Telling stories

I just finished reading ‘The storytelling animal,’ by Jonathan Gottschall. A good enough book. It covered mostly familiar territory for me, but I assume many parts would be revealing for some people. ‘Story’ is a very good lens to use and by the end of the book I was convinced of what I already believed, and yet still these issues remain beyond the grasp I want. Of course, I want the impossible – which in this case is to understand the human mind. I suppose it doesn’t help that the primary tool I have to do that with is a single human mind. And I barely understand myself.

So let’s start with an illuminating quote from Gottschall:

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.

And then back in Jeremiah it says: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

Allrighty then.

So I am in good company when I say:

We want our illusions. We don't want to be fools, but we really do want to be fooled - again and again. And many times, we would prefer not to know that we are being fooled. There is real magic in our illusions, magic that is often stronger than empirical reality.

Once again, the pronouncements remind us of a general intuition, but our reach for understanding exceeds our grasp. Assuming Gottschall is generally correct, human beings want stories – in most cases, stories with setting and characters and actions particularly defined. And yet we will (even want to) be fooled.

Rationality is one illusion that must be faced. As we argue with each other personally, or in society, we want to believe that we are not lying to each other – at least, that we are not lying to ourselves. But going all the way back in recorded time we have been fooling ourselves. Why should now be different?

Of course, we also manage the truth now and then. So how do we tell which is which, knowing our penchant for deceit? Ay, there’s the rub. Shakespeare had his own revealing tales to tell.

The proof remains where it always has been – in a pudding, or rather, a reality outside our own minds. My mind will always be the lens through which I perceive the empirical world, but if I am paying attention, rocks and river water and sky are not easily manipulated by my mind.

I am indeed spinning a story when I begin: The sky is reflected in the river … but I think I have a pretty good grasp of the solid and liquid and gaseous matter I see and that the objective nature of reality remains somewhat separated from my subjective awareness. But I will prefer magic - again and again and again.

And so we go forth, with glimpses that astonish or terrify us - I could tell you stories. It’s what people do.