Weaving History from Stories (Part 2).

The Story-teller as a Custodian of Culture.

Image Courtesy of Unsplash

In the first part of this discourse, we explored the fundamental role of stories in the constitution of human consciousness. We highlighted the fact that the prototype of this mechanism is embodied in how the mind of children work. We also touched on how the pictures painted by stories seep into the impressionable linings of nascent systems of thinking. Thus, we established within the context of our discourse that a child is not a kid, but any person who still has a lot of growing ahead of him. Another concept we discussed is how growth requires a certain indifference to difficulty. Mind you, this is not an indifference that amounts to denial, but a certain approach to challenges that chooses to play with possibilities, where one could otherwise have been consumed with singularly getting the problem over with. Withal, this mindset underscores an emphasis on learning, rather than a mere fixation on obliterating unpleasant circumstances. In due course, one would see that this winsome playfulness comes away with more from an experience than all the hard-hitting vigour that a man pitches against a perceived problem. I believe this video by Mark Rober gives an interesting perspective on the matter. The quote below also lends some credence to this approach:

Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.

The Art of Possibility

Enlarging the hypothetical box, and toying with different frames is exactly what children do well. They are experts at carving opportunities for play out of mundane or maddening reality.

In this second part, I'll wrap up my thoughts on this subject by scaling my arguments from the individual to the societal level. Looking at the influence of stories in the macrocosm of communities, we shall trace the tapestry they weave and the trail they leave within cultures over centuries.

The mobility of culture through storytelling

Storytelling … is how a community expresses [and transmits] the unique signature of its collective identity.

Culture may be viewed as how a community chooses to remember its past. One might even say that it is a kind of collective memory . The process of recounting what we remember (as a community) is what constitutes storytelling. Storytelling isn't just a rendition of (past) events or popularly-held beliefs; it is how a community expresses the unique signature of their collective identity. It is written (or told, if you will) in their fashion, architecture, dietary preferences, and language (linguistic style and structure), to name a few. It is not just a vessel for conveying their philosophy; it is a blockchain (the first of its kind, aha!) of sorts that records the history of their adaptation to geography; their response to adversity and conquests; their adoption, rejection, and absorption of alien elements. This - linked, relayed, and imbibed - constitutes the highway of culture transmission.

Our stories however, are being retold by the ‘reimagination’ facilitated by technology, the dynamics of migration in a ‘quasi-borderless’ world, and the constantly jiggling parameters of what it means human. These forces are actively terraforming the landscape of social consciousness however, they are not entirely new. They are in fact inherent in collective human behavior and have actively shaped intercultural interactions over time. They become prominent (not that they were non-existent) in ways that jump at the consciousness when two or more established cultures collide. This conspicuous manifestation could also result from major paradigm shifts, leaps in the understanding of the way the world works, or political manipulation. These concepts are somewhat beyond the scope of this discourse. Hopefully, we will explore them further in a later piece.

*A sidenote

Scaling up

Stories are the lifeblood of culture, and culture bears the DNA of a civilization. To kill a civilization, one only need corrupt, twist or completely extinguish the process of transmitting its (origin) story(ies). In the same vein (pun intended), one can alter the morphology of a civilization or society by simply introducing a mutation in the content of its stories. Another point to note is the significance of time scale in the evolution of cultures. Minor changes seem indiscernible at the time of their implementation. However, they gain relativistic mass and acceleration when left unchecked in their advance. A story that has completed its developmental arc, much like ‘an idea whose time has come’, possesses such power that it can’t be stopped from spreading like wildfire. This power is the manifestation of the momentum it gained while it seemed dormant. When the forces of time and chance supply the auspicious spark, these stories light hearts like a bonfire, even if all that propels them is the tiniest of whispers.

The familiarity of cultural stories notwithstanding, they exhibit certain mutabilities that make tracking changes in their core memes tricky to the average human being. This is primarily because of the mechanism of adaptation and our natural tendency to associate rather than discriminate information. In other words, when presented with a new data point regarding something remotely similar to anything we have in the archives of our experiences, our first inclination will be to group it with what we are most familiar with, rather than set it apart as a new class entirely. We do this regardless of the fact that whatever similarities the newcomer might have with old data may have been purely coincidental or merely superficial. Daniel Kahnemann's book Thinking, Fast and Slow (a concise summary here) provides some fascinating insights into this behavior. Furthermore, time as an extra dimension in cultural studies and storytelling is an essential parameter required to calibrate our knowledge of cultural evolution and societal transformation. Ensuring the consistency of a culture's stories over time is the best way to make sure it never goes extinct. This is why literature and documentation are literally the best things to have happened to the preservation of cultural legacy, or human history for that matter.

[Stories are] especially powerful considering [their] remarkable ability to bypass our conscious critic and embed themselves deeply…

Stories are how we shape our perception of reality. In the long run, our perception shapes our approach to creating reality. This generates a feedback loop that can spiral up or down depending on how we channel the effects it has on us. This is especially powerful considering the remarkable ability of stories to bypass our conscious critic and embed themselves quite deeply. Stories don't brainwash (which is an urgent bludgeoning of facts and perspectives, false or otherwise, that cause the mind to succumb to the sheer force of imposition). Rather, they tend to embrace the heart in a sympathetic, disarming manner. Perhaps this is also because stories tend to be told, or at least introduced to us, within the confines/context of the sentimental relationships in our lives. This makes stories some of the most effective tools for reality-casting. They use familiar elements to frame timeless, transcendental themes. Actually, the trinity of myths, folklore, and legends are projections of the collective consciousness of a community onto the canvas of the mind through the lens of stories.

Moreover, stories are like the wind: they go where feet may never reach, bearing the seeds of values or vices with which another mind or even an entire generation is cultivated. In essence, they are the ultimate tools of colonization. Every cultural conquest had a propaganda machine that churned out stories that subdued its subjects at (a) consciousness level. Almost inevitably, they leave a legacy that lingers perpetually in the heart of its bearers. As far as I am concerned, this is the ultimate frontier of conquest... And it almost never goes away. It is the aerosol that lasts eons; it is the fallout that mutates entire generations.

[Stories are] the ultimate tools of colonization… [they constitute] the ultimate frontier of conquest… [they are] the aerosol that lasts aeons; [they are] the fallout that mutate entire generations.

I'll conclude on this note. Stories are not just an assemblage of words to recount past experiences. Rather, they are a spectrum of tools with which we build conceptual structures, cultural monuments, behavioral frames of reference, and functional channels to keep generations roughly within a certain range of consciousness. Once again, storytelling isn't just a rendition of past events or popularly-held beliefs; it is how a community expresses the unique signature of their collective identity.

See you soon…

👋🏽