We all like stories, right? Fairy tales, tall tales, those lovely things your gran told you about her childhood. Stories are important to us, important to our societies and even our evolution.
Now, I’m no writer (a song or two when I was younger, maybe) and as such have no expertise or a huge amount of interest in the construction, use-cases and minutiae of how they work. What I AM interested in, is human behaviour. And the patterns therein. And one thing that has become apparent to me over the past few years is how double-edged this concept is.
So firstly, what are they for?
I figure that they must be FOR something, or they wouldn’t exist. It always begins with the beginning and if we have them, we must have evolved them.
The earliest evolutionary function seems to be around increasing critical thinking and reasoning, ie looking at multiple points of view. We’re meaning-making-machines and we used this trait to simulate experiences without having to directly encounter them thereby enabling us to challenge perceptions and solve problems. Makes sense, and sounds deliciously nuanced right?
The ability to crystallise concepts and make decisions on that thinking has been really important for humans. Our brains developed so much of this critical thinking and got to be so big that we’ve evolved to carry children for less time than other mammals (that big brain limits gestation) and a large proportion of us can’t breathe properly (our brains’ shape actually disfigured our skulls over time, restricting our nasal passages.) I reckon it’s fair to say, therefore, that stories (and our large brains, obviously) are functional one way or another and part of natures plan, whatever you consider that to mean.
In short, stories were good for us and our learning and are therefore one of the main reasons we came to dominate the planet (also y’know, we could run and stuff). So that’s an evolutionary function within ourselves and our objective view of the world. But what about relating to other people?
Transmitting knowledge, teaching lessons
Connection has of course also been incredibly important in our history. We developed trust, loyalty and equanimity and around these concepts formed tribes and cooperated as well as solving problems on our own, putting us at the front of the species pack. Stories helped us to team up and to teach future generations how to do things by analogy, passing on lessons and knowledge and allowing our societies to evolve alongside our bodies. We taught our children what to be scared of, what was good to eat and how to build structures, all by some form of story. Looking good so far.
For a deep dive on this, I would recommend reading “Sapiens” by Yuval Noah Harari. In it, he talks about the history of (amongst many other things) religion, nationalism, money, and shared identity. All of these are in effect, stories which have had an immeasurable effect on our development as a society.
At some point, we also came up with the idea of an ‘arc’. The concept of story arcs refers to the overarching structures that narratives often follow. That’s most commonly a format involving beginning, middle and end. The beginning gets us interested, the middle delivers the content, and the end gives us the closure and satisfaction to help us form the lovely clean simple conclusions that we crave so much. It’s clear that we crave this structure and/or are well-trained into it because it’s a similar structure that marketing copy follows. One example being AIDA = Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. This isn’t a ‘rule’ per-se, but it stands to reason that if we’re selling using these frameworks, they must hit home.
We got so good at creating these arcs that even outside of marketing we've sorted them into lots of types and categories. That got me thinking, what does this tell us? Is it that stories are in effect, repetitive representations of ourselves and our base emotions, not to be trusted? Or is it that they are fundamental and important as a way to understand humans (and even though to have any lasting impact, all stories have to be basically the same) they still have a lot of intrinsic value?
I'm going with both.
Dopamine and Gossip
It’s in this same way that even what we know as ‘gossip’ has its function in evolution. We might not (I certainly don’t) very much like the use of information about other people’s lives as currency, and even less as entertainment. But at its root, gossip is the basis of forming groups, security, safety, and all that connected tribal stuff. That’s not to totally legitimise gossip in its modern context, but maybe think a little bit more kindly about the people you see as gossips in your life. It’s a bit like xenophobia, we should have moved past it by now but it’s rooted in our genes and instincts. Many generations before us relied on gossip for survival and it would be nothing without stories.
In any case, some people just LOVE stories. Whether fictional or non-fictional, the idea of narrative is just catnip to them, and when something happens that they think is either interesting or remarkable, they desire to share that story with someone else and (whatever the base motivation) they ask countless follow-up questions to gather more information. Stories can be addictive to those people due to the emotional connection derived from sharing experiences, (or the perception that they are shared) and creating a sense of connection or validation. I am not one of these people and I've always found it a little bit confusing. But then, I’m not particularly emotional so it fits pretty well.
It seems that when storytellers witness the results of their narratives, it can create a dopaminic desire to continue captivating their audience. We all want to matter and have an effect on the world, and this is their preferred way of doing so. Additionally of course, the creative process itself can also be so fulfilling that it becomes addictive. Storytellers then continually seek that sense of fulfillment through their narratives. Now, there’s obviously nothing wrong with dopamine, long as we respect its power and are as aware of its effects as we can be and take responsibility for ourselves. More on the offsetting techniques later….
Emotion, memory, story
So if we need to parse and share information for the purposes of critical thought and developing interpersonal relationships, why stories? Why not a fact sheet or a PDF made on canva that says “I like you, can we pool resources on this hunting expedition?” (Do I wish that was the way the whole world functioned or what…..don’t get me started)
The simple answer to this is that if we want information to be retained, it has to connect to our memories. We form strong(er) memories through emotions. The more something provokes us, the more likely we are to remember it which creates a bit of a heirachry of retention which we can gain some control over, but it’s not easy. We all know the catastrophe of social media algorithms and how they’ve optimised for fear and pain by purport of humans being *slightly* more motivated by pain than pleasure. For a good account of this, go watch “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix.
Sadly, the vast majority of the time we don’t get to decide what’s sticky and what isn’t. It get’s a bit science-y here as “episodic” memory is the type that involves recalling events and emotions, making it more personal and tied to experiences. It's distinct from semantic memory, which deals with knowledge and facts, and procedural memory, responsible for learned skills and actions. I would have imagined that the latter two would be more evolutionarily useful and therefore linking THOSE to emotion would make more sense….but there we are.
In any case, if we needed to pass down information from one generation to the next, story and analogy (and therefore emotion) was the best way to do that. Ever noticed that emotional people seem to remember EVERYTHING? That’s why. Certainly it can work the other way round too and I have definitely noticed some correlations in my tiny little cross-section of the world, myself included. Again, I’m not a particularly emotional person and my memory is terrible. I’m very distractible too which means things are unlikely to get proper attention in the first place. Double-whammy for a brain-sieve.
The important thing to remember here is story = emotional responses = memory!
So we’ve got that stories have a use. And always have. And we’ve got that this means different things in different amounts to different people. But what if stories are true, completely made up or somewhere between the two? Where does story meet information? We're getting into the weeds now, and starting to move towards that very hot button word, truth. For the intents and purposes of this conversation, and in the context of story, truth relates to 2 ends of a sliding scale…..
Fiction vs Non-fiction
On one side we have the cold, hard yummy facts with no narrative attached, nothing left out and nothing added for the purposes of ease of consumption or to disproportionately provoke an emotional response (do I wish this was the world, or what? Mmmmm……facts……)
On the other side we have the purely invented sequence of events, arranged and combined so as to create an arc that is pleasurable to absorb, as emotionally motivating as it possibly can be and most likely to stick in our minds as a result (sure, it has it’s place….not that I have any leaning either way….oh no…..)
Pretty much everything is somewhere between the two. But where is the line? Where does fantasy meet fact? Arguing about what is and is not one side or other of an arbitrary line is not the goal here and I’d say it doesn’t matter really. What matters is the purpose and intention of a story, what it means to you and how it makes you feel, act, and show up in your life. (Incidentally, have you seen what passes for a ‘documentary’ these days? They’re playing pretty fast and loose with the idea of non-fiction in my eyes. Still useful though.)
So what about stories that are created primarily for the consumption of others? Then we begin to deal with these two words:
Entertainment and Art
What’s the difference? What are the primary purposes of these two words? In the context of this piece, I’d say that “Entertainment” is created for amusement and enjoyment whilst “Art” is created for the expression of the artist. But in reality, those two words are mostly interchangeable. Certainly there is always at least a bit of each in the other. (Is this very blog art or entertainment? I'm certainly not denying that there is a narrative and therefore a story based on my own biases, preconceptions, and opinions. Trixy stuff.)
I’m obviously not saying that Entertainment is bad. It’s great! And it’d be fucking boring without stories and narratives. Now we start to move into the more modern application of the way we sequence events and take meaning from them. What is the difference between narrative and story, I hear you ask? In this context, I take “story” to mean the individual sequences of bookended events, and “narrative” to mean a wider presentation of a situation. A narrative is more like a theme, and stories fit within, and support them for good or bad. But I’ll get to that.
Some examples now. I’ll go with Films and TV for simplicity but obviously, we can extend this to books, visual art, music, news, anything really, that tells us what's going on. To my mind, what we’re looking for (well, what I’m looking for) in fiction is a good balance of using stories to make solid points in an educative, fair and nuanced way.
A good example
One of the best examples of this balance of I can think of is Battlestar Galactica. It is ostensibly fiction, but is so relevant to how humans are. It addresses loyalty, morality, trauma, love and so many other things and to me is as much a treatise as anything else. It’s my perfect example of something that uses fiction to convey philosophical points in a largely balanced way. I’m sure you have your own. Like I said, this is about our own individualised responses, not right and wrong. (I’d be lying if I didn’t say that whether someone likes Galactica or not, is quite a marker for me in judging a person. A bit like whether they like Dubai or not. But that’s a different story)
A good example (of a bad thing)
The stories that we hear about relationships and what they’re supposed to be are probably the most toxic and unrealistic (change my mind) examples. They masquerade as truth when they’re anything but and are pretty destructive to boot. Specifically, the vast majority of the ones we hear lean towards the co-dependent. While intentionally a romantic (and certainly a VERY successful) film “The Notebook” can be seen as reinforcing unhealthy patterns in relationships. There is a weird lack of consent in how the protagonist pursues his ‘love’ and that's kind of the point. It's a wolf in sheep’s clothing in that way giving us a disgraceful representation of what ‘romance’ actually is (again, change my mind). And while I know a lot of people love it, I find it very difficult to get through an episode of “Friends” without cringing for exactly the same reason (the fact that it's witty does not offset this) and as well as the toxic relationship models, it also manages to contain all kinds of other lazy narratives about friendship, appearance, race, I could go on. Altogether now: It was a different time! Heh.
By now you’re probably starting to get an idea of how there’s the potential for a darker side to this…..
Where we are now
So - stories, narratives, gossip, art, entertainment, information.
They can all be fictional or non-fictional, and people consume both versions of all things. Mostly out of choice but these days, increasingly because it’s what an algorithm served them. That’s all well and good if we’re talking about ‘harmless’ stories (even here it gets wooly - is a story ever totally harmless and is it ever directly harmful? Again, it’s about what it means to US) but if we’re looking for facts, it's worth remembering that journalism has a lot to answer for since the money has been sucked out of that industry by the internet and it now sadly functions as part of the attention economy.
How can that not lead to embellishment? How can that not lead to sensationalism? It doesn't stop there. Music, art, photography, anything that is created for public consumption and monetised is now affected by click economy which raises all kinds of questions about how that purpose is guiding stories and creation itself. Again, do a small bit of digging into the algorithms for more info. It’s no secret.
Make no mistake, our precious stories are under threat.
The stories we attach to things
Like everyone else, I have been drawn in to thinking that my life was (or should be) something like the stories that I have read and seen. That I am the star of my own special movie with a pre-ordained and specific (good) outcome for yours truly. We see stories all around us all the time and we try to make our lives fit into them because they are powerful and they feel safe and understandable.
Life is however, unpredictable and messy and doesn’t have a clean beginning, middle and end. I would encourage anyone to watch out for their own tendency to make reality fit this model. We’re SO used to it and it’s SUCH a huge part of our history and evolution. But it’s by and large, bullshit. Real life is real life and stories are stories. It’s understandable of course, humans love control and resisting seeing our lives as a movie starring us is a tough thing to do.
This is the very reason why stories have produced (in my opinion) as many problems as they have benefits to us.
For example, ever met an embellisher? They truly believe what they’re saying. Such is the nature of confirmation bias. The story becomes their reality and as time goes on, it’s less and less possible to retrospectively gain accuracy. So what can we do? In short, we need to constantly strive to step back, write truer stories and not make decisions based on the idea that it will work out just like so-and-so in so-and-so, season seven.
Stories are equally powerful at holding court. Ever met someone who didn’t really seem to want to give the floor up? I must confess to having filled that role myself in the past. There is a lot of power in the very action of telling stories, as discussed earlier. Because interrupting them is impolite.
They have weight, and that weight can be thrown around.
Cognitive Bias
On top of everything else, once a story is formed in our heads, it becomes truth to us. Another evolutionary function designed to protect us which is now a bit of a tripwire. The father of this research and the umbrella term ‘behavioural economics’ is Daniel Kahnemann of ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ fame. Great book, go read. He posits the theory (I say ‘posits’ but the dude got a Nobel prize for this so let’s go with it…) of two systems of thinking: System 1 (fast, intuitive, and automatic - to conserve precious brain calories) and system 2 (slow, deliberate, and analytical - harder and more taxing but more factful). Incidentally, “Factfulness” by Hans Rosling is another useful read on this subject. It breaks down the idea of truth and fact in a very mathematical way. A firm favourite.
Cognitive biases mean that when it comes to stories, we remember what we want to remember and believe what we want to believe (there are over 50 examples in Kahnemann’s work - there’s an infographic to be found on the internet). Especially if either of those things fits in with a longer narrative we already have running about how something is, or is supposed to be. We look for evidence that supports our preconceptions and ignore the irritating stuff that doesn’t fit with it. It helps our brains to think in simple terms and conserve those calories. Evolution again, right? But in a modern context, it can be maladaptive (just like the taste of sugar, but that’s another story / blog post.)
Even the story we tell about the story can be skewed. Have you ever met someone who is utterly convinced they are being principaled when in actuality, they are acting out of fear or anger? Especially when doing something like “holding a grudge” or “picking up the mantle” of someone else’s issue. It’s easy and understandable to see how this compounds. Again, I believe we don't really have much of a choice but to learn individually that it’s our responsibility and integrity to do our best to counter this. We won’t succeed. But that is one of life’s infinite games, and one that’s very worth playing.
The prison of stories held on to
In psychology, meditation and all kinds of other modalities, practitioners talk about the stories we ‘attach’ to things. Thoughts, emotions, they all have parents and children. No thought is in isolation. Stories are unavoidable and in this case, can be just as easily defined as a sequence of thoughts rather than a cohesive narrative that gets passed from one person to another. Within those modalities, it’s often encouraged to have agency over this. Observe the story that emerges and let it pass so that it doesn’t spiral and gain a life of its own. That’s the important bit in my very humble opinion. Mindful control (wouldn’t it be lovely to have that!)
So what happens when it goes wrong? Ever met someone who has really heavily preconceived ideas of something? Ever met someone who has such a strong picture of a person, thing, situation or outcome in their head that it’s already real to them, even when it’s actually pretty unlikely? Ever seen someone so utterly convinced that something is so right and true that (even if the cards were on the table) when it happens differently they’re inconsolable? We’ve all done it. It’s incredibly hard.
This is where the other edge of the sword comes in at very high speed making a very scary swishy noise like in the movies - you’re seeing that in your mind’s eye now, right? Possibly being held by a guy in a mask? What does he look like? Bet he’s not a nice guy. That’s the analogy and story you’re attaching to the idea. Difficult not to, huh? I primed you with the image and you did the rest.
This to me is nothing less than a prison to escape from. Obviously it’s not totally possible to do so, but this is not trivial. Stories embed themselves in our brains and cling on like those annoying spherical seeds you find in your sock after you've been walking through a field. And the important thing to remember is that it's not a case of whether this story is positive or negative, but how strongly we are attached to it that makes the difference.
Probably the most famous research on this is Carol Dwek and her book “Mindset”. Essentially laying out that stories that emphasise learning and resilience can play a role in shaping a growth mindset and increasing adaptability and more resilience. But the reverse is also arguably (in the book) true. People with ‘fixed’ mindsets operate around ‘fixed’ stories and it's the story we tell ourselves about these behaviours that makes the difference. As before it all apparently relates to dopamine, which is a double edged sword within a double edged sword as it enhances learning and memory but is also very capable of habit-forming in the wrong direction (aka maladaption.)
What can we do?
That all depends on how much we care. I'm under no illusions that this is binary right and wrong and in fact, I rail against that very idea. To cast value judgements on any of this is to miss the point and I hope I've made that clear throughout this piece. We are all within our rights to analyse or not as much or as little as we want.
Personally, I think this stuff is really important. Living an honest and factful life is part of taking responsibility for yourself, which is a core value of mine. But that's easy for me, I am a less emotional person with a terrible memory and therefore stories don't impact me as much or form as much of my interaction with the world as other people. So it's easy to be dispassionate.
In any case,I would posit that the issue isn’t where something sits on the scale of truth, it’s the awareness of it. Thinking something is true when it isn’t is dangerous. Thinking something is fiction when it’s actually based around fact is equally dangerous. You only have to engage with politics a tiny little bit to see examples of this.
So in parting, I’ll simply say this. The stories we tell other people and ourselves are almost always two things:
1 - Probably only partly true
3 - Much more significant in their effects than we notice
Think carefully about what this very important word means to you and be conscious and stay keenly aware of the biases that exist just by purport of you being a normal human being.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan. Dream space is where the magic happens and without it we wouldn’t be inspired, or do anything. We’d certainly as discussed have less connection, which isn’t a good thing. But in these divisive days, it’s more and more important to have our eyes open and call a story a story and know what that means.
Stories have power. They have power over how we act, how we connect, and our very position in the world.
