kerravonsen | (Reply)

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It is something which has been simmering in the back of my brain for a while. Initially I only got as far as "change the culture" - because it's no good merely changing the laws, because the culture controls how those laws are enforced. A law intended to protect can be used to oppress the very ones it is intended to protect, if the will of the people in charge is hostile enough.

That's as far as it got for a long time. I was stumped at how to change a culture, because culture is a many-headed hydra which resists change.

Then two things came together. The first thing... I didn't realize had anything to do with this. But I read a book a while ago, called "Wired For Story", which has some fascinating hypotheses about story-telling, which, if I were to put it into a single phrase, would be "Stories are Stone Age flight simulators". The way we react to stories, the way we are absorbed by them, they allow us to learn things which we've never experienced in real life. Like flight simulators.

The second thing... much more recent. Pondering why anti-vaxxers resist vaccination, why all the hysteria over ebola, why climate-change deniers continue to deny -- why, in short, do people refuse to listen to the scientific facts, no matter how true or supported, or verified or repeated they are?

It's because facts are not stories, and it's the stories which stay in our minds and move our hearts. Our minds tell us what is true, and our hearts tell us what is good.

All the scientific papers in the world will make less impact on society than one well-told tale, because science speaks only to the mind and is soon forgotten.

Also, a remark by a friend about police brutality in the US, blaming all the TV shows and movies about maverick cops breaking the rules in order to get things done... resulting in cops who feel that the rules are optional. I don't think it's as simple as that... though on further thought... there is something to it -- not the rule-breaking, but an even more pervasive and unconsidered attitude: that it is more important to stop criminals than it is to protect citizens.

Whatever the case, the remark sparked the connection in my mind between fiction and attitude, attitude and action.

So. To change a culture one needs to change its stories.