Stories and Storytelling
“Stories are powerful because they transport us into other people’s worlds but in doing that they change the way our brains work, and potentially change our brain chemistry—and that’s what it means to be a social creature.” —Paul J. Zak, The Moral Molecule: How Trust Works
The Evolution of Storytelling
The Evolution of Storytelling
What is it about stories that enables them to work as they do? To understand where stories come from, and why they are crucial to human life, we need to travel back at least 500,000 to long before the birth of our own species.
The World's First Stories
Humanity’s first stories were conceived long ago in prehistory. The earliest were shared by Paleolithic people through cave paintings, carvings of ivory tusks, and engravings etched on stones and shells.
Oral Storytelling
For most of our human history storytelling was oral. Myths were spoken or sung by diverse storytellers who could select and modulate their narrative to best suit a given audience, emphasizing some aspects and ignoring others.
The Written Word
Scribes originally used the new technology of writing only for administrative purposes. But once the first scribes in Mesopotamia realized that writing could be used to record their most valued epic stories, their excitement must have been considerable.
The Science of Storytelling
“Stories are actually a form of technology. They are tools that were designed by our ancestors to alleviate depression, reduce anxiety, kindle creativity, spark courage and meet a variety of other psychological challenges of being human.”
Teaching Stories
A Unique Form of Literature
“It’s as if we had the unassembled parts of a bicycle, and knew, through analogy (the shapes perhaps) that there was a relationship between the handles and our hands, the pedals and our feet, and so on. We may even have an idea that these are a necessary part of what is known as ‘a bike’ and of ‘riding a bike’ But to actually assemble the bike correctly, and then to be able to ride it, when and where to ride it, that requires contextual thinking: seeing each disparate part as part of a whole. That ‘whole,’ of course, expands with experience and understanding. A comprehensive study of Teaching Stories provides what is for all intents and purposes a limitless whole.” —Robert Ornstein, Teaching-Stories and the Brain, Library of Congress lecture, 2002
The Teaching Story
The Sufis have been using carefully constructed stories for teaching purposes for thousands of years as a means of stimulating and stabilizing an expanded consciousness. Though on the surface these often appear to be little more than entertaining fairytales or folktales, they enshrine—in their characters, plots, and imagery—patterns and relationships that nurture a part of the mind not reachable in more conventional ways, thus increasing our understanding, flexibility, and breadth of vision.
A Contemporary Look at the Nature of Religious Experience
Review by George Kasabov
Contributing Writer
People can persuade themselves of anything. Many believe that death is a transition to a transcendental world, that miracles occur through the will of God, or that our lives are ruled by immaterial spirits. How is it that, in our scientific age, when we have learned so much about the evolution of the universe and the nature of life, so many still cling to such beliefs? Why is it that faith – belief in the unprovable – is considered a virtue?
Returning to the Spirit in “Sacred Nature”
A review of Sacred Nature by Karen Armstrong
A staggering 33 million people have been internally displaced in Pakistan. Because climate change is likely to have played a role in the heavy rains, the displaced can be considered “climate refugees”— a term that the novelist Fatima Bhutto urges us remember, as we will all be impacted by climate change, and many of us will become migrants as a result, if we haven’t already.
Religious Evolution and the Axial Age
From Shamans to Priests to Prophets
Hardcover edition 2018
Reported by Sally Mallam
Contributing Writer
Why are there are so many different types of religion and how and why has religion evolved over time? The answer lies in both our biological and our sociocultural evolution.
In the series: Ideas that Shaped Our Modern World
- Paleolithic Beginnings
- Connecting with the Gods
- Axial Age Thought
- Jesus: Origins of Christianity
- Muhammad: Origins of Islam
- The Journey of Classical Greek Culture to the West
- A Contemporary Look at the Nature of Religious Experience
- Returning to the Spirit in “Sacred Nature”
- Religious Evolution and the Axial Age