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Storytelling, both positive and negative, is one of the most powerful of all
human capabilities. It is surely one of the devil's most valuable tools. (Yes,
there really is a devil, but it exists only in the 'Mind' of mankind. It is simply
the dark side of Human Imagination.) Storytelling is used in every
conceivable way to influence motivate and dominate people. It is easy to
spot the evil storytellers on television and in the other media today spinning
(or singing) their tales of hate. People who agitate hatred and anger against
other people, who falsely accuse their neighbors of wrong doing, or start
false rumors are examples of evil storytellers.
The young girls who instigated the infamous witch trials in Salem,
Massachusetts a couple of hundred years ago by accusing their neighbors of
witchcraft are good examples of the harm this type of storytelling can cause,
especially when some foolish people take the accusers seriously. It still goes
on today, falsely accusing people, wrecking their lives.
The Homo Sapiens before they received their powerful imagination (before
the "transformation" to imaginative beings) were not capable of this power.
They were extremely intelligent beings but lacked the Human Imagination.
They did not have the mental power to invent words, languages, stories, etc.
According to recent findings they lacked the "language gene" necessary to
begin the storytelling traditions.
Language gene
For thousands of years following mankind's transformation people had only
the spoken word to rely on for their communication. Ancient prehistoric
drawings and paintings of animals, people and symbols were also early
forms of communicating. This type of communicating evolved into
pictographs and later ideographs such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Finally
around five thousand years ago the Sumerian tribes in southern
Mesopotamia developed the first primitive phonetic writing called cuneiform.
It marked the end of prehistory and the beginning of recorded history. The
idea of placing marks on a clay tablet that could be associated with specific
ideas was a giant imaginative step in mankind's intellectual progress.
Words, whether they are vocal sounds or marks on a paper convey ideas
(mental pictures) to our mind. They are made possible by our ability to
imagine. If we hear words or see them written in a foreign language that we
have not learned to associate with things or ideas, they mean nothing to us.
They simply do not generate any mental images for us. Some of the more
intelligent animals have a limited ability to “learn” vocal sounds but not
writing. Writing has given mankind a much greater ability to communicate
more accurately and preserve the stories and ideas of the previous
generations.
The joy of creating stories, or poems, singing ballads, reading, or listening to
these stories is also one of the great pleasures of being human. When we
read or listen to a story we instantly form mental images of the characters
and actions in our mind. We can “visualize” with our mind. We can learn the
intimate thoughts of the great minds of the past by reading their stories. We
can travel in our imagination anywhere the story takes us no matter where
or when. We can go back in time and travel down the Mississippi river with
Huck Finn or go into the future, travel out into space to another galaxy. It
makes no difference, as long as we have an imagination we can go to these
places.
When listening to stories on the radio, before television became popular,
each listener had to visualize their own private mental pictures of the
characters and locale. We were usually very surprised when we did finally
see a picture of the real person who portrayed the character in the story and
it did not match our mental picture at all. Such was the magic of radio.
The playwright and movie maker go a step further in their storytelling. They
physically set up the scenes, props and assign actors to play the part of the
characters. Presenting drama plays is an ancient form of storytelling that the
Greeks and Chinese developed long ago. It is a natural outgrowth of
storytelling. Although with the play, the audience could actually see the
characters and actions of the story, much was left to the imagination as far
as the scenery was concerned.
Now a days there is much more elaborate movable scenery to support the
story and less imagination is needed to enjoy the play. With the advent of
the motion pictures everything is becoming more and more realistic. The
present state-of-art technology of computer generated special effects used
in motion pictures are so realistic that no matter what situation is portrayed
little imagination is needed. With the development of “Virtual Reality” the
audience will be going right “into” the scenes in the near future. Someday
we may be able to “enter” a Jurassic type park and walk among the
dinosaurs in a virtual reality world.
Storytelling has grown immensely in its scope and power from its simple
beginning of telling stories over the camp fire. It now encompasses every
facet of human endeavor. Nearly everyone has a story to tell. We are
constantly being bombarded by stories both good and bad, by our family,
friends and the media. Companies spend billions of dollars every year on
advertising, trying to get their stories across to us, trying to influence us to
purchase their products.
Beer advertisements, for example, have equated partying and having a good
time with drinking beer for so long that it now just seems the normal thing
to do. Political leaders try to influence us with their stories. On television,
religious leaders are constantly telling their stories. In large areas of the
world today religious leaders completely dominate the lives of whole
populations through their mythical stories. Holding the threat of eternal
damnation over their heads if they disobey their "word of god". (Very
powerful people!)
Satellite broadcasting of radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and
now the computer’s Internet are immensely powerful storytelling mediums
that spread both positive and negative stories into every household across
the world for better or for worse. The editors have tremendous power to
disseminate the stories they want made known and to ignore the ones they
don’t (not so much power over the Internet, yet). Violence is especially
acceptable in the movies, viewers are constantly being exposed to people
being killed and battered as realistically as possible.
This scenario may be OK for movies, depending upon who the storyteller
makes as the bad guys. When the movies or stories start making various
groups of people the bad guys, we are getting into a dangerous area. The
hate and anger emotions produced by the storytellers may be more
dangerous then the actual violence of the stories. Some “rappers” are
continually expounding their hate and anger stories to our young people.
The influence of these stories is beginning to be felt around the country.
In real life, the government's storytellers tell stories (propaganda) to arouse
the anger in their citizens when they are preparing to go to war against
other countries. I witnessed this in our country during World War Two when
the Germans and Japanese were the bad guys (they really were). After the
war the stories changed from these countries to making the communists out
to be the bad guys. At the present time we are sort of floundering looking
for some new potential bad guys.
(Note) Since I wrote this article we have indeed found some new really bad
guys with the militant Muslims. ((Mullahs whose hatred stories of America
and the other western democracies have influenced powerful dupes such as
bin Laden and his followers to want to kill as many Americans as they can.))
The news media has been a powerful storytelling influence on people since
the invention of the printing press. With the invention of radio, television and
the video camera its power has increased immensely by graphically
reporting their stories on television over and over and getting everybody all
upset.
In addition to violence, the movie and television storytellers relate their
stories over and over to the effect, that the “normal” thing to do, if people of
the opposite sex are attracted to each other (are in “love”), is to have sex as
soon as possible. This has helped change the morals of our young ladies in a
couple of generations so much that they now think they are abnormal if they
resist having sex until they are married. Hollywood, a city whose primary
business is storytelling, has made having sex the socially acceptable thing to
do. Adultery is now more or less accepted as normal (depending upon who is
doing it).
As the moral ethics code of the motion picture storytellers has deteriorated
in the last thirty years, the birthrate of single mothers has risen in direct
proportion. Whether we realize it or not, all these stories are exerting a
powerful influence on our young people. It is leading to a gradual moral
decay in our country. We may not have a Hitler ranting and raving but our
ubiquitous storytellers are just as effectively spreading their powerful
influence into every nook and cranny across the country (and alot of it is not
good).
A large percentage of our young people are able to accept or reject these
messages on their merit but many are not and if the stories are repeated
enough (and are not opposed by positive storytellers) they are eventually
accepted as normal behavior. Our storytellers; family, peers, friends, church
leaders, teachers, movie producers, authors, politicians, philosophers,
historians, comedians, civic leaders, etc., need to accentuate the positive.
They have the power to guide, motivate, inspire and influence our present
and future citizens.
Storytellers, through their stories, can enter into our imagination
and interact with our deepest human emotions.
They can inspire us to strive for greatness or motivate us to do senseless
evil. They can make us happy, angry or sad. They can make us laugh or cry.
Storytelling and human emotion are closely linked, together, from the time
of infancy, they strongly influence every aspect of our life. Very little
happens in the human drama without a storyteller at its source.
Storytelling includes all types of family and tribal gossip, religious and
secular teaching, philosophy, prose, poetry, religious beliefs, myths,
traditions, propaganda, scientific writings, speeches, news chronicles,
periodicals, advertising, plays, movies, television stories, songs, and
unfortunately lying. It is one of the most powerful of all human capabilities.
It started with people’s ability to create words that they could associate, in
their imagination, with some idea, thing or action. Its power can be
awesome! It help create the "MIND" of mankind.
(The MIND of Mankind: Chapter 3. - Development of words,
Language and Storytelling.)
The 'MIND' of Mankind is the vast network of human minds that are able to
communicate abstract ideas across time and distance - made possible by the
Human Imagination.
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