The Science of Storytelling

 In my last post I introduced The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker, a brilliant but difficult work connecting effective storytelling with the workings of the human mind. I revealed a single golden nugget (a list of the 7 plots) to provide evidence of what the gold mine of Jungian analysis can provide. But, I could not recommend that book to anyone, but the more sophisticated readers, as it is a challenging volume. I will provide more nuggets in the future as it sinks in a bit better and begins to tie in with other things I know. In the meantime, I thought I would introduce a far more accessible book on the Science of Storytelling entitled, appropriately, The Science of Storytelling. The author is Will Storr.

Originally, I was planning to provide a post summarizing the key points of the book. But, as I looked back through the bits that I had highlighted, I realized that it would be more fun, and hopefully more interesting, to focus on some of the best points and elaborate on them. Here is a quote from the introduction. Note that the author states this in passing. But it is worth a deeper dive. 

"It's stories that make us human. Recent research suggests language evolved primarily to swap 'social information' back when we were living in Stone Age tribes. In other words, we'd gossip." 

OK, so stories make us human and we like to gossip. Is that it? 

Well, ever since the Enlightenment, scholars, and people in bars, have been arguing over what it is that makes humans different from animals. Prior to the Enlightenment, this was an easy question. Man was made in the image of God and the animals were not. Tough luck for the animals.  But, after the Enlightenment, people felt that a more scientific reason was needed for man's superiority. Here are some of the responses that people came up with.

Homo Faber (man the tool maker). Humans create and use tools which seems to be an important distinction. Yes, I know that chimpanzees use a stick to get termites out of the termite nest. But, a stick does not compare to a modern computer or an automated factory that produces cars. So, there seems to be something to this. And this is indeed the most popular response.

Home Ludens (man the game player). Man is the only animal that responds to imaginary rules. Bernard Suits defined a game as a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. Humans attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles whether they are playing a game or trying to return license plates to the DMV. Animals do not. One might point out that puppies play. But, that is just practice to develop survival skills.

Homo Loquitor (man the speaker). In his recent book The Kingdom of Speech, Tom Wolfe asserted that when we acquired language we became human. There is something to this claim. But, I will refer you to the book to justify it on your own.

Home Narrator (man the storyteller). Finally, we get to Storr's claim that it is stories that make us human. 

I would argue that all of these things are uniquely human. Yet each is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the human experience. What makes us human is our advanced Neo-cortex which, in turn, allows us to achieve these other distinctions. What allowed us to develop such an advanced Neo-cortex and each of these fine distinctions as well? There are various opinions on this question as you might imagine. However, my favorite is that the development of cooking allowed the advanced Neo-cortex to develop as it is much easier to digest cooked food than raw food. Hence cooking allowed us to consume the vast amount of extra calories needed to support our advance brain. And, since I love to cook, the idea that cooking made us human feels right. But, I am digressing.

 Why does gossip matter? Other primates live in much smaller groups where everybody knows everybody else. Trust is based on knowing the other individuals. Humans live in vastly larger groups where most individuals do not know the other individuals. How do you know if you can trust them? How do you know that they are obeying social norms? How do know they aren't getting away with something? Well, we have intelligence gathering and sharing activities where observed behaviors are shared with other members of the community. We call this intelligence sharing gossip.

How does that get us to stories? As human societies get larger and larger, it becomes difficult to keep track of a lot of details discovered in the intelligence gathering. So, we organize our knowledge into categories called archetypes. Character archetypes organize people (hero, bum, leader, most likely to get stabbed by his own spear). Behavioral archetypes organize actions (fought bravely, discovered new lands, acted selflessly). We then put these character and behavioral archetypes together to form narratives which provide intellectual economy and make the sharing of gossip easier. This in turn leads to social stability in increasingly larger populations. 

Over time people realize that certain narratives tend to produce positive outcomes while other narratives tend to produce negative outcomes. So the people begin sharing generalized versions of the narratives with each other and especially with children. These generalize narratives are what we call stories. And, yes, these stories are a big part of what it means to be human.