Selective Empathy Stories And The Power Of Narrative

Societies venerate their storytellers almost as much as the stories. We talk about the wonders that stories can create, the ways they can change the world for the better.

- Aminatta Forna

Human beings tell stories. This is a fact. Every society, however differently organized and structured, whether founded on the values of matriarchy or patriarchy, whether agricultural, sea-going, peaceful, or warmongering, tells stories. We know this because anthropologists tell us so. Anthropologists, historians (what are historians but storytellers themselves?), and archaeologists, who have traced the origin of stories as far back as human life. The first written story to have been found is the Epic of Gilgamesh, produced sometime between 2150 and 1400 bc in cuneiform on fragments of tablets and unearthed in the sands of what is now Syria.

From epic legends like Gilgamesh to anecdotes, we tell each other stories every day: “Guess what happened?” Typically my seven-year-old son’s first words when he dashes through the door at the day’s end. A woman is late for lunch with a friend, she sits down, she says: “Just listen to the day I’ve had . . .” A man at a bar leans across to another man: “So I was driving down the freeway . . .” And so it goes. Storytelling is a symbiotic process, an exchange between teller and listener, between writer and reader. It is the way my son shares the highs and lows of his day, the way the woman who is late encourages her friend’s sympathy rather than irritation, how the man at the bar extends the hand of friendship.