Story as a Weapon - No. 37
It is impossible to underestimate the role that storytelling has played in shaping communities, cultures, and civilizations throughout history. Before we had written languages, ancestral tribes relied on oral traditions, built around stories that passed down their collective wisdom and history. Our minds are created to learn through story, not just the passing along of information. Some people can become very good at remembering information, but simply transferring knowledge doesn't lead people to discovery. It's through discovery that we really learn. Story gives meaning to information and allows us to internalize truth and wisdom in a way that is impossible in a textbook. Stories stick with us and allow us to remember things that we would likely never remember if they weren't shared within a larger story. There's a reason that Jesus taught using parables. Great teachers throughout all of history have relied on story as the primary tool for guiding and instilling wisdom in the people they lead.
Something tragic has happened to story in the modern world. It has become a commodity to be used and manipulated for profit. Story is no longer the domain of the wiseman; it has become entertainment. Our Western scientific thinking-based culture values information more than transformation. Now, stories are leveraged by businesses to capture people’s attention with little regard for their impact on people's thinking and on our society as a whole.
Almost every story we engage with nowadays is connected to a business model. Most of the people telling stories have some way to monetize that story. At first glance, there's nothing wrong with that, but when we look deeper, we have to consider feedback loops. A feedback loop occurs when we create something, share it with others, and learn from their reactions. If you make a YouTube video and it gets very few views, then you learn that you need to do something differently to make it more interesting for people. After making and sharing hundreds of videos, you have learned lots of little things that you might not even be aware of about how to make your videos more engaging. Most people creating lots of content for social media have a profit motive. Sometimes that is a business or product that they are promoting or a personal brand they are creating. Other times, they are simply making money from advertisers who sponsor their content or pay to run ads during their videos. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the movie industry, where studios spend billions of dollars a year to make movies as entertaining and engaging as possible so that they can sell them. Content creators are driven to make their content engaging, not truly impactful. Even people whose motives are good are still paid for engagement, not lasting impact and societal health.
There are many layers to stories. The first and most obvious is the actual story we tell or the plot of a movie or book. But story is much deeper than that, every story carries many narratives with it and subtle messages, whether they are intended or not. Most people will watch movies or read books and miss out on these subtle underlying narratives within the larger story. But the storytellers themselves are deeply aware of the power of these subtle narratives and messages. That's why companies pay for product placement in movies and shows. However, many of the subtle narratives aren't intentional, but they do echo the feelings, beliefs, and desires of the culture they are made for.
Story is no longer a tool that helps us discover what we must understand in order to live well, and instead has become a commodity used to make us feel good. In other words instead of guiding us to what we need to hear, story is now used to tell us what we want to hear. From books to movies, social media content, and even TV channels, decades of feedback loops have enabled storytelling to get better and better at showing people what they want to see.
How many major movies these days center around a happily married man as the lead character? Not many; most feature a single man, either because he's never been married, or his spouse was killed, or they were separated by divorce. When I ask myself why that is, I come to one simple conclusion. When a story involves sexual tension and sexual conquest, it's much more interesting. From wondering whether the guy will get the girl, to wondering how the main character will navigate his complicated web of multiple sexual partners, we find the romantic and sexual side of the story fascinating. So, if almost all stories today that have a male lead character feature someone who is single and romantically active, what is the subliminal narrative that young men begin to internalize subconsciously? I think one of the subliminal messages is that it is more fun to be single than to be married. Could this be a contributing factor in delayed marriage, declining marriage rates, and increased divorce rates? Almost all of our stories celebrate single men, not happily married men and committed fathers. But what does our society need more of? Single men on the hunt for sexual partners, or devoted fathers? Regardless of where you look, the answer is abundantly and overwhelmingly clear: the health of societies throughout history is directly tied to how well they help boys become men and lead families. Families are the foundational building block of every society. And yet now the nuclear family is being eroded at an ever-increasing rate. The role of story in perpetuating the erosion of gender identity and families in the world is undeniable.
Let's consider another form of story, podcasts. Most people I know listen to at least a few podcasts a week. One of the most popular forms of podcasts is interviews. Most podcasters try to get the most successful and famous people they can to interview on their podcasts, and their interviews tend to center on how that person became successful. We all enjoy these types of interviews because we see ourselves in the person's story. We love when they started from nothing, had a dream or a vision, faced challenges, and ultimately became successful. In their stories, we learn all sorts of helpful things, sometimes wisdom and other times hacks for productivity, relationships, and health. What we tend to fail to see is that in listening to all of these interviews, almost all of the people featured on these podcasts are being interviewed because they have achieved our culture's definition of success. Unfortunately, this means that it reaffirms for us the thinking and priorities of our modern culture and encourages us to build our own lives around a very broken set of priorities and definition of success.
Story shapes culture. Story shapes people. We must be very careful of the stories that we engage with, and very aware of the subtle messages within them. Almost every story that we will find on social media, YouTube, Netflix, and Spotify is designed to tell us what we want to hear, not lead us to discover what we need to understand. The stories that we need to hear most aren't easily found on these platforms, because they don’t fit into the algorithm. All you have to do is scroll through YouTube to see that most of what is promoted by the algorithms is shocking, controversial, and exciting. The stories that we need to shape us aren’t flashy and edgy and won’t fight for our attention. The stories we need must be sought out, then pondered so that we can discover their wisdom and consider how it applies to our own lives.
Story has become a weapon of chaos. Almost all popular stories today celebrate and promote values and ideas that are antithetical to the way of life that we were created for. They tell us that we should want things that aren't good for us, and that our worth is found in what we can achieve and what others think of us. Most importantly, the stories our culture is built on aren't real stories. In real life, people don’t have superpowers, James Bond ends up a broken and lonely man, workaholics end up destroying their health and families, and wealth never makes you truly happy.
Our minds are designed to learn and discover through story. We will all do well to be very selective about the stories that we allow to shape us. Even stories that seem harmless are often built on broken narratives that encourage us to pursue what we want when we want it instead of letting go of what we want so that we can discover what we are truly made for. The stories that have most shaped my life have come from men I respect sharing their journey. Their stories often come to mind when I find myself facing the many challenges and opportunities of life, whether it’s raising kids, navigating work, or wrestling with life decisions. Great stories guide us into the identity and way of life we were made for.
- John Walt
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