On Storytelling

Once upon a time in the ancient Greek environment, lived a blind old Guy, named Homer. Theories and legends about his origins, about his name, the real role he’d played in the society or even his health conditions multiplies constantly.

Personally, all I remember from school is that Homer was an epic poet, a legendary minstrel who had never written down a word himself. However, he’d chosen greater and more difficult mission then simple writing. The guy was actually trying to implement his stories into others, so that they could continue these word tradition further, worship ancient heroes for centuries and learn from their adventures some general truths about human behavior. As for me, he did a very good job… but he failed at one point. Who could’ve imagine more than 2000 years ago, that there would be, in the contemporary West civilization environment, a disturbingly good looking guy, named Brad Pitt, who would bravely best-male-performed and lead American Producers to conquer Troy… financially.

What was storytelling itself than and what is now?

In what direction the art of storytelling had gone…

… and what exactly went wrong?

How storytellers transformed, what methods do they use now? For what causes?

Is there any hope to make it as pure and as magical as it was before?

What are the REASONS for storytelling now, and how they are different from those before?

What does Storytelling mean?
Storytelling is a scientific survey/analysis method based on stories told by the
employees of a company.
The analysis shows the deep structure and hidden regularities of the company
“world” – the “Company in the Mind”.
Storytelling provides knowledge of a company beyond its official description of itself
which can immediately be turned into efficient strategies:
•to make internal communication more effective;
•to develop a company culture that will retain highly-qualified employees at the company;
•to take calculated and successful measures in personnel development;
•to target and manage strengths and weaknesses inside the company;
•to plan restructuring concepts that will really change things;
•to optimize co-operation culture;
•to enable post-merger integration without friction;
•to plan successions and management changes.
Based on a storytelling analysis, effective change processes, guidelines, visions,
communication strategies and leadership principles can be developed to suit a
company’s real needs.

The Storytelling Method SYSTEM + KOMMUNIKATION 2002

Storytelling is the conveying of events in words, images, and sounds often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories or narratives have been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and in order to instill moral values. (…)The earliest forms of storytelling are thought to have been primarily oral combined with gestures and expressions. (…)The evolution of technology has changed the tools available to storytellers. With the advent of writing, the use of actual digit symbols to represent language, and the use of stable, portable media stories were recorded, transcribed and shared over wide regions of the world. Stories have been carved, scratched, painted, printed, or inked onto wood or bamboo, ivory and other bones, pottery, clay tablets, stone, palm-leaf books, skins (parchment), bark cloth, paper, silk, canvas and other textiles, recorded on film and stored electronically in digital form. Complex forms of tattooing may also represent stories, with information about genealogy, affiliation and social status.

WIKIPEDIA

I am going to broaden this subject during my artistic research, so this short explanation is being made only as a foretaste. What we have above is a compilation of two, more or less general texts regarding storytelling. What we find interesting about them is a comparison between reasons and goals. Dramatic gap between what was then and what is now. Everything gone inhuman and is being defaced … entertainment, joy, education, culture, values, morals, emotions are being turned into efficacy, qualifications, successfulness, management skills, co-operational skills, skills, skills, skills, … please tell me a story about your beloved doggy when You were a child, and I’m gonna tell you if you’re a good keeper, son!

However, there’s still hope for storytelling to re-birth in its glory. Pending my rather superficial for a moment web research I found many, more or less fine examples of people, societies, communities, artistic events etc. trying to get back to the storytelling roots.

From: http://www.storynet.org/index.html

I mean, I know this is pretty cheesy, especially those “key tools”, “power”, „storytelling transforms lives” expressions. I guess it is pretty lame, but we cannot argue that this is a complete waste of time. Each such initiative generates both weak and shallow, but also good and positive attitudes and changes. Probably we can even estimate that probability of distribution of storytelling movements’ effectiveness is more or less close to the normal distribution in terms of Gaussian theory … so it has its strong points too.

Well, maybe this NSN isn’t the best example after all. As I’m looking now at costs of such splendid experience as organized by them Conference called “Many Stories – One world” with the main goal : To make this the best investment of your story-dollars this year! I feel like I’m cheated again. Seriously, how naïve could I be?

But then again it reminds me this cool conversation on Facebook I had with young artists from Greece. It considered Alain de Botton - mentioned by me in the “the Good life” part.

We don’t need messiahs. I think we need reasonable people.

This guy actually has a point.


Should we move on to another, maybe more artistic examples?





From: http://www.themoth.org/

Here we have something from the other corner of invented, for a reason of this part of my deliberations, Gaussian function. Here we have 5% of, maybe too sophisticated even, hope. Celebrities hand in hand with “ordinary people” (not such ordinary if they chose this type of entertainment and can appreciate it, but still way far from being a celebrity) share their life stories, anecdotes, jokes, day to day dramas etc. Pretty amazing show. Someday, if I have a chance to go to NYC for the second time I exactly know how I’ll spend my evenings, but still it is not what I am looking for in this “me wishing” re-birth of storytelling. I’m rather aiming in the leftover of 90% . What should we do with that?

This is the place where all youtube fans and youtube creators can shake hands. This is the place where Douglas Coupland shares with us his visions of the last day on earth in Generation X or presents to us sad and moving stories of piece of toast in The Gum Thief. This is the place for the real ordinary people to share their lives with others and learn, entertain, spread individual and collective culture and enjoy the great feeling of relief afterwards. This is even a place for shallow inspirational speeches! (like this story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McvCJley78A Remember The Good Life post?)

But most of all, this is a place for such characters as this amazingly talented kid - Cosmo Jarvis (http://www.myspace.com/cosmojarvis)

My personal favorite is his short movie about scissors.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtwEZWONl8M

Not only he is able to create a great plot, full of suspense and diabolic humor, but he’s presenting it in very unconventional style. And how many more such impressive kids exist nowadays? And moreover, what they have to say?

This scissors story reminded me one interesting exercise we had, back at the Psychology Faculty. I don’t exactly remember the general theme of those classes, but I will always keep in mind the task we were asked to fulfill.

“And now please chose one object from this classroom. It could be anything – a pencil, chair, wall… whatever you want. Write a short story about its future. What, in your opinion, would happen to it?”

After couple of minutes devoted to careful looking around the room I’ve chosen a small round yellow magnetic thingy hanging on a white board. It supposed to detain papers, brochures, flyers to the boards, but instead it was just holding itself all alone in the corner, forgotten by everybody. I felt sorry for this poor little yellow fellow, so I dedicated him my story. I don’t remember all the details, but according to my vision, this little thing would have eventually lost all its magnetic skills and felt down completely unnoticed on a floor. Someone, probably a cleaning lady, would have thrown it out, with all the classroom dirt, directly into the trash container. Finally, it would have somehow finished his journey on the dump, where it would have lie on rotten corps of his organic friends for the eternity.

I was so proud of my horrible story. I wrote it on purpose to disturb my friends and show them how shocking I can be. I was really proud until I heard the second part of our task:

“I can see that you’ve finished your writings, so now please read them out loud but in the first person.”

…

Till this day I’m keeping this little yellow guy in my wallet. I won’t let anybody hurt him!

"The Good Life"

(...) Most of the information used by journalists in depicting  Generation

X in this way comes from polling data and marketing research, especially

by Yankelovich Partners and the Roper Organization. For example,

in a 1996 poll, Yankelovich Partners found that 64% of young

people aged 18 to 24 agreed that “material things, like what I drive and

the house I live in, are really important to me” (Hornblower, 1997,

p. 65). About one half believed that they would be better off financially

than their parents. Nearly all—96%—agreed, “I am very sure

that someday I will get to where I want to be in life” (p. 62). In a 1992

poll, the Roper Organization found 18- to 29-year-olds to have higher

material aspirations than 18- to 29-year-olds polled by the organization

in 1978 (Roper Organization, 1993). Fifty-nine percent aspired to 

have a lot of money (compared with 50% in 1978), 42% aspired to

have a second car (28% in 1978), and 41% aspired to have a vacation

home (25% in 1978). Sixty-nine percent included a job that pays a lot

more than average as part of their definition of “the good life” (58% in

1978). However, an equal percentage included an interesting job as

part of their definition. Many of the poll results on the views of emerging

adults concern economic issues, partly because these are believed

to be issues that are especially salient to young people as they enter

the workforce, but also because the objective of pollsters such as

Yankelovich Partners and the Roper Organization is to inform their

corporate clients about the economic characteristics of their potential

customers.

HIGH HOPES IN A GRIM WORLD

Emerging Adults’Views of Their

Futures and “Generation X”

JEFFREY JENSEN ARNETT

University of Maryland

 

Published in 2000. Study conducted between 1994-1995… what has changed since then? In the terms of “good life” and “future”, I mean. The whole spectrum of, more or less, connected notions suggests that probably we won’t be able to avoid the question of current understanding of success, which is personally harmful for me, but what can I do?

And why it is so disturbing? It’s actually pretty simple… I feel that I’m being forced into sort of an association pattern – phenomenon which creates in my mind a vision of attractive people in suits, driving shiny cars, talking through iPhones, waving their golden credit cards in the supermarkets etc. when I hear word “success”. This is my automatic first connotation, which I cannot control. I can always correct myself after, but in what position exactly does it put me?! Being against this influences, trying to think rationally and critically I am still associating success with profitable business, attractiveness and money, in a way as an unconditioned mind reflex. How powerful is that? Swiss banks, Louises Vittons and Rolexes do not exactly help…

Luckily, thanks to my Greek friend from school, I discovered this guy! For now on my personal “King of Banality” (in a good way, not in the Paulo Coelho way):

 

Alain de Botton: A kinder, gentler philosophy of success 

In this short lecture, Mister Botton is proposing a pep talk regarding a term of success as a personal success. Moreover, he underlines a potential of individual successes which, in his opinion, are being unfairly standardized into one common vision of success. When you don’t fit in, you’re a LOSER. Why? Because we live in a world in which each one of us is responsible for his future. We are alone in our struggle and we have only two options - to win or to lose.

That reminds me the adorable movie “Little Miss Sunshine”. Especially the Father character (Richard), who was specializing in inspirational speeches basing on simple division, is coming to my mind right now:

Richard: There's two kinds of people in this world, there's winners and there's losers. Okay, you know what the difference is? Winners don't give up.

… and of course during the movie he’s forced to redefine his theory and he finishes with the simple conclusion à la Mister Botton -  we are not afraid of losing, as much as we are afraid of judgment. Media and consumption culture are those powers that keep the ongoing creation of the one and only idea of success, and they are guarding the leading position over our weak self-esteems. Living consciously and above those influences enables us to choose our own path towards our own personal success.

So simple, so true, but so difficult to accomplish. I’ve shown this lecture to my friends and my brother. Everyone agreed that it’s nothing reviling and nothing that we weren’t aware of. However, everyone also agreed that it’s not so easy to apply this attitude during everyday activities. Envy, fear of negative judgments, stereotype of success are powerful weapon against real needs and desires of post-industrial human being. How can we get rid of them and start to think independently when even in Kenya some idiots organized a social campaign promoting success by hanging posters presenting a simple mathematical(ish) equation:

Image of One guy in a suit + Image of One shiny car + Image of One Big Wallet full of money = SUCCESS *

I mean for god’s sake! Assuming that the receivers group was actually able to understand the written word (it’s not a sarcasm!) there are still quite huge obstacles on the Kenyan road to success don’t you think?

[* this interesting information I received from one of CCC fellow students. We had a long discussion concerning this disturbing fact, and who would have known that I’m going to use this argument afterwards…]

 

Back to the original notion of the good life - movie experiment. I am pretty amazing in films and TV series knowledge, but still a lot work a head, so I’ve decided to trust Google this time. Results:

There are “quadrillion” of movies with “life” in the title.

Several movies titled “Good life”, in many different languages.

All of them are dramas.

Interesting…

Right! There’s also one British sitcom about a couple, who quits their jobs and starts to lead their life in a village, raising chickens and growing vegetables. Cliché !

To make my point - please watch this trailer of Canadian movie from 2008. Actually, it is about people in their 20s. About us, more or less. Movie is called “When life was good”, so I’m asking myself where are those smiley faces in the trailer? I don’t feel a need to add more comments on that.  (Well, ok I have one – can we, as a faculty, order this movie to our archives. Maybe it’s pointless but I honestly doubt it.)

To conclude this small part of my reflections concerning the notion of good life I would like present two answers I’ve just obtained from my friends asked “what is your first association with the concept of the good life?”. First of all, I have to emphasis the fact that I’ve written to several, more or less, close friends of mine, representing completely different backgrounds and approaches towards life in general. Till today I received only 2 answers, both from young male graduates, pretty successful in their professional lives – suits, fair money, complete independency from family, fluent in 2 or more foreign languages, experienced in working and studying abroad, way more than 250 friends on Facebook. Personal happiness? Problematic…

1.       Good life = advertising campaign slogan for a new brand of yogurt light

2.        First Thought: Good Life as an advertising slogan. I’m looking at a lady on a body shop poster. She’s beautiful but you know.. ecologically beautiful. Red hair, slightly tanned skin. Many MANY freckles! She’s wearing make-up but in a completely natural way. She wants to say that GOOD LIFE cacao face cream made her so happy.

Second Thought: Good life as a French middle class from la treinte glorieuse 1950-1980 period. A couple. Both in really trendy cloths. Their house is full of serial home appliances. It’s their first work-free Saturday, so they drive on the newly build highways, they eat in inexpensive restaurants and they don’t have any idea what Value Added Tax means.

Third Thought: Advertising slogan again, closely related to original products from British grocery chain Sainsbury’s  - “taste the difference".

Don’t get me wrong. I’m pretty convinced I understood the irony, but still my dear beloved “association patterns”…

 

 

 

On Morality

I've decided to narrow down things a little and discuss some issues more deeply. Maybe that's the way? Chaos always accompanies me so excuse my jumping from one topic to another. Being in the middle of segregating various concepts I think it's a good opportunity to connect more valid ones to my primary idea. So please welcome warmly my first primitive philosophical achievement ! 

A discussion was brought up yesterday between my friend and me. Hard stuff. Morality issues. As I’m finding myself more and more confused about my morals, other’s morals, general notion even, I’ve got as always curious. It seems that my closest friends are afraid of my judgments! They believe that my understanding of good and bad is very categorical, inflexible, narrow-minded even. I won’t defend myself. I won’t avoid a problem either. I’ll start digging instead, cause it is simply unfair that they made me feel like fucking Spanish Inquisition. And how exactly should I react on the argument that “we are what we are and I don’t feel bad at all about what I’m doing, cause I know that others do it too.” So… following this thought, if a bunch of our common friends agree that there’s nothing wrong in shitting on a street, we would automatically do it cause for now on it is acceptable and even well-seen? Bizzare…

Finally, I’ve been warned ! “Stop imposing your morality on others!” Does it mean that there’s more than only one morality, in general sense I mean? I always thought that there’s one common morality for certain society, created by ages of tradition, culture, religion, philosophy and collective conscience. However, in my naïve understanding, each person has his own sense of morality which could more or less resemble the BIG one, or could be a bit, a little, very or totally different and wrong (I’m simplifying on purpose, cause philosophical arguments look better on Wikipedia). If there are more moralities, and everything bases on personal judgment influenced by problematic rationalization and similar cases of behavior in our closest environment, does morality even exists? 

Let’s see …

“People resemble their times more than they resemble their parents”

Oh yeah ?!  Shallow, completely  superficial ancient saying. There’s nothing so simple any more after Freud ! I can agree on fifty-fifty, and no more no more ! (irony included)  
 

…While the Builders’ Generation are most influenced by authority figures and Boomers

make decisions based on data and facts, post-modern youth are more likely to make a

decision based on the influence of their own peers. Our research has further confirmed

that the biggest factor determining the choice a teenager will make is the experiences of

their core group of 3 to 8 friends. Rather than making independent decisions based on

core values, they live in a culture encouraging them to embrace community values, and to

reach consensus.

Understanding Generation Y

Mark McCrindle

Ho ho ho! Why I’m not surprised? But without a proper definitions we won't go far ! 

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") has three principal meanings.

In its first, descriptive usage, morality means a code of conduct or belief concerning matters of what is moral or immoral (these words are commonly misplaced with right or wrong which are words of logic not morality). In its descriptive use, morals are arbitrarily and subjectively created by society, philosophy, religion, and/or individual conscience

In its second, normative and universal sense, morality refers to an ideal code of belief and conduct which would be preferred by the sane "moral" person, under specified conditions. In this "definitive" sense, claims are made such as "Killing is immoral." While descriptive morality would not necessarily disagree that killing is immoral, it would prefer to say, "Many believe that killing is immoral." – moral skepticism

In its third usage, 'morality' is synonymous with ethics. Ethics seeks to address questions such as how a moral outcome can be achieved in a specific situation (applied ethics), how moral values should be determined (normative ethics), what morals people actually abide by (descriptive ethics), what the fundamental nature of ethics or morality is, including whether it has any objective justification (meta-ethics), and how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is (moral psychology).

Morality

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 



 According to this brief explanation I wasn't so wrong after all. I wasn't right either. Morals are arbitrarily created by societies and by all the influential forces, institutions, ideas characteristic for them. One point for me! On the other hand, we have this individualistic approach which is, more or less directly, a result of one’s beliefs and specific milieu conditions. Aha! Second point for me for such an outstanding observation! On the third hand (for the continuation’s of this thought sake, let’s assume that we have 3 hands), there’s ethics, so super meta-approach which simply cannot be applied into the reality, cause it is strictly combined with academic, completely irrelevant for living, crap. We have this exception here called applied ethics, but we won’t go this road this time(joke included)...

Now please check out this short movie:  

Richard Dawkins on Morality

So there it is. Genetic explanation which in a way lowers the meaning of religion and conscious. Seams realistic to me, but still how should we treat the notion of morality? The notion of Moral Systems seams a lot more convincing. Moral systems created by societies, basing on altruistic genes telling us what’s wrong and what’s right for our community. So much easier to understand, unless of course we don’t mention today individualism, which’s started to be strongly cultivated in Western realities lately. If we dig deeper into this idea, we could come out with the conclusion that above uncontrollable biological factors each person needs A REASON to behave morally. It could be a strong sense of common moral system, but it could be also everything else, like for example a strong need of acceptance in chosen environment. In this case morals become a result of personal criteria, which of course are infected by general moral system, but in the same time this system is being changed continuously by individual experiences.

Our background, religion, traditions, family etc., in opposition to current circumstances (media, globalization, term of success etc.) could cause, and probably are causing severe moral crisis among so-called “millennial generation”. At least those factors don’t stay neutral.   

Let’s sum it up and make a point!  

My probably very childish perspective for the moment:

 

Remember my mapping task? What’s above is my original, general graph layered with today ideas concerning morality. As we can see I’m distinguishing notion of morality as a complete abstraction, in the same time emphasizing a sense of morality (one's interpretation of morality). Directions of influences are rather random, but they need to be taken under the consideration. Codes of conduct as a result of “socially respected morality” are also an important factor. By social contract I don’t mean an agreement by the governed on a set of rules by which they are governed, but rather an unwritten agreement in certain community concerning socially accepted and wanted behaviors.

 Does it make any sense?