Stories – The markers to our history
For millennia Stories and the telling of stories have been central to human existence. From the Hunter-Gathers who told of the day’s conquests around the fire, to friends who tell of what they were doing in December 2004 the exact minute the Tsunami hit while on holiday in Phuket, humans have woven their existence together with stories. The value of a story lies in its ability to convey complex multi-layered ideas in a simple and memorable form to culturally diverse audiences.
Today stories seem less important to our functioning as they were in ages gone by. We find that our preferred modes of operating are void of metaphor, symbolism and imagery. Often, when looking at management science employed by managers, the ‘softer’ value of viewing issues through the lens of Story is relegated in preference to good practice and sound expertise that over-complicate simple ideas. We are more comfortable in the realm of Story when it is applied to parenting as children thirst for the quenching that stories provide their imaginations.
There is another arena in which we are comfortable with Story, that of religion and moral education. All major religions started off with a great storyteller who gathered people around and told them stories that conveyed high moral worth in memorable and moving ways capable of being understood at many levels.
Throughout history whole communities have been created and kept alive through and with stories where the health of the community could be measured on the depth and prevalence of storytelling. Their leaders led through the art of telling stories. And these stories were kept alive as every member passed them on. They told stories of their history. They told stories of their future. They told stories of pain, or hope, of life, of death … life was created and kept alive through stories. The very fabric of reality was found in the story.
In these times stories seldom remained linguistic events in nature. Instead, stories moved people to capture and represent the impact that the story had. Through time communities have expressed this impact in symbolic forms that marked their existence. The Native American Indians constructed totem poles that were representations of the community’s identity. Found at the entrance of each community, the totem had carvings that represented significant events and people in the life of the tribe: how the tribe got its name, who had lead the tribe, how many wars had been won, how many wars were lost, what hardships had been endured, what it believed and how the tribe was to be revered.
Ancient communities and civilizations created mediums that conveyed their stories. The ancient Egyptians created a pictorial language of hieroglyphics that communicated their stories. The San used rock paintings to do the very same.
When one considers the wealth of history found in stories one has to wonder how it is that we feel that stories play less of a role in our modern day existence. Is it that the role of stories has changed? Is it that our communities are less dependant on stories for cohesion and functioning? Perhaps it is possible that modern communities have come to rely less on stories as a social fabric. When one however searches deeper into the make-up of modern communities one finds that stories still remain, exist, live and thrive. The difference is that the world has changed, thus changing the very nature of how stories are told, retold and remembered.
Storytelling is an old skill in a new context. The roles of Story and storytelling may not be explicit in our daily interactions, but they are there. Instead of sitting around fires, carving totems or painting on rocky outcrops we now tell and share stories through different mediums. The technological advent in the last few hundred years resulting in photographs, videos, television, websites and radio have changed the manner in which stories are created, told, remembered and shared. Today modern communications technology has replaced sitting around the fire, carving a totem and painting on a rock to keep our social memories in tact.
In comparison to the relative ease with which we store information, communities of old kept information through the telling of stories. When a significant event took place much time was spent on constructing the story, replicating it and ensuring that it stayed alive through its retelling. Think for instance of a monumental hunt where the Hunter conquers one of the largest buffalo. A buffalo that was elusive to all the hunters except this one. The buffalo that, if slaughtered, will keep the family alive longer than any other.
As the hunter drags his kill towards the cave, the family knows they have witnessed a significant moment. Deciding that this moment must be remembered, the hunter gathers all together around the fire, which is a story of its own, and reenacts how he overcame the buffalo with precision of movement, timing and skill. The family would sit in awe. The kids would ask for another telling of the story … and before we know it, a legend is born. As the story turns into a legend, it becomes worthy of spending copious amounts of time turning the story from a verbal retelling into a pictorial reference on the family cave wall. Finding the right coloured pigments might have taken days to prepare. Refining the painting implements adds more time while the legend becomes stronger. And then, pigment and rough twig-brush are committed to the rock face. The legend becomes timeless as the hunters finest moment is depicted in motions.
Today’s hunter pays his small fortune to be lead straight to the lion. He loads his rifle, aims, fires and then hops in his van to take a photo. Upon his return, he shows his family the photo … and becomes a legend, for a short while. Today however, we do not have the burning need to keep information alive as it is done for us through the use of recording mediums.
Because change is incremental, we have hardly noticed this shift. When seen in this light, we see that Story and storytelling is as much a part of our social fabric as it was in years gone by.
The consequence of having the technology to store our modern day stories is that the effort and pain required to keep the story alive has been taken out of the equation. We have lost the vested interest in keeping stories alive by knowing that they are stored instantaneously. In fact, we can store any story we like. We do not have to choose which stories will remain a part of our social fabric. In short, stories are now commoditized where we do not feel the need to index and categorise the significant stories from the insignificant ones. In days gone by the stories that remained alive were the significant stories. Today however, our story culture is cluttered with the excess of story such that the precious nature of Story is desensitized.
Stories have performed various functions within history: to warn; to empower; to gain trust; to inspire; to gather together; to remember; to focus; to laugh and to cry. One additional key element of Story and storytelling is that stories became symbols of significant times. If you like, they were markers for the outgoing generations to pass on to the newer generations as memories of a communities heritage.
With the advances of globalization it is becoming less important to have societal markers that distinguish communities from each other. Again, this global change has aided in the relegation of stories from key functional attribute to an occasional nicety.
In many ways, the markers of old are seen as recreational in today’s terms. If you take painting as an example, we see that painting has moved from a necessity a recreational art form. The challenge today is to rediscover the obvious impact and value of story in organizational contexts. We need to find our markers again.
By Barrie Bramley and Aiden Choles
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I agree.
Our ancestors embedded human wisdom in their tribal mythology, and it enabled them to survive for millenia. The symbology of myth has strong relationships to dreams and therefore access something deep and subconsious within us. As we’ve advanced, the relevance of the old tribal stories has waned and they lost their relevance. We’ve become a little arrogant in our age of scientific reductionism, rejecting the myths as historically incorrect but missing the point that they are not supposed to be interpreted as historical fact. Myths are stories about the process of human and social transformation, and historical markers are there for relevance and context, the psychological genes of tribal inheritance.
Humans still hunger for guidance, and stories which connect us with our tribe, and in our secularised and materialistic society, movies, TV shows, advertising, corporate spin-doctoring and recreational art (as you note in your article) have essentially hijacked this space from the old myths. We have, basically, developed a very sophisticated and pervasive system for tapping into the human subconsious, but are dabbling in the shallow end of the pool. However, as a society and as individuals, we are feeling a pull into the deeper waters, and there is a leadership gap in that respect. I think the real challenge to our modern western society is to find our new myths, after-all, we are a single tribe now which in a short time frame looks very different from the narrowly bounded tribes of the recent past. No longer is the forest the boundary of the tribe, it’s the planet. Unfortunately, in the absence of new myths, rich with relevant symbols and metaphors, we expose ourselves to the potential for the old tribally dividing myths to be restored, as we can see now in the global battle being fought between Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
I think the most glowing example of the kind of leadership that is now needed in Martin Luther King Jnr, who brilliantly bridged the divide between the power of the traditional tribal myth and made it relevant in his contemporary social context. Importantly, he also bridged the different tribal myths too. Most analysis of MLK’s speeches focus on the powerful visual elements of his visionary talks. But it runs even deeper – MLK so eloquently used our language with the power of the most ancient of human abilities: stories which speak to the unfulfilled truths in our hearts.
When leaders learn to connect to these aspiring human truths, and use contemporary metaphors and symbols which access the subconscious, we will truly unfold as a single tribe, bonded with our new mythology.
For leaders, our task is not to save the planet nor society, it is just to work the ground we are given, in our companies and communities, and story by story, lift us.
Matt Walsh.
Adelaide, Australia.
I like the words yo use above Matt … “we are a single tribe now”. Globalisation and cultural assimilation (if that is a good word?) have increased our interconnectedness to such a point that we don’t have the space to step back, reflect and remember our stories and myths.
I have heard many a person say when we’ve done Narrative work in organisations that they struggle to “remember”. In our world of close proximity and high paced communications, we’ve lost the art of remembering. Not only that, but the language of story and myth representes taboo language in organisations. Interesting.
you write: “The challenge today is to rediscover the obvious impact and value of story in organizational contexts.”
a few questions:
1. what is the “obvious impact” other than nice feelings of affirmation and belonging?
2. what is the value for the employee? how does the story-telling exercise empower a critical view of the organisiation?
Thanks Aiden – Yes I think overt storytelling and myth is taboo. However the principles of story/myth are powerful if understood and woven into the ongoing dialogue that goes on in the business.
Interesting comment on remembering you make: what do people mean by remembering? David Whyte (“Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work and the Shaping of Indentity”) says we should not be called Homo Sapiens but instead Homo Forgettens, because we forget so much – not only the lessons of history, but our own inherited wisdom, and even our own purpose – we have actually forgotten who we are. Jacob Needleman, in “Time and the Soul: Where has all the meaningful time gone and can we get it back” says “if we think this remembering is something we can do, we have not begun to understand it.”.
We can’t schedule in a workshop for remembering – it must become woven into the fabric of daily life. Personally, I find at work, people forget why they are there, they lose the passion they started the job with, the routine and time-consuming crap overwhelmes them. My own challenge is to find the simple anecdotal stories, but told with mythological principles, reconnect people. It’s not easy but when it works it’s powerful.
With families fragmenting and becoming global, this forgetting does not only affect our work life. We’re losing entire generations in our grandparents who hold the link between us and our past. How often do we tolerate their ramblings and listen with only half an ear? When we disregard what they have to say because of their age? When we never engage them in the meaningful conversations which could open up this world to us?
Maybe the reason for forgetting starts at home. When the here and now consumes our time, focus and energy. We’re so used to being told to focus on today and the future that we’re not treasuring the richness of our past.
Maybe it’s time we began to uncover the stories in our families which form our ‘tribal’ identity. And as we start to appreciate where we’ve come from and what our purpose as a family is, then we can start carrying that through to our communities and our world of work.
Anj,
Great insight. Do you think part of this is about having a deeper respect for ourselves by knowing more about our own story – our biological and social inheritance? Our culture of the indepedent personality fueled by our egos tends to create a perspective of ourselves as seperate actors not part of a vast system. Your suggestion about starting in the family is a good one – because it helps keep the ego in check.
My children live in a lovely large modern home. My grandmother at their age lived in a two room house with packed earth floor. But the action of the family then, and their society, propelled us on this path where we have what we have today. The thread has never been broken. To me it’s not about hearing my grandmother’s stories in order to appreciate what we have today – it’s more about the understand of WHY we have what we have today, and HOW we got it, and WHO we got it from. Appreciation is not of the things themselves but the human passage to them.
Does that make sense?
I think that as time goes by and I see my parents and their peers age, it hits home that they won’t be around forever. Although we’d like to believe that they will always be a part of our lives, the reality is that time marches on and affects us all.
My father recently lost his best friend. He was best man at his wedding 50 years ago and they had been firm friends for 60 years. And it’s hard seeing my father mourn not just his best friend, but also his humanity and the realisation that the people who help him to ‘remember’ are starting to leave him. And that a large part of who he is, is a reflection of himself in these people’s eyes.
And watching grows a sense of urgency in me. Of how little I really know of my father and his life. I am second generation Chinese and my grandfather came to this country when he was a boy. With every family member that I lose, I lose a part of myself. Of where I came from, of what drove them from their home, of the dreams they had and the sacrifices they had to make so that I can have the life I have today.
So what you say makes perfect sense. I need to help my father and my family to remember, because through their remembering I can gain a clearer understanding of who I am and the legacy I will leave my children.
Anj, sounds like you might benefit from just writing one story after the other? Capture it all now – like interview your Dad and then write it down – don’t worry about how well it is written just that it is.
Your own desire for remembering will be fulfilled when you have captured enough that it moves beyond the stories themselves into “knowing”.
That is real remembering and a wonderful legacy to be left with.