, who must be obeyed, what sacrifices were rational and what futures were imaginable.

Once embedded, myths enabled millions of individuals to align without central control, producing wars, empires, migrations, genocides and institutional structures that persisted long after the original myths were lost or forgotten.

Dismissing myths as false misses the point because historically the operative variable was not factual accuracy but conviction and social belief.

In the modern era myths persist in altered form as falsehoods, distortions or untested claims circulating through real life, media and social platforms, and despite the absence of gods or prophecy they continue to shape real world decisions and outcomes in much the same way as their older counterparts.

Once infected with myth or falsehood, the brain can have a metaphorical mad cow disease; corrupted assumptions propagate, normal error correction breaks down, and incoherent beliefs replicate faster than they can be challenged.

Myth in this context can be anything; an actual myth, an imagined thought, some propagated bullshit, anything.

As the false premises reinforce one another through repetition and social validation, rational constraints are progressively displaced, until the distorted model of reality dominates decision making and leads to cognitive and behavioural dissolution.

You can fight it rationally, notice the hypocrisy or dissonance, and still lose the battle with bullshit.

It’s hysterical in more ways than one.