I saw Brian Eno and Will Wright chatting on stage tonight. Would have been worth it just for the live Spore demo but the rest of the talk was interesting. Towards the end Brian Eno gave his definition of culture:

“Culture is everything you don’t have to do.”

His example was that in a cold climate we have to wear some kind of clothing, but it could just be a sack. We choose to wear fancy clothes and eat fancy food, we don’t have to. Why do we have culture? The human imagination forces us to try alternative ways of living and working. We have a sensitivity for difference. Will responded that games are play that act as modeling exercises. Our ability to model other humans is what gives us empathy. This is where storytelling comes from. We watch movies and read novels to put ourselves in other people’s situations, to better empathize.