Writing

GreatGazoo

(4,195 posts) Fri Oct 3, 2025, 10:47 AM 3 hrs ago

Humans: The Story-Telling Animal

If you show a child a series of static pictures -- for example, a girl smiling, a plate of food half-eaten, the same girl frowning -- they will make those images into a story. They will project their own thoughts, experiences and emotions onto the girl. If they don't like the food in the picture they will say the story is the girl doesn't want to finish eating. If they are frequently hungry then the girl is sad that there isn't more food.

Jonathan Gottshall argues in his book " The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human" that storytelling is a survival skill. Our ability to find patterns in behaviors, events and outcomes is what helps us anticipate or avoid those outcomes. The impulse to find meaning is so strong in us that we will see stories even when they aren't there.

“The storytelling mind is allergic to uncertainty, randomness, and coincidence. It is addicted to meaning. If the storytelling mind cannot find meaningful patterns in the world, it will try to impose them. In short, the storytelling mind is a factory that churns out true stories when it can, but will manufacture lies when it can’t.”

We give priority to stories which scare us. Again this plays back to survival instincts. We are bombarded with information so we filter it down to what is most important -- threats to our health and survival.

“There is a paradox in fiction that was first noticed by Aristotle in the Poetics. We are drawn to fiction because fiction gives us pleasure. But most of what is actually in fiction is deeply unpleasant: threat, death, despair, anxiety, Sturm und Drang.”

In a big picture perspective, we collectively construct and reinforce cultural narratives. "History" has 2 somewhat contradictory meanings in the dictionary -- one is factual and statistical but the other, the root meaning emphasizes legend, myth and improbability. It is easy to forget that secular history is a fairly recent phenomenon.

The Puritans, for example, had no concept that history could be secular. For them, history was strictly the unfolding of God's plan; same for the present and future. Everything that happened or would happen had to be fitted into narrative of the Bible. Jefferson rewrote the Bible during a transitional phase of cultural narrative. He omitted the miracles and embraced the Age of Reason. Cultural narratives of the era demanded this because in non-secular history King George was the King because God wanted him to be thus revolution against King George was by extension revolting against God-given order. Jefferson was one of many who changed the dominant narratives to affect political ends.

In the present we tend to think of cultural narratives as being fact-based (or as flawed because they contradict facts). The battle over narrative includes "the culture wars" and is key to how we see ourselves and our future. As such our ability to tell compelling and engaging stories is fundamental to influencing the future:

“Story, in other words, continues to fulfill its ancient function of binding society by reinforcing a set of common values and strengthening the ties of common culture. Story enculturates the youth. It defines the people. It tells us what is laudable and what is contemptible. It subtly and constantly encourages us to be decent instead of decadent. Story is the grease and glue of society: by encouraging us to behave well, story reduces social friction while uniting people around common values. Story homogenizes us; it makes us one. This is part of what Marshall McLuhan had in mind with his idea of the global village. Technology has saturated widely dispersed people with the same media and made them into citizens of a village that spans the world.”

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/17882886-the-storytelling-animal-how-stories-make-us-human