Why story?

I'm reading a book at the moment called "Three Genres," and I don't remember who it's by (some bald guy), but it's about poetry, fiction, and drama. Since I write fiction, and since there's poetry in fantasy, and since I might go crazy and become a playwright, I thought it might be an interesting book.
Swerving back to the point, I skipped the poetry section and went straight to fiction. In the fiction section, there are short stories, because evidently he couldn't get permission to print whole novels in there, and we do that on our own time, anyway. As I read this short stories, I thought, "WHAT was THAT?! There's no point at all!" (The most recent one was about a talking cat.)
This got me thinking: What's the point of a story, anyway?
Entertainment?
Humor?
Knowledge?
Deep Truths for Real Life?
Those are all good things, and they're all in stories, but that's not really the point. The point is to have a "Powerful Emotional Experience," to plagiarize author Randy Ingermanson. (Here, to make up for it, I'll give you a link to his website here.)
But why would we want THAT?
Well, probably because our normal, everyday emotional experiences are...boring.
The fact is, discovering that you left a dollar bill in your pocket is nice, but not nearly as nice as discovering the secret that will save all mankind from evil villany for the rest of eternity.
And when a character in a book does that (and the writer has done his job, and made you feel like you ARE the character), it excites you.
It makes you think you just discovered the Big Secret.
Maybe that's why we read. When I read, I feel like I'm the hero, which beats the tar out of YOU being the hero. You just don't get a chance to save the world every day, so you have to read a book that makes you FEEL like you just saved the world.
But what about the rest of the story? The Saving of Humanity doesn't come till the end.
Well, if you just read a sentence that said, "The bomb was about to go off. Then, he cracked the code and diffused it," you might be relieved that the bomb didn't explode, but on the other hand, who would have cared?
The point is, you have to have conflict. The more conflict there is and the higher the stakes are, the better it feels when the main character saves the world.
God didn't want us to be bored, so He gave us the desire the save the world, and people to write books so that we feel like we did.
That worked out rather nicely.
But what about the books without happy endings? What's the point of that?
Well, I suppose some people just like being depressed. After all, you watched Little House On The Prairie, too, and you liked it.
What's even more powerful than reading something that makes you feel like a hero, however, is writing something that makes you feel like a hero.
Or a villain.
Or a plant.
That's the beauty of fiction: None of it is true.
Since none of it is true, anything can happen, and when you use that realistically, you actually are a hero, because you've accomplished something, and you can get unholily wealthy off the idea.
Now that I have imparted my Novel Wisdom to you, what is the point of short stories?