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Abstract Humans exist as part of social-ecological systems (SES) in which biological, physical, chemical, economic, political and other social processes are tightly interwoven. Global change within these systems presents an increasingly untenable situation for long-term human security. Further, knowledge that humans possess about ourselves and SES represents a complex amalgamation of individual and collective factors. Because of various evolutionary pressures, people often reject this complex reality in favor of more simplistic perceptions and explanations. This thought paper offers an overview of how and where people acquire knowledge and how that knowledge acquisition process reflects and influences narratives, which subsequently affect efforts to address challenges in SES. We highlight three narratives as examples of constraints on finding ways forward toward a more resilient future. Our focal narratives include tendencies to conflate tame and wicked problems; to posit a false human-nature duality; and to resist the explanatory evidence from biocultural evolution. We then discuss the human cognitive propensity to create narratives to think about how we might intentionally develop narratives that are more appropriate for living in coevolving SES.