This sounds like a non true scotsman. If large societies buying into a story doesn’t qualify it as a success, what does? M

Why would that be the qualification for success? I didn’t write that “everyone believing it” was the marker of success, so I don’t know why that would be relevant.

In another comment thread, I wrote that a story is needed which combines accurate scientific information with a human purpose in the world. Those examples quite obviously didn’t have scientific views of the world.

By that standard, successful societies are the ones without a story. While the ones with story are autocratic and dictatorships.

Those societies not being failures as a result. They both fail to properly understand politics and economics. Also sociology.

By that token, every attempt to encapsulate reality into a simplified story is successful until it fails. Not a very useful thing to bring to the table