The Stories We Tell Ourselves
One thing that we do as a species that neither crows nor monkeys do, is tell stories.
When I went to school, we were told that human beings were the only animals that used tools.
This turned out not to be true, as any regular viewer of National Geographic can attest. Even some crows have learned to use simple tools.
But one thing that we do as a species that neither crows nor monkeys, as far as we know do, is tell stories.
As a species, we are inveterate storytellers. Our history is replete with stories. Stories are the way that we communicate ideas, concepts and history to each other, and pass on knowledge from generation to generation.
Take the Bible — a treasure trove of stories. Take Exodus in particular. The whole point of The Book of Exodus is to get to the Ten Commandments. But if the Book of Exodus were just the Ten Commandments, nobody would remember them. So the Ten Commandments are wrapped into a great story — the story of Moses. Let’s say, the Amazing Adventures of Moses. He has a tough childhood, unhappy Egyptian prince, kills someone, heads for the desert, given a mission, doesn’t want to do it, rises to the occasion, lots of problems, overcomes them and finally arrives at Mount Sinai where he gets the Ten Commandments. A really great story. 3500 year later, we still know it like it was yesterday.
That’ the power of storytelling.
Recently, we were hired to help launch a 24-hour local cable news network in the US. Instead of doing conventional news ‘packages’, we instead wrapped the news in stories — character, arc of story, conclusion — Netflix meets the News. Within a few months, those stations rose to the #1 slot in their market. As Jack Warner said, “Give the people what they want.” And what people want are stories.
Stories help us make sense of an otherwise seemingly very confusing and randomized world.
I am just reading In The Wake of the Plague — The Black Death and the World it Made by Norman F. Cantor.
In the 14th Century, the Black Plague or bubonic plague swept across Europe, killing anywhere from 1/3rd to 1/2 of the population. This was no Covid. This was more like a nuclear war. In an age before science, no one could figure it out. What had happened. To make sense of the seemingly senseless, people developed stories — a narrative that would explain it. Clearly, God was not happy with the people of the earth. This was God’s punishment, and so a solution that would please God would clearly end the plague. For some, this meant killing Jews — which must have seemed logical at the time, and so wave after wave of murderous progroms were set off — made sense, at least to them.
In a more scientific bent, the King of France appointed a commission of University of Paris professors to account for the Black Death. After much research, they released their report. The Black Death had clearly been caused by the influence of Saturn on the House of Jupiter. OK. Now we can understand. Thank God for science.
This morning, I read a piece in The NY Times that the US is close to a civil war because we essentially have two sides of the country who are buying into wildly different stories about who we are and where we are and where we are headed.
Not much has changed.