For millennia people have been inventing various tales to understand the world better. People told legends like the Trojan Horse or
flood myths long before recording them in writing. Stories are still primary carriers of ideas today.
Apart from being entertaining, the most memorable ones usually contain an essential message woven between the words. In the biblical narrative of Noah’s Ark, for example, the underlying message is that God protects virtuous people. However, this moral is “smuggled” in the story, without ever being explicitly expressed.
This “smuggling” is precisely why we are unlikely to question a message presented to us in this way. We perceive it, at least to some extent, unconsciously because we are more focused on the events of the story itself. But while our conscious attention remains on the surface of things, our unconscious absorbs that which hides beneath.