III. Shared culture ↑
25. We share stories with one another.
Humans share stories with each other.
These can be quite simple tales, or very complex narratives.
And stories can be told and recorded using a variety of media.
A story generally includes the following elements:
- Setting;
- Situation;
- Character;
- Actions;
- Consequences.
Stories often embody a group’s values, and form important elements of their cultures.
Stories often feature the exploits and accomplishments of heroes.
Stories can also be useful to broaden the perspectives of the listeners/readers.
But good stories are also fun and engaging, providing novelty in our lives.
Stories, however, have their limits, and some necessary forms of wisdom are difficult to reduce to the elements of a particular story.
Words from Others on this Topic
The dullness of fact is the mother of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, 1962, from the book Fact and Fancy
Those of us who have been true readers all our life seldom fully realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to authors. We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison.
C. S. Lewis, 1961, from the book An Experiment in Criticism
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
John Rogers, 2009, from the blog post “Kung Fu Monkey - Ephemera 2009 (7)”
It’s only recently that I’ve come to understand that writers are not marginal to our society, that they, in fact, do all our thinking for us, that we are writing myths and our myths are believed, and that old myths are believed until someone writes a new one.
Kurt Vonnegut, 1974, from the interview “WNYC Reader's Almanac - Vonnegut Interview”
To be human is to confuse a satisfying story with a meaningful one, and to mistake life for something huge with two legs. No: life is mobilized on a vastly larger scale, and the world is failing precisely because no novel can make the contest for the world seem as compelling as the struggles between a few lost people.
Richard Powers, 2018, from the book The Overstory
Relevant Reference Models
- An element of The Tribal Instincts
Next: IV. The Restless Animal