There was once some really smart person who had the following little story:

Oneday mankind built a very powerful computer which was thought to rival the intelligence of humans themselves. However, noone could figure out how to tell if the computer was indeed as smart or smarter than it's creators? Eventually the creators figured that the best approach was to actually ask the computer. So they did.

"Computer, How would we know if a computer were as smart as a human"

"Well now, that reminds me of a story......."

I'm not sure if this is really true or not, but it IS true that stories play a crucial role in human intelligence and human life in general. From children's novels to War and Peace humans use stories for various purposes.

One thing having to do with stories that popped into my head the other days has to do with the search for meaning ( spirtuality ?):

The search for the smallest, most generalizable story is the search for meaning

ok, just in case that wasn't going anywhere maybe this does?