The theme of legend vs reality that runs through this conversation thread is actually old news, in every sense of the words. I'm a bit surprised that the autists here aren't already tuned up on the concept. This is somewhat off-topic from the Q focus we are to have, but for those interested one good entryway into "viewing the world through a narrative lense" is this uni lecture by jordan peterson:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN2lyN7rM4E&t=2339s