CHAPTER THREE:
What stories shape (and reshape) our world
How do you explain right and wrong to a four-year-old child? The other day, I found myself telling my son “You shouldn’t bully people. And you shouldn’t be afraid of bullies.” He stared at me blankly from the passenger seat.
Before bed, I read him a modern version of the old Norwegian folk tale, Three Billy Goats Gruff.
I saw him feel the fear of the little goat, simply trying to cross a bridge, only to be threatened by the troll that lives beneath it.
A few pages later, I saw him feel pity for that same troll when the little goat’s big brother kicked it down to a watery grave.
My son hadn’t yet fully understood the concept of bullying. But he could understand everything he needed to through the power of a narrative.
Humans have used stories to shape societies for millennia.
One of the earliest extant legal texts is the Code of Hammurabi. Inscribed on a basalt slab, it sets out 282 rules in an ‘if this, then this’ format. For example, “If a man accuses another man of murder, but cannot prove it, the accuser shall be put to death.”
In the text’s prologue, the Babylonian King Hammurabi claims to have received these rules from Shamash, the Babylonian god of justice. But logic tells us such laws are a codification of many lived experiences over time.
The ancient Babylonians figured out the rules and punishments that worked best, and formed them into a series of tiny narratives - single chains of cause and effect - to allow them to be transmitted to the society as a whole, told through the mouthpiece of Shamash.
Today, storytelling is proving a vital technique for those working to change damaging systems, heal communities, or build toward other social goods.
Most prominently seen in films, creatives express suffering, explore trauma, and encourage critical reflection for audiences. Recently the release of Candyman (2021), the spiritual successor to Candyman (1990), highlighted the evolution of filmmakers over time in exposing racism and its effect on the black diaspora.
This tool has also seen families and social workers in the UK swap stories, realize they have shared goals, and co-create a new service. At its most ambitious, storytelling unites people to author a new manifestation myth for humanity.
Most organizations’ goals aren’t so grand. But the fact is, whether you want to convince a customer to buy a product, motivate your employees, or change the culture of your brand - you should be studying and applying storytelling too.
Story has many different qualities that make it useful for changing systems. It enables the possible to feel probable in ways our rational minds cannot comprehend.
Historical stories of the past can teach people lessons, but there is a deeper value for storytelling to human development.
Australian researchers found that verbal and painted stories from Indigenous communities were able to faithfully record and track changes in sea levels between 18,000 and 7000 years ago. Where modern humans might assume only scientists could reliably note these events since they happen very slowly and would not have been noticeable in an individual’s lifetime, 300 generations of Indigenous communities faithfully documented their environment.
Intergenerational stories don't just pass orally or physically, they can be genetic. In 2015 scientists confirmed that children of Holocaust survivors held their ancestors' trauma responses despite not experiencing the event. In fact, subsequent generations don't necessarily need to be told or see the traumatic story in order to be affected by it. This is the theory of epigenetic inheritance and scientists still cannot explain how human DNA stores this.
From learning what could and couldn't be eaten, to how to best raise a child, humans have always known that all answers can be discovered through stories.
