Members Only Post #140 – The More I Learn About It, The More I Think Story Telling Is The Single Most Powerful Agent Of Change In The World

For better or for worse.

I’ve been doing a deep dive on story telling for roughly over a year now, learning all the ends and outs of it, and what goes into an effective story versus an “ineffective” one. I’ve been devouring books on writing novels, screenplays, poems, even songs, and about the science of story telling. The biological reasons for it, the psychological effects of it, and the central importance of it to all human affairs. I think it’s something we’ve drastically underestimated.

The goal of this site is to give you the tool to live the best life possible, whatever that means to you. It’s to give you the tools of success and “wholeness” so you can do with them as you will. I’ve curated a small list of skills that I see as “must have” skills on that list are things like persuasions/sales/copywriting or whatever you want to call that grouping of skills. Marketing skills maybe or soft skills, sales skills. Again you get what I’m talking about.

I’ve promoted those so much because it’s often those soft skills that determine where you end up in life, at the very least career wise but also in general. Now don’t think that I’m going to go on and say these skills aren’t important they absolutely positively are. And they’re mandatory for learning. However one of the big reasons I harped on them so much was because of their power to persuade, and persuasion is the most powerful force of “making use of” human capital and potential.

What Is Religion But Story?

That might sound manipulative and while it can be, it doesn’t have to be. Telling a child that a hot burner is hot and will hurt them if they touch it, technically is manipulation, yet no one would say its bad. Same with persuasion. It certainly can be used to mislead and dupe people but that doesn’t make it in and of itself bad. But getting back to persuasion as important as the soft skills are I don’t think they’re the most powerful way to persuade, at least on a large scale.

Person to person I don’t think soft skills can be beat, however when we’re looking to change the thoughts or ideas of a large group of people I don’t think storytelling can be beat. Story pierces through our conscious mind and goes straight to the subconscious, changing and effecting us often without us really understanding or knowing what’s happening. While sales we have to “get around” the conscious mind with story telling the door is left wide open for us.

What is religion but stories told? And religion is one of the most powerful human forces on this earth. How much has religion effected? How much has it changed? All because of well told stories that are spread far and wide. Where would a religion be without its “holy book” without its body of stories? And what are most religious books but stories? Sure there are some lists of laws and such but most are stories.

Stories Change The World

I think people greatly underestimate Hollywood and the effect its had on the world. More than wars and banks it has changed the thought patterns and morality of a world to suite a few in America. Its essentially a world changing institution and most don’t even know it. And again that’s because of the genius of story. Story slips right past the conscious mind and works at our deepest level right off the bat, especially a well told story. Tell a good story and you can change just about any line of thought.

You can get people to work against their best interest, to do things that run counter to what is good for them and enjoy doing them. Even think that what they’re doing is for their best interest, all evidence to the contrary. With a good enough story you could essentially have someone keep touching a hot burner, getting burned, yet do it again but they’ve been convinced their burns come from having a window open.

I know that analogy is a bit convoluted but what I’m saying is with a good story you can blind people to the obvious and get them to hate the innocent. With story you can do just about anything. Now that might seem like I’m making it out that story is a bad thing and a force for “evil”, evil as in that which is against the primal/cosmic order. However story is just a tool.

The Tool Of Story

The issue that I see is that the tool of story is used relentless by what we’ll call “evil” yet rarely if ever used by “good”. Don’t think evil/good in the modern or religious sense, we’re talking the primal/cosmic order here which is a very different thing. We see all sorts of stories promoting things that are dysgenic, that are bad for society and bad for mankind as individuals. We see people being divided and conquered and barely anyone raising a peep about it in the story field.

Hollywood and the big 5 publishers continue to churn out the same politically correct spiritually dead recycled bullshit year after year and the people accept it because the people’s need for story is far greater than their need for truth, among other things. So the same crap gets pushed and reinforced in everyone’s mind, over and over and over again. Now with self-publishing and “indie” media part of this is changing.

But there is still a desperate need for good story tellers out there. A desperate need for those that tell the truth. If you’re someone who cares about the state of the world you live in, or not even the world but the country, neighborhood, tribe, family, or whatever then you should look into story telling. If you want to cause change in the world that is the way to do it on a large scale.

So go and be a story teller and change the world, heal the world, with your stories. I’ll eagerly wait to see/hear/read them.

And hopefully will join you there.