A narrative dies when it stops being needed, not when it is shown false: it loses its hold the moment people can reach what it promised without it, or find it fails to deliver at the hour it was needed. Ansary: the church's power came from "its monopoly on access to heaven"; the plague showed people doing everything the church recommended "and still they kept dying"; and "its relevance, not its accuracy" is what kills a story. Applying this to intermediary stories made unnecessary by agents, including our own, is Leo's step.

Evidence 7 passages

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A narrative rendered unnecessary is a dead man walking. Its lifeblood starts to ebb from the moment its relevance, not its accuracy, but its relevance comes into question.
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The power of the feudal church came from its monopoly on access to heaven. If people could get to the coveted afterlife on their own, they wouldn't need the Catholic Church and its narrative anymore.
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People had done everything the church recommended, and still they kept dying.
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The Chinese master narrative lost much of its coherence at this point, and a narrative that can't render the world meaningful can't retain its grip.
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The opium war and its aftermath seemed to discredit the whole Chinese model of the world
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There, for many people, situating their grievances within the Islamic narrative made the grievances comprehensible.
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The communism versus capitalism story had never possessed this kind of meaning-making power in the Islamic heartland.

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