Grimm World
Stories and Truth
Is there anything better than a good story to help us understand the world? Stories are much more than just entertaining. We understand the world through the stories that we tell ourselves about it. Much less of what we perceive as reality is related to objective fact than we might be tempted or even coerced to believe. What do I mean by that? I mean only that it is very tempting to minimalize our perception to literal observation without fully appreciating the role which narrative plays in our interpretation of what we observe. I also mean that there are many who intentionally minimize the effect of narrative, while employing carefully crafted narratives to coerce or influence. Research the term neural linguistic programming if you are interested. It is a deceptive practice that I believe has been used to great effect historically and currently. The field of narrative psychology is quite interesting and philosophically important in my humble view. The British writer, A.S. Byatt said that narrative, “is as much a part of human nature as breath and the circulation of blood”.
Stories help us understand abstract concepts by giving them life. I have always asserted that fiction is possibly a better tool for revealing truths about human nature than non-fiction. That is because non-fiction is an attempt to craft a narrative based on a sequence of events, while fiction seeks to craft a narrative based on a sequence of ideas. The straightforward focus on ideas can be more representative of truth than the attempted recreation of events. Non-fiction is just as much a fantasy as fiction in a way, if you really think about it. So much of who we are and what we believe is tied into how the “facts” are presented. This is evident in the unreliability of our memories, made obvious by the weakness of eyewitness testimony.
When I was studying criminal justice at university, my professor conducted a very enlightening experiment on our class of roughly one-hundred and fifty students. As she was giving her lecture, a man came bolting into the room, assaulted her, and took her purse, before running off. We were then asked to write down a description of the suspect and the assault for the police. You never would have guessed that so many variations could spring from one event and one individual. It was downright nonsensical. Some were closer than others, but the overall accuracy was disturbingly pathetic. Mind you, none of us were likely being intentionally obtuse or lying about what we saw. It was simply that our memories told us a story about what had happened, and our brains filled in the missing pieces in ways that would not serve well in a court of law, especially for an innocent defendant.
One mistake that we have made in recent decades, at an ever-increasing rate, is that we have outsourced our storytelling to an entertainment industry that does not have the best interests of our children in mind. I understand why we do this; I do. Life is insanely busy and the economic reality of modern life, combined with the high incidence of single-parent households or households where both parents work, has stymied our ability to spend the kind of time that I am sure we all want to with our children. We also must compete with technology that is not just figuratively but is literally addictive. The addictive nature of social media and video games has been widely documented. Sometimes trying to have a conversation with our kids is like trying to have a conversation with a heroin addict, when there is a bag of heroine and a needle in sight.
When you start really paying attention to the stories that are being told to our children by companies like Disney, you will notice that what we thought of as innocent departures from traditional roles are not only more and more common, but that they are woven throughout the material. This has become so prevalent in the entertainment industry that Hollywood has been left scratching their heads as to why no one wants to see their movies anymore. They can’t seem to grasp the fact that people just want to be told a good story. They don’t want or need to be incessantly inundated with activist agendas.
If one sets out to write a story with a specific agenda in mind and allows themselves to be hemmed in by every form of political correctness and to be ideologically landlocked by a “woke” mentality, the stories no longer retain any credible resemblance to the real world. This makes them intolerably boring and predictable stories.
We have also coddled our children to shield them from the harsh realities of the world. The cult of safety has caused us to abandon much of the value of the stories. Presenting the world as we wish it to be does not prepare our children for experiencing the world as it is. I have been thinking about this as I started re-reading The Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales. There is a link to a free pdf of the book here from Project Gutenberg.
Over the course of the next few articles, I will go through several of these tales to tease out some hidden truth about human nature. Instead of the sanitized versions we see in entertainment, we will go through the original text. I encourage you to read the book with new eyes and think about the direct and often morbid details and ask yourself what lessons can be learned. Maybe there is some lost value in not sugar coating this famous lore.
Are we able to integrate our shadows as Carl Jung proposed, or should we continue to suppress the realities of the harsh world? I would argue that the former would be of greater benefit in the long run. I hope you choose to come along on this little journey. I will be starting with Hansel and Gretel for those of you interested in participating in this thought experiment.
There is nothing like a good story to cut through the haze and bring clarity to the world around us. It should go without mention that there is great value in studying history and analyzing current events. It is important to acknowledge that the stories being told to us are merely interpretations. The authors’ perceptions are always subjective, whether in fiction or in the daily news. They are the combination of observable facts and individual minds.
We are seeing more and more pressure on individuals to ideologically conform, in schools and universities, workplaces and online. Totalitarianism is essentially a story that goes unchallenged. It is the spoiled child who must always have their way. It is the product of abdicating our right to tell our own stories and be the authors of our own lives.
You are valued, you are loved, and you are worthy.
God Bless and Goodnight.