The Utility of Stories

and the limits of our imagination

September 20, 2025

I believe our ability to imagine is fundamentally limited. Our capacity for empathy is constrained by the experiences we’ve had, and our vision for our own future is often just an interpolation between the lives of the people we know. This isn’t a failing, but a feature of how we learn; psychological frameworks like Social Learning Theory suggest we build our sense of self and possibility by observing and imitating the models around us. 1

If the problem is a limited dataset, the solution is to expand it. For me, stories are the most powerful tool for this expansion. They are a technology for exploring other minds and other possible lives, allowing us to imagine beyond the narrow confines of our own experience.

Imagining Others: Stories as Empathetic Simulation

We only get to live one life, which provides a single, narrow dataset of experience. It is incredibly difficult to truly understand an experience you haven’t lived. I see cognitive empathy not as a feeling, but as the skill of building a functional model of another’s mind. Without shared experience, our models are often flawed.

Research in psychology supports this, identifying biases that actively hinder our empathy. A primary one is egocentric bias, our pervasive tendency to use our own mind as the only model for understanding others, which fails when their experiences or perspectives differ from ours. 2 We project our own feelings and beliefs, making it difficult to empathize with those who are truly different.

Stories seem to offer a way to acquire a form of vicarious experience. Neuroscience offers a possible mechanism for this: research using fMRI has shown that when we read a story, our brains can activate neural regions in a way that mirrors the activity of actually experiencing the described events. 3 While this is not the same as living the experience, it suggests that stories can provide our brains with a richer dataset than abstract thought alone. This is consistent with studies that have found a correlation between reading literary fiction and an improved “theory of mind”—the capacity to understand that others have beliefs and intentions different from our own. 4

Imagining Ourselves: Stories as a Catalogue of Possibility

Just as our empathy is constrained, so is our ability to imagine our own futures. Learning about the lives of others is a powerful first step in expanding our imaginations. Biography and history offer a rich catalogue of real-world models whose motivations and experiences can expand our own sense of what is possible (other than a struggle for power, sex, survival):

Click to explore examples
  • Tara Westover: She provides a model for the transformative, and sometimes painful, power of knowledge. Her journey wasn’t just about acquiring an education, but about how that knowledge created an irreconcilable break with her past, forcing a choice between loyalty to family and a new, hard-won sense of self. (Educated)
  • Jacinda Ardern: She offers a model that redefines political strength, demonstrating that empathy, compassion, and decisive kindness can be powerful tools for leadership, especially in times of crisis. Her approach challenges the conventional wisdom that equates power with aggression. (A Different Kind of Power)
  • John von Neumann: He represents a model of intellect so vast it appears alien, reportedly driven by a complex cocktail of ambition and insecurity. His life challenges the simplistic narrative that genius is a pure or serene force, suggesting it can be fueled by more common, human anxieties. (The Man from the Future)
  • Haben Girma: Her life is a radical model of innovation born from necessity. As the first Deafblind graduate of Harvard Law, she doesn’t just “overcome” obstacles; she treats access as an engineering problem to be solved, advocating for a world designed for disability. Her model is one of proactive invention rather than reactive adaptation. (Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law)
  • Malcolm X’s life is a testament to radical intellectual and spiritual transformation, showing that one’s entire worldview can be deconstructed and rebuilt. (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
  • Viktor Frankl: A psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust, his life is a model for finding meaning in the midst of unimaginable suffering. His “success” was not in avoiding pain, but in developing a philosophy—logotherapy—that argues our primary drive is the pursuit of what we find meaningful, a purpose that can sustain us even in the bleakest conditions. (Man’s Search for Meaning)
  • Frida Kahlo: Her life offers a model of transmuting immense physical and emotional pain into a radical and fiercely unique artistic identity. She challenged conventions of beauty, gender, and art, using her own body and experiences as her canvas. Her success was the creation of a world entirely her own, a testament to the power of self-expression against a backdrop of suffering. (Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo)
  • Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers): He provides a model of success defined by radical kindness and emotional validation. In a world that valued strength and competition, his life’s work was dedicated to the emotional well-being of children. He demonstrated that gentle, patient, and direct communication could be a form of immense power and influence. (The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers)
  • Ernest Shackleton: His story is a masterclass in shifting ambition. When the original goal—crossing Antarctica—became impossible, his motivation transformed into a singular, absolute focus: bringing every single man home alive from an impossible situation. He is a model for resilience and leadership where the definition of success is radically redefined by circumstance. (Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage)
  • Temple Grandin: She offers a profound model for how a different kind of mind can be a source of unique insight. As an autistic woman who “thinks in pictures,” she didn’t just adapt to the world; she used her distinct cognitive process to revolutionize the livestock industry with more humane designs. Her life is a powerful argument for the value of neurodiversity and a challenge to the idea that there is only one way to think effectively. (Thinking in Pictures)
  • Muhammad Ali: He provides a model of an athlete whose primary motivation transcended sport. For Ali, boxing was the platform for a larger purpose: the assertion of his Black identity, his religious conviction, and his political opposition to the Vietnam War. He was willing to sacrifice his title and career for his principles, demonstrating a model of integrity where personal success is secondary to one’s moral and political beliefs. (King of the World)
  • Wangari Maathai: Her life is a model of grassroots, holistic problem-solving. A Nobel Peace Prize laureate, she saw the interconnectedness of environmental degradation, poverty, and the disempowerment of women in Kenya. Her solution, the Green Belt Movement, was profoundly simple and scalable: pay women to plant trees. Her motivation was not a grand, top-down vision, but a practical, community-based approach to healing both the land and society. (Unbowed: A Memoir)
  • George Orwell: While known for his novels, his life as a journalist and essayist is a model of intellectual integrity defined by a willingness to inhabit uncomfortable truths. He was a socialist who was fiercely critical of Soviet totalitarianism, an intellectual who chose to live among the poor and destitute to understand their lives. His motivation was a relentless drive to see the world as it is, not as ideology said it should be, and to report back with unflinching honesty. (Down and Out in Paris and London)
  • Christopher McCandless: His story, while tragic, provides a powerful model of radical renunciation. He was motivated by a deep dissatisfaction with societal norms and materialism, leading him to abandon his possessions and identity to seek a more authentic existence in the wilderness. He represents a powerful thought experiment about what one is willing to give up in the search for meaning, challenging the very definition of a successful life. (Into the Wild)
  • Vivian Maier: A model of artistic creation completely divorced from audience, fame, or validation. She worked as a nanny in Chicago for 40 years and, in her spare time, secretly took over 150,000 brilliant street photographs that were only discovered by accident after her death. Her life was driven by a private, obsessive need to document the world around her, raising profound questions about what it means to be an artist. (Vivian Maier: A Photographer Found)

These figures expand our sense of what a person can experience, want and achieve. But fiction can explore what history cannot. It can model experiences and motivations that have yet to exist in our world, providing data points from the outer edges of the conceivable. Consider:

Click to explore examples
  • Victor Frankenstein offers a model of pure, untethered ambition, representing the pursuit of creation without responsibility and the catastrophic consequences of intellectual pursuit divorced from empathy. (Frankenstein)
  • Frankenstein’s Creature provides a model for the experience of absolute, total alienation—a sentient being born into a world that rejects it on sight, exploring how the denial of fundamental needs like companionship can transform innocence into vengeance. (Frankenstein)
  • Captain Ahab is a model for monomaniacal obsession as a metaphysical quest, a motivation that transcends simple revenge to become a defiant, self-destructive war against the perceived malice of the universe itself. (Moby Dick)
  • Prince Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender: A model for a life defined by the painful deconstruction of a toxic ideal. Zuko’s initial motivation is an all-consuming quest to regain his “honor” as defined by his abusive father. His entire arc is the slow, agonizing process of realizing that definition is a cage, and then building a new, internal sense of honor based on his own morality and compassion.
  • Don Quixote in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes: A model for a life motivated by the willed, total replacement of mundane reality with a more noble, literary ideal. He doesn’t just interpret the world through a different lens; he actively overwrites it, seeing giants in windmills and castles in inns. He is a profound and tragicomic exploration of what happens when a person chooses to live entirely within the story they’ve told themselves, no matter the cost. (Don Quixote)
  • Napoleon Dynamite in Napoleon Dynamite (Film): A model of radical, un-self-aware authenticity. His motivation is not to rebel against social norms, but to live in a world where his own idiosyncratic skills (nunchucks, drawing ligers) and interests are the only ones that matter. He represents a form of integrity so absolute it is completely divorced from the need for external validation, challenging the idea that self-worth must be socially negotiated. (IMDb)

This is where my own interest lies: in exploring experiences and motivations that fall even further outside these bounds. This is the unique territory of the truly strange story. It can introduce us to characters like:

Click to explore examples
  • Lyra: A model of motivation aimed at universal cessation, where the ultimate goal is not creation or peace, but a perfect and absolute silence she sees as the only true mercy in a chaotic universe. (Loud: Silence Like a Cancer Grows)
  • Julian: A model of a life driven by an almost scientific curiosity to experience and catalogue every form of failure, believing that true understanding requires embracing the full spectrum of negative experience. (The Satiated King: A Man Who Had Everything, Except Failure)
  • Howard: A model of pure, detached intellect, where the sole motivation is the elegance of a theoretical solution, with no regard for its practical application or human impact. (The napkin solution: Solved, but not implemented)

These are not models for direct imitation, but radical new data points. They align with the psychological concept of “prospection,” the ability to mentally simulate our future to help guide our actions. 5 By presenting motivations that history does not provide, stories give our imaginative faculty more, and stranger, material to work with.

Ultimately, this is how I view the value of stories. Reading them is not an escape. It is a conscious practice of expanding the dataset of our own humanity. It is a way of sharpening the tools we use for empathy and imagination—tools that allow us to better understand others, and to envision a future for ourselves that is more than just a repetition of the lives we’ve already seen.

  1. Bandura, A. Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1977. Bandura’s work demonstrated that people learn from one another, via observation, imitation, and modeling, forming a basis for how role models shape our behavior and ambitions. ↩

  2. Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. “Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment.” Journal of personality and social psychology, 87(3), 327–339, 2004. This paper details how our attempts to understand others are often anchored in our own perspective, which we then fail to adequately adjust. ↩

  3. Speer, Nicole K., et al. “Reading Stories Activates Neural Representations of Visual and Motor Experiences.” Psychological Science, vol. 20, no. 8, 2009, pp. 989–99. This research suggests a potential mechanism for how stories are “experienced” by the brain. ↩

  4. Kidd, David Comer, and Emanuele Castano. “Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind.” Science, vol. 342, no. 6156, 2013, pp. 377–80. This study suggests a correlation, though the strength and replicability of the effect are subjects of ongoing academic discussion. ↩

  5. Gilbert, Daniel T., and Timothy D. Wilson. “Prospection: Experiencing the Future.” Science, vol. 317, no. 5843, 2007, pp. 1351–54. The authors define prospection as the ability to “pre-experience” the future by simulating it in our minds, a key function for planning and decision-making. ↩