Transformation is an oft-used phrase today, as individuals and corporations all strive to achieve higher levels of success. Around forty to fifty years ago, it was enough to be the best you could be, usually in one field of endeavour that you stayed in throughout life, unless it was disrupted by war or some other external event.
In this society people tended to see themselves as situated in a particular context - work, community, social milieu - throughout their lives, and the only way to improve was to develop within that particular environment, unless they were removed from it, often forceably. The stories of successful people from that time were about progression, advancement, of moving upwards within their social milieu. The 1956 movie 'Giant' is an iconic representation of the era.
In the sixties and seventies it was about challenging the status quo, of establishing a place in an area of our own choosing, rather than one that society dictated for us. Women, indigenous peoples, along with others from what we now call 'equity groups' claimed their right to a stake in hitherto unavailable fields of endeavour and social groups were disrupted and reorganised as new people entered them. Success stories were about people who questioned and rebelled against established customs and traditions, even those in society's elite. Heroes and heroines tended to be outrageous rather than staunch pillars of the community - Woodstock (1970) was an iconic movie of this era.
In the eighties, there was a sense that we all had hidden or latent talents that, if exposed, would lead to greatness - that our nirvana was there waiting for us, and it was our duty to approach this, either step by step or in an amazing leap - how we did it didn't really matter. Think 'Ghandi' and 'A Woman Called Golda' (1982)
The nineties saw us looking outside ourselves - tarot readers, naturopaths, essential oils and alternative medicines would take us on a journey to a new world. We had 'Lorenzo's Oil' (1992) to show us the redemptive power of non-mainstream medicine.
And now we have seen the noughties come and go, an age in which ideas about transformation began taking over as the new age thinking (as in the series of movies called 'Transformers'). We could be anything we could dream we could be; we could go anywhere in the world; we could make choices about whether we lived in a nuclear family, an extended family, or no family ('Something's Gotta Give' 2003). We were the super-powers we had previously assigned as comic-book heroes - in short, we could transform ourselves into any shape we desired.
Now, and especially following the latest global financial crisis, we realise we are still human after all. We are looking back and wondering if things have changed much, or at all, and will they ever. Maybe life is meant to be boring when all is said and done.
Well not quite, we have made a few strides forward since the fifties, and possibly some backward - but let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
The next stage of transformation, to fit the current age (whatever we call this decade) is internal. We can only fix ourselves - each person has to play his or her own part in keeping the world an environmentally-friendly and humane place. We also have to dust our own attics and cellars. In this stage, transformation is not about becoming a better you, or a different you, but simply, 'more you' - a you that is authentic, living in sync with your own values, life mission and individually set goals, which are remarkable simply because they are yours.
Put another way, this means putting in effort to get somewhere exciting, but in doing so affirming the real you. This has its own challenges, because first you have to know who the real 'you' is - or, perhaps, doing the right thing will lead you to you. What shape will this transformative narrative take? I don't know yet, but it will be exciting finding out. Can you imagine an iconic movie of the current decade 2010-20? Who will be the hero or heroine, and what will they be doing? Will the transformation be obvious or discreet, and how will it manifest itself on the screen?
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Story Practice, Transformative Narrative and Discourse
Wikibooks describes discourse as 'the use of living language'. (http://www.wikibooks.org/.)
Here are some others:
We all make the mistake of thinking that the story is truth, and that there is only one way to interpret it. This way of thinking, as flawed as it is, gets us through the day. We can't go around examining all sides of everything we hear - we have to get on with our lives, so we hear something, make a decision about it, and move on.
In story practice, we cannot do this. In order to truly appreciate it, we have to understand and accept its discourse - its way of telling - otherwise we cannot come close to appreciating the story, or the transformation that has occurred, is occurring, or will occur behind it.
Unfortunately, schools (and societies) are not geared to training us to understanding the marvelous workings of discourse. This is because educators, and societies themselves on the whole, are more in the business of telling, persuading, or straight out forcing, us to act in particular ways. They don't want us to analyse the discourse too much. Political speeches are all discourse and no substance - people love hearing them because they can side with the person they want, and find plenty of reasons to shoot holes in the other's arguments. We all know that politicians lie, but that doesn't stop millions of people from enjoying the discourse.
The discourse of story practice is a little bit more muddy, because applied stories must reflect and describe the uniqueness of the protagonists, the situations in which they find themselves, their reflections on these situations, and the actions they take. Of course, if the same protagonist provides several narratives, we will usually find similarities in their discourse, and their style, but in story practice we might find a million stories by a million people, and each one involves a rethink.
Above all of these stories, story practice is developing its own discourse; one that has been artificially arrived at in order to integrate the stories into a 'genre' or 'kind of literature'. It would be sad indeed if this discourse became a template or prototype that could simply be followed. Stories would become more stylised and less unique, which goes against everything story practice stands for.
Respect for a transformative narrative must involve an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the particular discourse that provides the nuts and bolts that underpin it.
Story practitioners who are not the protagonists in the stories have an extra responsibility, to ensure the discourse is faithful to the individual as much as it is faithful to the genre of story practice.
Here are some others:
- the totality of codified linguistic usages attached to a given type of social practice. Eg: legal discourse, medical discourse, religious discourse.(www.revue-texto.net/Reperes/Glossaires/Glossaire_en.html)
- a coherent piece of spoken and/or written language in a specific context. A discourse may be a whole text (for example, a personal letter or an entire conversation), or it may be part of a text that conveys related meanings (for example, several exchanges, within a dialogue ...) (tki.org.nz/r/language/curriculum/german/glossary_e.php)
- a contiguous stretch of language comprising more than one sentence (text) or utterance (speech). (portal.bibliotekivest.no/terminology.htm)
- utterances or text larger than a sentence; sequences of sentences and interchange and their relation to social interaction, dominance, and collaboration (www1.appstate.edu/~mcgowant/3610glos.htm)
We all make the mistake of thinking that the story is truth, and that there is only one way to interpret it. This way of thinking, as flawed as it is, gets us through the day. We can't go around examining all sides of everything we hear - we have to get on with our lives, so we hear something, make a decision about it, and move on.
In story practice, we cannot do this. In order to truly appreciate it, we have to understand and accept its discourse - its way of telling - otherwise we cannot come close to appreciating the story, or the transformation that has occurred, is occurring, or will occur behind it.
Unfortunately, schools (and societies) are not geared to training us to understanding the marvelous workings of discourse. This is because educators, and societies themselves on the whole, are more in the business of telling, persuading, or straight out forcing, us to act in particular ways. They don't want us to analyse the discourse too much. Political speeches are all discourse and no substance - people love hearing them because they can side with the person they want, and find plenty of reasons to shoot holes in the other's arguments. We all know that politicians lie, but that doesn't stop millions of people from enjoying the discourse.
The discourse of story practice is a little bit more muddy, because applied stories must reflect and describe the uniqueness of the protagonists, the situations in which they find themselves, their reflections on these situations, and the actions they take. Of course, if the same protagonist provides several narratives, we will usually find similarities in their discourse, and their style, but in story practice we might find a million stories by a million people, and each one involves a rethink.
Above all of these stories, story practice is developing its own discourse; one that has been artificially arrived at in order to integrate the stories into a 'genre' or 'kind of literature'. It would be sad indeed if this discourse became a template or prototype that could simply be followed. Stories would become more stylised and less unique, which goes against everything story practice stands for.
Respect for a transformative narrative must involve an understanding of, and an appreciation for, the particular discourse that provides the nuts and bolts that underpin it.
Story practitioners who are not the protagonists in the stories have an extra responsibility, to ensure the discourse is faithful to the individual as much as it is faithful to the genre of story practice.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Reflection, story practice and transformation
In my last blog post I talked about how important it is to be reflective. I didn't go into why it is important - that is part of a much larger dissertation that forms the Transformative Narrative Project.
In story practice, reflection comes to life through expression. My argument is that through this expression comes transformation. Or is it more that reflection, expression and transformation are all necessary components of meaningful change, as well as a meaningful narrative about that change?
Reflection, it could be argued, is the core element in story practice. Through reflection we can notice those 'punctuation points' in our lives that lead to change, we can notice where the changes have manifested themselves and where they have led us. To exemplify: if a man changes jobs several times in his life, moving from one to the next without much thought, and in each role does the work he does without much effort, chances are he will not have felt the need to reflect too often. Imagine he comes home each day to a loving family, food on the table, clean sheets on the bed and his favourite shows on the TV - life would seem pretty good, wouldn't it? Besides the fact that this is a stereotype and few people will ever have this fairytale-inspired existence, reflection may be a redundant activity. But who really wants this life, even if they can have it?
Chances are this man, if he does exist, will end up knocking on my door at 40-something saying he feels unfulfilled and can't work out why. He may, by that time, be in the midst of career crisis, possibly with an anxiety-related illness.
Now imagine if you can that same man, reflecting on his life, what he had done well, what he had not done so well. What if he allowed himself to examine his hopes and dreams, taken some steps towards them, even failing in the process? Imagine that man putting himself into some risky situations to test his level of skill or endurance - what would he be doing differently by age 40-something do you think?
Story practice is about seeing your life as a narrative, a personal story that contains good bits and bad bits, times of success and times of failure, of health and of sickness, or good and bad relationships. It is more than just the detail; it is your interpretation of the detail that is important. More than that, it is your expression of this interpretation that makes it real. Once you have made it real, 'on the page', on show some way or another, you can transform your story and your life.
In story practice, reflection comes to life through expression. My argument is that through this expression comes transformation. Or is it more that reflection, expression and transformation are all necessary components of meaningful change, as well as a meaningful narrative about that change?
Reflection, it could be argued, is the core element in story practice. Through reflection we can notice those 'punctuation points' in our lives that lead to change, we can notice where the changes have manifested themselves and where they have led us. To exemplify: if a man changes jobs several times in his life, moving from one to the next without much thought, and in each role does the work he does without much effort, chances are he will not have felt the need to reflect too often. Imagine he comes home each day to a loving family, food on the table, clean sheets on the bed and his favourite shows on the TV - life would seem pretty good, wouldn't it? Besides the fact that this is a stereotype and few people will ever have this fairytale-inspired existence, reflection may be a redundant activity. But who really wants this life, even if they can have it?
Chances are this man, if he does exist, will end up knocking on my door at 40-something saying he feels unfulfilled and can't work out why. He may, by that time, be in the midst of career crisis, possibly with an anxiety-related illness.
Now imagine if you can that same man, reflecting on his life, what he had done well, what he had not done so well. What if he allowed himself to examine his hopes and dreams, taken some steps towards them, even failing in the process? Imagine that man putting himself into some risky situations to test his level of skill or endurance - what would he be doing differently by age 40-something do you think?
Story practice is about seeing your life as a narrative, a personal story that contains good bits and bad bits, times of success and times of failure, of health and of sickness, or good and bad relationships. It is more than just the detail; it is your interpretation of the detail that is important. More than that, it is your expression of this interpretation that makes it real. Once you have made it real, 'on the page', on show some way or another, you can transform your story and your life.
Reflection - an essential component of story practice
Most university students these days are asked to engage in a form of reflective practice as an assessable component of their work. In days gone by, this was the domain of the Social Work and Psychology Departments, but now, everyone from Engineers to Business Management students are being asked to reflect on their study and work activities.
Some adults actually engage in reflective activities quite comfortably: these activities include writing journals, movement and dance, drawing and painting 'without rules'.
Students are often asked to reflect on the work-based activities that form part of the course in which they are enrolled. These include internships, placements, and Industry Based Learning (IBL). While there are slight differences between all these activities, essentially they each involve a form of on-the-job training that compliments the theoretical, classroom-based studies.
Over the years I have taught students in wide-ranging settings, from Secondary Education, TAFE and Uni to adult education. As I teach mainly career and work-related subjects, invariably lessons include one or more on 'how to engage in reflective practice'. I have market hundreds of assignments over the years, and I can say that most people do not do this part very well at all. I have some grounds for blaming our education system for avoiding this less-scientific-rational activity that is output rather than outcome or results based. Apart from the 'airy-fairy' label, it is something many other teachers avoid wherever possible, because they find it so hard to assess. Some questions I have been asked include, 'Do you assess a student for honesty, higher level self-awareness or grammatical accuracy?' 'Does a student who digs deeper into his psyche and uncovers the muck and mire obtain bonus points over a student whose life appears to have been one everlasting bed of roses?' I have even been handed the genderist comment, 'Boys are disadvantaged in this kind of activity. Males just don't DO reflection very well!'
Reflection essentially means looking inside yourself and expressing what you find, to yourself and maybe to others. There is some anxiety around this. A lot of the problem stems from constraints placed on us by our own societies. Most of us love to read or hear stories about relationship breakdowns, financial failures, mental fragility, monumental mistakes and the like, but this has to be in a particular context. In the weekend papers or a Nicholas Sparks box-of-tissues novel, we expect to have our emotions torn asunder as we grapple with the things that make us human. But, when it comes to expressing these same emotions from a personal perspective, we are completely clueless!
Of course, there is also the issue that there are right places and wrong places to be reflective: imagine a job interview where the applicant discusses a mistake she made that cost the company a small fortune - no matter how much she has learned from this episode, you can pretty well guarantee she won't be on the list of finalists. In so many ways, we are taught to bury our failings, our weaknesses, and along with these a large chunk of ourselves. So it is no wonder that teachers and students alike baulk at the idea of reflection. And it is no wonder that as people we walk around as ghosts of ourselves - after all, it is only through reflection that we can feel truly alive?
So, what is reflection, how does it make us feel alive, and why is it an essential part of story practice? (stay tuned, more coming soon ...)
Some adults actually engage in reflective activities quite comfortably: these activities include writing journals, movement and dance, drawing and painting 'without rules'.
Students are often asked to reflect on the work-based activities that form part of the course in which they are enrolled. These include internships, placements, and Industry Based Learning (IBL). While there are slight differences between all these activities, essentially they each involve a form of on-the-job training that compliments the theoretical, classroom-based studies.
Over the years I have taught students in wide-ranging settings, from Secondary Education, TAFE and Uni to adult education. As I teach mainly career and work-related subjects, invariably lessons include one or more on 'how to engage in reflective practice'. I have market hundreds of assignments over the years, and I can say that most people do not do this part very well at all. I have some grounds for blaming our education system for avoiding this less-scientific-rational activity that is output rather than outcome or results based. Apart from the 'airy-fairy' label, it is something many other teachers avoid wherever possible, because they find it so hard to assess. Some questions I have been asked include, 'Do you assess a student for honesty, higher level self-awareness or grammatical accuracy?' 'Does a student who digs deeper into his psyche and uncovers the muck and mire obtain bonus points over a student whose life appears to have been one everlasting bed of roses?' I have even been handed the genderist comment, 'Boys are disadvantaged in this kind of activity. Males just don't DO reflection very well!'
Reflection essentially means looking inside yourself and expressing what you find, to yourself and maybe to others. There is some anxiety around this. A lot of the problem stems from constraints placed on us by our own societies. Most of us love to read or hear stories about relationship breakdowns, financial failures, mental fragility, monumental mistakes and the like, but this has to be in a particular context. In the weekend papers or a Nicholas Sparks box-of-tissues novel, we expect to have our emotions torn asunder as we grapple with the things that make us human. But, when it comes to expressing these same emotions from a personal perspective, we are completely clueless!
Of course, there is also the issue that there are right places and wrong places to be reflective: imagine a job interview where the applicant discusses a mistake she made that cost the company a small fortune - no matter how much she has learned from this episode, you can pretty well guarantee she won't be on the list of finalists. In so many ways, we are taught to bury our failings, our weaknesses, and along with these a large chunk of ourselves. So it is no wonder that teachers and students alike baulk at the idea of reflection. And it is no wonder that as people we walk around as ghosts of ourselves - after all, it is only through reflection that we can feel truly alive?
So, what is reflection, how does it make us feel alive, and why is it an essential part of story practice? (stay tuned, more coming soon ...)
Monday, April 26, 2010
The Practised Story and Oral Histories
Are there links between practised stories and oral histories? I believe there are, but not in the way you mightthink.
Both oral histories and practised stories are about people's lives, and about their responses to events that have happened, things they have learned, people who have influenced them.
The most obvious difference is that oral histories are told from the receiver's perspective, i.e. his or her worldview, rather than that of the teller. For example, an interviewer takes charge of the project, and is working towards a specific outcome. This directs the questions that will be asked, guides the storyteller to deliver responses around those questions, before the historian edits and compiles responses into a larger work. Aside from the obvious power imbalance in this relationship, the fact that the oral historian has an agenda is often disguised, or at least not made transparent. It may form part of a doctoral thesis, or supply useful data to form the basis of a grant application. While stories in themselves may contain surprises, most oral historians will unconsciously decide which bits of the stories are useful, which are not, and how the elements will be put together.
In story practice, the person who facilitates the process (and remember, this might be the main protagonist of the story) comes to the meeting with no preconceived ideas or agenda. The questions he or she will ask are never leading; the art is in opening the right doors for the teller to develop and relate his or her story without it being judged or assayed. The person central in the story is the one who decides what is important.
Here is a simple analogy to demonstrate. Someone holds a wine glass in front of them and asks for a particular type of wine, from a particular region, being a particular colour and having a certain taste. He or she tastes the wine tests it against his or her expectation, based on knowledge and experience. It may be a bit better or a bit worse than expected, but it will most probably not be surprising. This is the literary equivalent of picking up a Mills and Boon paperback, or a daily newspaper.
A story practitioner is more like the person who presents several drinking glasses of different shapes and sizes, and invites the wine waiter to select a glass and to then provide the liquid of their choice. The taster will probably find the contents surprising, unique, perhaps even unpalatable, but he or she will drink it all the same, and appreciate its special qualities, feeling its impact on his or her taste buds, intestinal juices, and general demeanour.
As the receiver of a story, are you a person who enjoys the comfort of the known, the expected? If so, you might prefer a story that will not transform or shock you but will make something you feel when you come home to a nice ordinary meal with a friend or partner after a long hard day? Or, do you want a story to be unique, to teach you something new, something that will stretch your perspective on life and what it is about?
I have talked elsewhere about the transformational nature of story practice. Given that storytelling is not something that all people do well, a story practitioner can become the intermediary between the individual and his or her story. The art of the story practitioner lies in working with the storyteller to identify the transformational elements of the story. The oral historian, on the other hand, is interested in obtaining perceived 'truths', often presented (or at least interpreted) as factual information. In other words, there can be described as transactional story elements that combine with other stories as evidence: many stories that share common elements make a larger whole that is unified and can be thematised, described and analysed in terms of its relevance to the oral historian's original proposition.
Story practitioners do not have an original proposition, nor do they place any importance on consensus, themes and patterns, rather they look for unique events, individual responses and surprising outcomes that have led to individual transformation, i.e. changing one's life course, believing in something new, operating on a new and more meaningful level.
Another way oral histories differ from practised stories is in their timing. Finished or past events that have created ideas, beliefs, and ways of life are the focus of oral histories - these are entire, concluded in some way. Practised stories, on the other hand, tend to be as much present and future focused as they have elements of the past. They might begin with a current state, goals and plans and then go back in time to provide details that show how the transformation occurred, or the transformation might be in progress, incomplete and containing many unresolved issues.
Obviously special techniques are required if a story practitioner is to assist a person to reveal the elements of a practised story. Some of these techniques are discussed on the Story Practitioners' Space page. You can also find out why being a story practitioner might be the right job for you.
Both oral histories and practised stories are about people's lives, and about their responses to events that have happened, things they have learned, people who have influenced them.
The most obvious difference is that oral histories are told from the receiver's perspective, i.e. his or her worldview, rather than that of the teller. For example, an interviewer takes charge of the project, and is working towards a specific outcome. This directs the questions that will be asked, guides the storyteller to deliver responses around those questions, before the historian edits and compiles responses into a larger work. Aside from the obvious power imbalance in this relationship, the fact that the oral historian has an agenda is often disguised, or at least not made transparent. It may form part of a doctoral thesis, or supply useful data to form the basis of a grant application. While stories in themselves may contain surprises, most oral historians will unconsciously decide which bits of the stories are useful, which are not, and how the elements will be put together.
In story practice, the person who facilitates the process (and remember, this might be the main protagonist of the story) comes to the meeting with no preconceived ideas or agenda. The questions he or she will ask are never leading; the art is in opening the right doors for the teller to develop and relate his or her story without it being judged or assayed. The person central in the story is the one who decides what is important.
Here is a simple analogy to demonstrate. Someone holds a wine glass in front of them and asks for a particular type of wine, from a particular region, being a particular colour and having a certain taste. He or she tastes the wine tests it against his or her expectation, based on knowledge and experience. It may be a bit better or a bit worse than expected, but it will most probably not be surprising. This is the literary equivalent of picking up a Mills and Boon paperback, or a daily newspaper.
A story practitioner is more like the person who presents several drinking glasses of different shapes and sizes, and invites the wine waiter to select a glass and to then provide the liquid of their choice. The taster will probably find the contents surprising, unique, perhaps even unpalatable, but he or she will drink it all the same, and appreciate its special qualities, feeling its impact on his or her taste buds, intestinal juices, and general demeanour.
As the receiver of a story, are you a person who enjoys the comfort of the known, the expected? If so, you might prefer a story that will not transform or shock you but will make something you feel when you come home to a nice ordinary meal with a friend or partner after a long hard day? Or, do you want a story to be unique, to teach you something new, something that will stretch your perspective on life and what it is about?
I have talked elsewhere about the transformational nature of story practice. Given that storytelling is not something that all people do well, a story practitioner can become the intermediary between the individual and his or her story. The art of the story practitioner lies in working with the storyteller to identify the transformational elements of the story. The oral historian, on the other hand, is interested in obtaining perceived 'truths', often presented (or at least interpreted) as factual information. In other words, there can be described as transactional story elements that combine with other stories as evidence: many stories that share common elements make a larger whole that is unified and can be thematised, described and analysed in terms of its relevance to the oral historian's original proposition.
Story practitioners do not have an original proposition, nor do they place any importance on consensus, themes and patterns, rather they look for unique events, individual responses and surprising outcomes that have led to individual transformation, i.e. changing one's life course, believing in something new, operating on a new and more meaningful level.
Another way oral histories differ from practised stories is in their timing. Finished or past events that have created ideas, beliefs, and ways of life are the focus of oral histories - these are entire, concluded in some way. Practised stories, on the other hand, tend to be as much present and future focused as they have elements of the past. They might begin with a current state, goals and plans and then go back in time to provide details that show how the transformation occurred, or the transformation might be in progress, incomplete and containing many unresolved issues.
Obviously special techniques are required if a story practitioner is to assist a person to reveal the elements of a practised story. Some of these techniques are discussed on the Story Practitioners' Space page. You can also find out why being a story practitioner might be the right job for you.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The fable and its place in story practice
As children, the stories we are told are often in the form of a fable. The protagonists are usually animals, insects, birds and mystical creatures who live their lives and behave like humans. The stories are usually simply told and one-dimensional, with an implied or real ending in which good triumphs over evil - thus, fables have a moral message. Thus, in the story of The Tortoise and The Hare, we learn that it is better to be slow and steady than fast and careless. Some famous early fabulists include Hesiod, Aesop, Phaedrus, and Jean de la Fontaine - many of these stories have been retold through generations, standing the test of time.
In fables that relate to largely unexplainable events, such as the beginning of time, the creation of the universe and everything in it, and uncontrollable things like the weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, gods became the central protagonists, whether they were in human, animal, or other-worldly creature form. It was simply too difficult to explain that a person could have ever held such power, so these activities were reallocated to one or more deities, depending on the prevailing religion. These stories underpin all modern cultural beliefs to some extent, and were often elaborately told, such as those of Ancient Greek and Roman times, while the Australian aboriginal Dreamtime stories are very simple.
Thanks to developments in the Middle Ages, we can now also read about normal human beings achieving extra-human feats. Becoming popular with Everyman, the title of a story about an average man living an ordinary life in the 15th Century, the Everyman story was a device used by the Christian church to keep the population under control - the poorer you were in your human life, the richer you would be in the afterlife, and the harder you worked on earth the easier time you would have once you got to heaven. This genre is better known these days as magical realism, made famous by Latin Americans such as Jorge Luis Borges and Paulo Coelho . These stories have a similar construction to that of the fable. One large collection of fables that contains identifiable elements of Everyman and magical realism is The Bible.
In the Everyman stories, men (yes men, not women), rather than other creatures, mythical or otherwise, became the central characters. Everyman was an ordinary person who was capable of achieving extraordinary feats, usually because of the intervention of a supreme being, such as God, Allah, or Om. the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances
Every culture is rich with fables, or myths, and whether we realise it or not, these underpin how we live our lives - we may live according to the prevailing moral code of our society or rebel against it, but either way it is present in our lives and informs the choices we make.
The messages of fables are usually intended to reach a wide, or mass, audience, hence the characters are often not named, and if they are, this name will most likely become synonymous with a character trait. Often a name is fabulised so that people become branded or associated with the term, to the extent that we don't often know that there was actually a real person attached to it - modern ones include Maverick (Samuel A. Maverick, mayor of San Antonio in the mid-1800s), Murphy's Law (Captain Ed Murphy, an aircraft engineer during WW2, complained about an incompetent technician on his team: "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will"), Guy Fawkes, Boycott, and Silhouette. This highlights the one-dimensional nature of the fable, making it simpler to understand and retell, and thereby promoting its longevity.
Another key element of the fable: the Everyman, provides an opportunity for each person within a society to identify with the characters and action in the story to some extent, and can see the possibility within themself for right and wrong, good and evil through identification or non-identification of the centrally expressed trait. These become a kind of unwritten law or rule, by which an individual can make a judgment as to whether they are a moral, worthy person, or immoral and unworthy. We can also easily judge other people using this technique, with the suggestion that a person's actions makes him or her either praiseworthy or punishable.
Topical in Australian news this week is the bludgeoning to death in prison of Carl Williams, who wore the crown as King of the Melbourne Underworld for several years. It is not hard to invest Carl Williams with the title of Evil, just as the Catholic world recently invested the title of Good on Mary MacKillop, making her a saint - even non-Catholics who know her story would be inclined to agree that she was worthy of this title.
As we have seen, fables are simple and easily remembered. They are also reductionist. Giving people the opportunity to only assess something as good/evil, right/wrong, black/white, does not provide for the possibility that both (or neither) can exist simultaneously. Likewise, good/bad, right/wrong etc. can be easily reversed using manipulation. Many will argue that the terms 'good' and 'bad' were stood on their heads during the reign of the Nazi Party in Germany. More than sixty years later, Germans and non-Germans alike can label Hitler as evil, but in the 1930s he was seen as good - saving Germany from the devastating effects of foreign domination post World War 1. Even the tortoise is getting a run for his money in our fast-paced society, where risk and spontaneity are seen as survival skills, and the plodders challenged to keep up the pace.
So, because of their simplicity and the universal truths they disperse with alacrity, fables have been often criticised as propagandist and suppressive, and at the very least a blatant attempt to pass on preconceived biases to younger generations and to maintain the status quo. To subscribe to this view is, however, unrealistic, narrow minded, and potentially dangerous. The growing youth culture in Australia that puts people who rape, steal, and attack others on a pedestal shows that fables may not necessarily be the receptacles of truth that we would like them to be. Is this because the world is changing, becoming more sophisticated, or simply that, in a world where cultures and worldviews collide on a regular basis we are now less likely to accept the universal truths that are indicated? Or, are the old fables in fact being replaced with new ones?
From what I hear and read, fables are very much still a part of human society. What has changed, perhaps, is that sub-cultures are more likely to actively create their own fables, ones that provide a better fit with their own rules. People are still subjected to propaganda, but this might be created for a short period of time or within a small group, often to the extent that actions and behaviours become synonymous with these groups and/or times. Think about our tolerance of subcultures like bikie gangs, Greenpeace groups, footballers after a win, men on buck's nights, high school graduates during schoolies week (which is now more like a month) and veterans on ANZAC Day (the one day of the year when it is socially acceptable to have a beer for breakfast). In this way, fables other than the prevailing ones, can be accepted or tolerated, and any associated bad behaviour is contained to particular sub-groups or to set time periods.
Whether they are universal, or restricted to particular cultures or even families, fables are transactional stories: do this, and you will be rewarded, do that and you will be punished. Given their centrality in our societies and lives, fables should rightfully have a place in story practice. I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog that story practice is interested in transformational stories - ones that lead to, or talk about meaningful change in people's lives.
So, are fables to be dismissed as irrelevant in story practice? Given the all-pervasive nature of fables, it would be madness to suggest this, nor am I about to do so. Fables, folk stories, fairy tales, myths, everyman stories all have an important place. For instance, we can use them to highlight the current fables that we live by and which may be holding us back, to deconstruct and analyse the truisms that currently provide a blanket, protecting us from noticing how we and the world have changed, how we are different from others. We can also use simple techniques to create new, more personal and more meaningful fables to live by. In this way they become powerful tools for change, or in other words, transformational.
In fables that relate to largely unexplainable events, such as the beginning of time, the creation of the universe and everything in it, and uncontrollable things like the weather, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis, gods became the central protagonists, whether they were in human, animal, or other-worldly creature form. It was simply too difficult to explain that a person could have ever held such power, so these activities were reallocated to one or more deities, depending on the prevailing religion. These stories underpin all modern cultural beliefs to some extent, and were often elaborately told, such as those of Ancient Greek and Roman times, while the Australian aboriginal Dreamtime stories are very simple.
Thanks to developments in the Middle Ages, we can now also read about normal human beings achieving extra-human feats. Becoming popular with Everyman, the title of a story about an average man living an ordinary life in the 15th Century, the Everyman story was a device used by the Christian church to keep the population under control - the poorer you were in your human life, the richer you would be in the afterlife, and the harder you worked on earth the easier time you would have once you got to heaven. This genre is better known these days as magical realism, made famous by Latin Americans such as Jorge Luis Borges and Paulo Coelho . These stories have a similar construction to that of the fable. One large collection of fables that contains identifiable elements of Everyman and magical realism is The Bible.
In the Everyman stories, men (yes men, not women), rather than other creatures, mythical or otherwise, became the central characters. Everyman was an ordinary person who was capable of achieving extraordinary feats, usually because of the intervention of a supreme being, such as God, Allah, or Om. the term everyman has come to mean an ordinary individual, with whom the audience or reader is supposed to be able to identify easily, and who is often placed in extraordinary circumstances
Every culture is rich with fables, or myths, and whether we realise it or not, these underpin how we live our lives - we may live according to the prevailing moral code of our society or rebel against it, but either way it is present in our lives and informs the choices we make.
The messages of fables are usually intended to reach a wide, or mass, audience, hence the characters are often not named, and if they are, this name will most likely become synonymous with a character trait. Often a name is fabulised so that people become branded or associated with the term, to the extent that we don't often know that there was actually a real person attached to it - modern ones include Maverick (Samuel A. Maverick, mayor of San Antonio in the mid-1800s), Murphy's Law (Captain Ed Murphy, an aircraft engineer during WW2, complained about an incompetent technician on his team: "If there is any way to do it wrong, he will"), Guy Fawkes, Boycott, and Silhouette. This highlights the one-dimensional nature of the fable, making it simpler to understand and retell, and thereby promoting its longevity.
Another key element of the fable: the Everyman, provides an opportunity for each person within a society to identify with the characters and action in the story to some extent, and can see the possibility within themself for right and wrong, good and evil through identification or non-identification of the centrally expressed trait. These become a kind of unwritten law or rule, by which an individual can make a judgment as to whether they are a moral, worthy person, or immoral and unworthy. We can also easily judge other people using this technique, with the suggestion that a person's actions makes him or her either praiseworthy or punishable.
Topical in Australian news this week is the bludgeoning to death in prison of Carl Williams, who wore the crown as King of the Melbourne Underworld for several years. It is not hard to invest Carl Williams with the title of Evil, just as the Catholic world recently invested the title of Good on Mary MacKillop, making her a saint - even non-Catholics who know her story would be inclined to agree that she was worthy of this title.
As we have seen, fables are simple and easily remembered. They are also reductionist. Giving people the opportunity to only assess something as good/evil, right/wrong, black/white, does not provide for the possibility that both (or neither) can exist simultaneously. Likewise, good/bad, right/wrong etc. can be easily reversed using manipulation. Many will argue that the terms 'good' and 'bad' were stood on their heads during the reign of the Nazi Party in Germany. More than sixty years later, Germans and non-Germans alike can label Hitler as evil, but in the 1930s he was seen as good - saving Germany from the devastating effects of foreign domination post World War 1. Even the tortoise is getting a run for his money in our fast-paced society, where risk and spontaneity are seen as survival skills, and the plodders challenged to keep up the pace.
So, because of their simplicity and the universal truths they disperse with alacrity, fables have been often criticised as propagandist and suppressive, and at the very least a blatant attempt to pass on preconceived biases to younger generations and to maintain the status quo. To subscribe to this view is, however, unrealistic, narrow minded, and potentially dangerous. The growing youth culture in Australia that puts people who rape, steal, and attack others on a pedestal shows that fables may not necessarily be the receptacles of truth that we would like them to be. Is this because the world is changing, becoming more sophisticated, or simply that, in a world where cultures and worldviews collide on a regular basis we are now less likely to accept the universal truths that are indicated? Or, are the old fables in fact being replaced with new ones?
From what I hear and read, fables are very much still a part of human society. What has changed, perhaps, is that sub-cultures are more likely to actively create their own fables, ones that provide a better fit with their own rules. People are still subjected to propaganda, but this might be created for a short period of time or within a small group, often to the extent that actions and behaviours become synonymous with these groups and/or times. Think about our tolerance of subcultures like bikie gangs, Greenpeace groups, footballers after a win, men on buck's nights, high school graduates during schoolies week (which is now more like a month) and veterans on ANZAC Day (the one day of the year when it is socially acceptable to have a beer for breakfast). In this way, fables other than the prevailing ones, can be accepted or tolerated, and any associated bad behaviour is contained to particular sub-groups or to set time periods.
Whether they are universal, or restricted to particular cultures or even families, fables are transactional stories: do this, and you will be rewarded, do that and you will be punished. Given their centrality in our societies and lives, fables should rightfully have a place in story practice. I have mentioned elsewhere in this blog that story practice is interested in transformational stories - ones that lead to, or talk about meaningful change in people's lives.
So, are fables to be dismissed as irrelevant in story practice? Given the all-pervasive nature of fables, it would be madness to suggest this, nor am I about to do so. Fables, folk stories, fairy tales, myths, everyman stories all have an important place. For instance, we can use them to highlight the current fables that we live by and which may be holding us back, to deconstruct and analyse the truisms that currently provide a blanket, protecting us from noticing how we and the world have changed, how we are different from others. We can also use simple techniques to create new, more personal and more meaningful fables to live by. In this way they become powerful tools for change, or in other words, transformational.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
The 'One Story' and its Consequences
We are all guilty of buying into the 'one story'. Somewhere, some time in each of our lives we have all said something like this: 'All politicians are liars'; 'No one who has been to Alaska can say it's not cold'; 'People who eat meat are unhealthy'. These are all examples of the 'one story', which are not only generalist and ineffective, but they are also untrue.
One Stories tend to lower the common denominator so that we can save ourselves the trouble of doing a lot of thinking about people and the things we do and have, which means we can sit and luxuriate in our own comfort zones. One Stories are breeding grounds for racism, sexism, and a whole lot of other isms which are all too easy to slip into.
Sure, we like to be connected to other people, so having some common bonds is good, but these need to be actively created rather than artificially constructed. Too much of the One Story and we no longer recognise and appreciate difference, and people are robbed of their dignity in the process.
Quite different to One Stories are Practised Stories - 'practised' does not mean that the telling is rehearsed, but that the stories are lived ones, by real people living real lives. Not only are the messages are rich and meaningful; they take us to a higher level of understanding of the complexity and richness of humanity in all its permutations. Practised stories are often known as applied stories - by this we mean that the stories that are experienced and reflected on are used to create positive transformational change.
Imagine a world that is rich with stories, a world that brings new delights each day. Imagine if the newspapers and current affairs programs were full of Practiced Stories rather than One Stories - Tiger Woods would not be apologising on screen for yet another extra-marital blunder but might actually say something interesting that he has learned about himself and the world. Then rather than hearing all the socially-contrived excuses, we might see how his experience has allowed Tiger and the rest of the world an opportunity to become positively transformed by his experience.
This does not mean to indicate that only celebrities are worthy of Practised Stories. In fact, the best Practised Stories are those about ordinary but distinguishably different people - in fact, the living and telling makes them a little less ordinary, a lot less stereotypical, and a little more distinguishably different. Practised Stories are empowering, humanising, and transformational - they show we exist, and how we exist.
Practised Stories reveal greater truths in the experiences themselves and are uncovered further in the telling. Obviously, this places a huge responsibility on the story practitioner, and this has more to do with intent and less to do with expertise.
If you want to find out more about being a Story Practitioner, go to the Story Practitioner's Space page.
One Stories tend to lower the common denominator so that we can save ourselves the trouble of doing a lot of thinking about people and the things we do and have, which means we can sit and luxuriate in our own comfort zones. One Stories are breeding grounds for racism, sexism, and a whole lot of other isms which are all too easy to slip into.
Sure, we like to be connected to other people, so having some common bonds is good, but these need to be actively created rather than artificially constructed. Too much of the One Story and we no longer recognise and appreciate difference, and people are robbed of their dignity in the process.
Quite different to One Stories are Practised Stories - 'practised' does not mean that the telling is rehearsed, but that the stories are lived ones, by real people living real lives. Not only are the messages are rich and meaningful; they take us to a higher level of understanding of the complexity and richness of humanity in all its permutations. Practised stories are often known as applied stories - by this we mean that the stories that are experienced and reflected on are used to create positive transformational change.
Imagine a world that is rich with stories, a world that brings new delights each day. Imagine if the newspapers and current affairs programs were full of Practiced Stories rather than One Stories - Tiger Woods would not be apologising on screen for yet another extra-marital blunder but might actually say something interesting that he has learned about himself and the world. Then rather than hearing all the socially-contrived excuses, we might see how his experience has allowed Tiger and the rest of the world an opportunity to become positively transformed by his experience.
This does not mean to indicate that only celebrities are worthy of Practised Stories. In fact, the best Practised Stories are those about ordinary but distinguishably different people - in fact, the living and telling makes them a little less ordinary, a lot less stereotypical, and a little more distinguishably different. Practised Stories are empowering, humanising, and transformational - they show we exist, and how we exist.
Practised Stories reveal greater truths in the experiences themselves and are uncovered further in the telling. Obviously, this places a huge responsibility on the story practitioner, and this has more to do with intent and less to do with expertise.
If you want to find out more about being a Story Practitioner, go to the Story Practitioner's Space page.
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