Story: What is it Good for?

The media, especially the western kind looks for "human" or individual's stories. I guess that human stories sell advertisements better than organizational or non-human stories. Otherwise, the western media would not do it.

My unscientific research leads me to believe that human beings are more interested in stories than they are in food. Food is a finite need. Stories seem to be an infinite need. From religion to marketing to education to law and many other fields, the more compelling the story, the more successful the outcome. The need of the truthfulness of the story varies from discipline to discipline.

People want to be part of good, wholesome stories. If they don't have a good story in their lives they either gossip, buy or borrow fictional text, or go watch movies. People need stories...

Study any movement. It "moves" people through stories. If the story is persuasive, the movement would be stronger and sustainable. If the story is less than compelling, the movement would be weak and unsustainable; and will eventually wither away. A good storyteller need not worry about the delivery of tangible results. Emotional benefits are good enough.

Please note that the truth of the story has nothing to do with its effectiveness. Human beings are very much able to wear fiction on themselves to turn the falsehood into truth. This is why Hollywood has been able to blur and sometimes eliminate the line between fact and fiction.

Personally, for a large part I am not a story kind of guy. My mind works on facts and logic. Stories generally bore me. Therefore it is very difficult for me to sit down and read stories to my children. However, I am not immune to stories. When a story is convincing from the factual point of view, from the delivery point of view, or both, the immunity melts away. This is what happens when Wall Street and Madison Avenue get together and weave great sequence of stories that can bamboozle the best of us.

From the story of Adam to Abel/Cain to Noah to Abraham to Aad to Thamood to David to Soloman to Jacob to Joseph to Moses to Jesus to many others without specific names, the Qur'an uses this powerful medium of storytelling to inform, educate and move people.

That is the very reason the religious and political mafias have been able to feed stories to their listeners instead of providing concrete solutions.

Tell a good story...the world is yearning for yet another one.