šAIP 105 Why In Goodness Gracious Do We Like Stories?
As a kid, one of my greatest pleasures was going to the movie theater on a Friday night, bag of buttery popcorn and M&Ms in hand alongside a group of friends. Inside, I was transported to another world where I could lose myself amidst characters and settings I loved. At home, I would invest myself in video games like The Witcher 3. Tucked in bed at night, I would fall asleep with Harry Potter in hand.
Iām not aloneāpeople spend billions of hours every year investing in stories. We could be learning a valuable skill, doing our taxes, or staring out the window in existential wonderment. Thereās something about stories which hits us differently and as weāll explore it goes beyond just making us think. Stories shed light on our fundamental relationship with knowledge itself and our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world.
To get to how, we first need to explore the power of stories for learning.
Stories Are Deadly Serious: The Power Of Stories For Learning
While we go into stories wanting to be entertained, we're really being entirely changed.
Stories arenāt simply a "pleasant pastime." Sure, it often feels fun, but just like playing Stardew Valley at twenty-one, it's deadly serious, dad. Think of a story that has fundamentally altered your life direction. You have one. It came at the exact right moment for your time in life and gripped you to your very heartstrings.
For me, I think of The Martian.
Mark Watneyāa botanist Engineer (pretty sick combo)āgets stuck alone on Mars after his crew fails to rescue him during an emergency storm evacuation. He wakes up the next dayāIām sorry, Solāburied in the sand, with a hunk of metal puncturing his suit and embedded in his chest. As he mildly puts it in his first video journal entree, his situation is āpretty fucked.ā And yet, he pulls through. He uses his botanical skills to grow potatoes and engineering to keep his life systems in check.
But one of the most significant contributors to his survival is his incredible humor. He jokes constantly, recording video journal entries where he laughs at himself, dances to terrible music, and more. He takes the situation seriously but not himself.
This playful humor came during my sophomore year of college, a time where I took myself too seriously. I joked to my friends, but I didn't approach life with a humorous lens. I was a part of four clubs, consistently creating content on YouTube, my blogs, and podcast, and had a girlfriend.
Mark showed me the power of laughing when I tripped over myself in the sidewalk; of seeing the humor in the situation when technology was a bitch trying to record a YouTube video.
That's the power a single story can have over you.
So stories can be deadly serious for our learning. There's a reason oral storytelling has been such a cornerstone of our species ever since our caveman season. Though I imagine their stories were slightly less complex: "Grog see big tooth cat. Grog run. Be like Grog."
Stories helped create shared beliefs and cultural cohesion in early human groups. They helped pass down vital survival information across generations. Before writing and google maps, we had to store all our knowledge in our head. Some people remembered plant species, others remembered how to perform human sacrifices. Unfortunately the second one isn't a joke.
Thankfully, we had a psychotechnology perfect for covering learnings in a memorable, engaging exterior: stories.
Stories are like emotional glue, making normally abstract concepts we need to learn stick in our mind.
But this still doesn't answer the deeper question: how are stories doing this? Someone could have just told me to "be more funny mate" instead of watching a whole movie about The Martian. But we intuitively know that wouldn't of had the same effect. What's going on here?
Stories Put You In The Being Mode And Connect Us With Others
To understand how stories hit us differently than mere propositions we need to take a journey into cognitive science. Don't worry it won't be as dry as your neuroscience in high school. I added some water.
According to Professor of Cognitive Science John Vervaeke, we have four different ways of knowing. Letās analyze each through the lens of one of my favorite characters in The Stormlight Archives Dalinar Kholin.
Propositional Knowing:
- This is knowing about things. It's expressed in declarative sentences and involves assertions that can be true or false. For example, Dalinar is a highprince. He is brother to Gavilar Kholin, etc. It's the kind of knowledge that can be easily communicated and argued about.
Procedural Knowing: - This is knowing how to do things. It involves skills and procedures and is often tacit, meaning it can be hard to explain verbally but is evident in action. For example, Dalinar Kholinās skill with wielding a shardblade (basically a sword but infinitely cooler).
Perspectival Knowing: - This is knowing about what it's like to exist from a certain perspective. It is context-dependent, knowing which changes depending upon one's environment, the people you're with, what's happening around you, and how you fit into that scenario. For example, what does it feel like to be Dalinar as he is in a certain chapter of the book. It's impossible for you to know.
Participatory Knowing: - This is the most fundamental foundational type of knowing. This is knowing how to be in a certain context. This form of knowledge is pre-conceptual, not describable, and relates to the fit between the agent (the person) and the arena (the environment or context they are in). It's about the attunement of the individual to their surroundings. For example, how is it like to be Dalinar not only in the context of a particular chapter but the context of his life as a whole, all his experiences combined, his goals, his genetics, etc. and how they influence the relationship he has with the world.
Here's what makes stories so powerful for learning: they tap us into perspectival and if they're really good participatory knowing; in other words, they put us in the being mode.
When we hear a story, we naturally embody ourselves in the characters. You know the feeling, losing yourself in the story, hours passing by in mere moments. Coming out, it feels surreal and saddening as you realize you can, in fact, not punch through walls.
I don't know what it's like conceptually to be a soldier scarred by the death of their only brother, depressed by the monumental self-inflicted responsibility of protecting all those I love to ensure it never happens again. But when I read about Kaladin's arc from The Way Of Kings, I do something better: I experience it. I've never been depressed, but exiting that story, I feel I can relate to those who are depressed on a level I never was able to before.
Made To Stick mentions when we imagine doing something, the same parts of our brain activated in actually doing it get activated. In this way hearing stories can actually be a mental rehearsal for doing the thing itself. I tried explaining this point to my parents when I told them I don't have to actually responsibly find a career but can rather imagine the money coalescing in front of me. No luck.
This is also what connects us to others who consume the same story. We know they've gone through a similar experience to ours. Sure, they might have imagined things differently, but they invested in the same story.
When we share a story, we share a piece of our soul's DNA.
Imagination is also why we relate to some stories more than others. Everyone has objectives and obstacles blocking them in their life. But in the day to day it can feel like we aren't seeing much differenceāwhether positive or negative.
Great stories often showcase characters we relate to, with their own objectives and obstacles. We imagine ourselves as them, which is easier to do if we relate. And because stories are the satisfying emotional journey of a character(s) navigating death (whether psychological, professional, or physical), we see the results of that journey in a very dense format, allowing us to experience it ourselves through the characters.
Stories are practice grounds for navigating the journey of real life.
This is what gives stories the life-altering effect that propositional arguments often lackdon't. It's one thing to be told you should start exercising because the weight scale is embarrassed to spit out a number when you stand on it in the morning. It's another to watch a documentary about Eliud Kipchoge's epic journey to running a sub-two-hour marathon.
This still leaves another question unanswered. Why are there so many forms of stories? If stories help us learn at the level of our perspectival and participatory knowing, why not learn from purely real ones? They should be the most transferable to real life right? And yet, tons of fiction exists. What gives?
The Beauty Of Imagination: When Fiction Is Truer Than Reality
It seems like a ridiculous claim. Harry Potter, more real than reality?
And yet, in many ways Harry is more real than reality. For one, he actually has a girlfriend (sound of tears pattering on keyboard). And a magic wand. Though at this point, I'd settle for either.
Think about what's more real to you: numbers or the things they represent? Numbers are permanent, unchanging. This is the power of abstraction. The things they represent can change form in innumerable ways. In some ways numbers are more real than what they represent, because they are abstractions.
What is fiction or fantasy or sci-fi but an abstraction of the perennial patterns facing society or that could face society? While it might not have literally, historically happened, great fiction exists in the hearts of everyone who connects with that pattern. Harry Potter exists in the hearts of all high school students. Raskolnikov exists in the hearts of all Russians during the 19th century. Twilight exists as a quintessential example of how not to have a relationship.
But here's the thing--it can't just be the same fiction we're used to every time. Otherwise everyone would be writing The Lord Of The Rings over and over and--actually lots of people are just writing Lord Of The Rings over and over. Ahem, good stories are just different enough to be interesting but not so different they are alienating.
To paraphrase, Russian Literary critic Viktor Shklovsky: good art makes familiar things seem strange and strange things feel familiar.
This is called Strangefying, and it's one of the things great stories do best. Many stories morals are too trite or too similar to previous stories. I believe the scientific term is hodgepodge. When we get a story like this, we often react to it in the same way as an overly simplistic, obvious piece of advice like "You should be kinder:" We hate it.
This is why cliches are so bad. They're once interesting stories which have gone stale as an old piece of bread. They don't give that novel shit our brains want. Great stories are subtle in their forces.
There's another reason stories are so powerful: they're very simple.
I don't mean simple in meaning, I mean simple in form. A written English story, for example, is made up of the 26 characters of the alphabet arranged in complex ways (once you get really into English, this isn't technically true, but one must learn to pet the rock before wrestling with existential granite..) True some other art mediums often include various other auditory, gustatory, tactile, visual, and oratory sensations. But the point is stories, and especially written ones, are much more simplified versions of reality.
By de-emphasizing the role of sensations and realistic appearance of the physical world, poems put themselves more in the realm of the imaginary. And this changes everything. We can imagine how characters look. We can imagine how the world looks. We can imagine how historical conflicts went down.
For example, a poem mentions a flower, but doesn't show an image. Fantastic! You get to imagine what type of flower and how it looks like in your mind. We shape stories as much as they shape us. This gives you more autonomy over the thing you come up with. It makes it more personal. And in turn, it makes you believe you came to the idea yourself.
Because after all, a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.
Clearly, investing in stories can be incredibly transformational. But there is even more growth to be had in creating them yourself. How does storytelling grow you?
The Power Of Storytelling
Most people are terrible at telling stories. And the world is a more boring place because of it. Right now, tens of thousands of powerpoint presentations are being given in the same monotone, dreary voice you are scarred from because of lectures during your college days. The kind where even the presenter seems bored. It doesn't have to be this way.
Storytelling makes life more interesting.
It stops the terrible conversations about the weather, about how much sleep you got, about how busy you are. Storytelling is one of the most intimate ways of conversing with another human being. Any time you are blessed with the attention of another human being, you have an obligation to be interesting. Of course, not all the time, but meetings, dinner conversations, study sessions, and more can all be made better with stories.
Recently, I taught a backcountry cooking class. Instead of telling people the obvious statement of "don't do stupid shit around the fire," I told them about the time I almost blew everyone up by leaving the oil unopened next to the burning flame. Nobody did stupid shit around the fire.
Finding and crafting stories also helps you make sense of your life.
When you dive into the endless depths of your psyche and make a narrative, you're weaving meaning into the tapestry of yourself. This doesn't just connect you more to yourself, it connects you more to the person you are telling the story to as well. Storytelling helps you realize that the biggest, scariest, most painful or regretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with two, or three, or twenty, or three thousand people.
I used to be terrified of telling people about my fallout with my YouTube accountability group after I was accused of copying another person's content. But after telling the story to some of my closest friends, it became less scary. I moved on from the incident and integrated my learnings into myself.
And finally, telling stories slows time down.
It's far too easy to let the train of life pass us by as we're left sleeping on the bench. We get stuck in a routine, the days coalescing into a mixture of getting up, going to work, maybe seeing a friend, and going to bed. But when you live life looking for stories, you shine the light of awareness on every passing moment. Any day, however, mundane has the potential to become a story. In fact, the mundane stories are often the best because no one relates to the time you feel out of an airplane and survived by landing in a hay barrel.
Every day I do what Matthew Dicks in Storyworthy refers to as homework for life. I write down the most story-worthy thing I can think of, which happened from that day. Most of the time it's not interesting at all. But in those few cases where I capture a gem, it makes the whole thing worth it.
So far, we've focused exclusively on storytelling's benefits. But we must also explore its dark side.
The Danger Of Stories
Everything that makes stories so powerful is also what can make them so dangerous. Stories have been weaponized countless times throughout history. The story of Jesus from The Bible has been used in so many different contexts it's not even funny. Much of the time for great ways, but sometimes like in the case of the Crusades, it can support heinous acts.
In her TED talk, Chimanda talks about her experience growing up with only British American literature. As a result, despite living in Nigeria she wrote stories resembling the West's literature. It was only when she started reading African literature she realized how misguided she had been.
There is danger in a single story.
Because stories tap into our being mode, they can sometimes make us forget to relate to our logical, empirical side as well. Stories are often used in place of evidence. Personal traumas will always be valid, but they often don't generalize very well because of that very reasonāthey're personal.
People use stories all the time in marketing, education, and politics to sway your emotions one way. This is great when used alongside evidence and logic, but too often the story becomes a placeholder for them instead.
Hitler convinced an entire nation to begin killing Jews and wage war against the world using a story. He told the Germans they had been for too long been shamed by the rest of the world, it was the Jews's fault, and if they could work together, they could create a strong Aryan nation that would dominate the world.
This example highlights how easy it is to forget the story we're hearing is only one rendition of what could be. As the quote goes, history is written by the victors.
We should relish stories. Cherish them. But always remember at the same time, the danger they can hold when taken as law.
So, What's Next?
While I didn't realize it, all my movie watching, video game playing, and fiction reading was having a profound effect on me as a child. Now, I consider stories the closest thing I know to magic.
And they are only becoming more like magic as we speak. Video games, roleplaying games like Dungeons And Dragons, and virtual reality are changing the way we related to stories. For one, video games let us participate in the story itself, which has incredible ramifications outside the scope of this article. Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying games let us create a story alongside a group of other people, a shared story. And virtual reality allows us to experience stories on a deeper level than ever before.
The future of stories is ripe. I suggest you find a story to invest in after reading this. Perhaps one you already know, or a new adventure to get into.
If you want to learn how to tell better stories yourself, I recommend checking out my article 20% Of Storytelling Tips, 80% Of Outcome, In 16 Minutes. Read that article, you'll be better than 99% of people at telling stories in the first week.
Now if you don't mind, I'm going to turn my computer off and go read some more of The Stormlight Archives. Happy storytelling.