Really, a necessity must exist? Drug use, addiction, and violence have been with us since then too. Also a necessity?
Because I doubt that if I go without a story in my day to day life I will die, vs. actual necessities like air, food, water, shelter, and safety, and social connections.
The older I get the more and more I realize that what is defined as "necessity" is anything but in this first world of ours.
ETA: And to be perfectly clear I am not saying these things are not important to humanity as whole only that I don't put them on the same level of "This will kill me without it" type necessity.
When time allows I will consider it.
Sadly, I think an argument that some of those things could indeed be considered a necessity. Especially from a sociological point of view.
On an individual level?
Well, to paraphrase Hogfather, specifically Death, Justice is fiction, Truth is fiction, Love is fiction… all things we believe in, and need, that you won’t find on a periodic table of elements.
In the wider sense, my point is very much that those cultural elements are exactly what is needed for civilisation to exist in so many ways. They are the *why* rather than the *how* or the *what*.