Karen Armstrong: Myths and the Modern World

NPR : Karen Armstrong: Myths and the Modern World
Talk of the Nation, November 7, 2005

As soon as people became aware of their own mortality, writes Karen Armstrong, they created stories that gave their lives meaning, explained their relationship to the spiritual world, and instructed them on how to live their lives.
“Human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.”