Reflections 23rd October
On my Mind
When stories fall apart
“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
Muriel Rukeyser
The use of stories as a means of persuasion is as old as history. Apparently, one of the reasons we Sapiens replaced Neanderthals was our creative ability to tell stories about the future, and use them to bring people together in common cause. For thousands of years, before the printed word, stories were thr repositories of our histories, our relationships with each other and the places we lived. They were the thread that connected us with our past, and gave us context for our efforts into the future.
The trouble is that stories are such mischievous things. When told in context, within communities to which they belong, they are a force for bonding and continuity, but when they escape into the wild, and get reconstructed by those outside the community, they can do great damage.
Until the enlightenment, stories travelled by word of mouth, person to person. The …
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Outside the Walls to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.