Why Do We Crave Stories?

July 25th, 2008

Earlier this week, award-winning sf writer Nancy Kress (who is attending Launch Pad next week, by the way) wrote a short post about “the point of fiction.” I agree with her that a primary point is indeed “to decide what matters.” Last night, I was starting to reread Robert McKee’s excellent book, Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting, and in the first chapter he writes:

Day after day we seek an answer to the ageless question Aristotle posed in Ethics: How should a human being lead his life?

…

Traditionally humankind has sought the answer to Aristotle’s question from the four wisdoms — philosophy, science, religion, art — taking insight from each to bolt together a livable meaning. But today who reads Hegel or Kant without an exam to pass? Science, once the great explicator, garbles life with complexity and perplexity. Who can listen without cynicism to economists, sociologists, politicians? Religion, for many, has become an empty ritual that masks hypocrisy. As our faith in traditional ideologies diminishes, we turn to the source we still believe in: the art of story.

I think that’s very insightful and why story matters so much. People have always gossiped to keep track of everyone’s social status and their own, a very useful skill that conveys evolutionary advantage, even if it’s tawdry, but we also listen with fascination to stories about people we don’t know or that don’t even exist.

We learn, vicariously, from stories about what’s important and how we should live our lives, discovering what works and what doesn’t and how people perceive each other. There is a relationship between fiction and society that runs deep. It’s why there are forbidden stories that people reject, and how the stories and society symbiotically reflect each other. It’s why I have a problem with Michael Crichton whose work gives the public unconscious guidelines for how to view science and scientists, with suspicion and fear, even though science provides our greatest hope to solve the world’s greatest challenges.

Being able to learn from the successes and failures of other people had to provide significant evolutionary advantages, hence our need for story today. It’s a fundamental way we educate ourselves about life and our world, for better or worse.

Writers have a responsibility here. I’m not suggesting that we write polemics. I am suggesting we endeavor to write what’s true about people, society, and the world at large. If we do that, we honor what underlies the story cravings, and we provide a valuable contribution. Anything else is abuse.

Addendum:

I just saw this Scientific American article about how story trumps science, for many people for much vital information, because of the evolutionary history of our species as I discussed above.   We didn’t evolve with science.   We evolved with story.   We must learn how to let science trump story when it can, as science is more reliable.   Story, however, will always continue to serve an important role given the limitations of science.

Share/Bookmark

Tags: , ,

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.