Story - Not Story

In the way that we rank our senses and neglect to recognise that in certain circumstances certain sense are far better than the usual favourites - we often forget that we are story telling, social animals.

Much of human society is driven by stories, but 'stories' for many are tainted by being 'fiction'.

Please pause and think about the word 'stories' for a moment.

...Storyteller by Bev. [Copyright]

Thank you! What did you get?

For me there are associations with time out, relaxation, children's stuff, escapism, and so on. Generally we are cautious to accept stories are just as much the way we explain the world to each other, or that we use them for good or evil. I'm going to guess you didn't have any of the following:

That in court the lawyers' and the judge summing up are carefully constructing a story to sell an idea to a picked audience within a set of rules, as much as a salesman is selling a product by using a story. History and archaeology only comes into focus for non-statisticians and non-specialists when a story is created to explain it. Music and painting are often telling a story to the audience, but so is the scientist seeking research funding, and (obviously?) the journalist reporting on the ... wait for it ... story. And so on.

It's hard to think of areas where stories don't have a role, yet we rarely acknowledge that's what they really are. They are 'a convincing argument' or 'a good case'.

I was reminded of my belief that we are driven by stories as much as we drive stories through every part of our lives by this article on the BBC website today. Leaving the political stripes aside for a moment, this is interesting as a rare expose of the power of stories over our much vaunted facts and numbers:

Stories not facts

In his book The Political Brain, psychologist Drew Westen, an exasperated Democrat, tried to show why the Right often wins the argument even when the Left is confident that it has the facts on its side.

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modelled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate.

With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

And here - for me - is the kicker:

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious."

Every day we are surrounded by stories. For good and bad. Most of them are in disguise. How many do you encounter in a day?

James