How has "story" affected your life?

Shared human experiences are essential in building sustainable trustworthy communities and enabling equity, literacy and resilience.

As Harari says, "Stories are the glue that binds us together". Didn't I read a recent article about how the brain works by creating stories out of our experiences... It is the stories that define how we see the world and deal with it... The stories are everything, after all what else is there? Even the universe makes sure no information is lost.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Alex. The idea that we structure the world through stories is hardly a novel insight, as the references to Heider’s observations (1944) and Schank’s concept of scripts from the 1970s make clear. But the article completely fails to work out what more recent brain research can actually add on top of this. And so the impression remains that “the experiments read as a rather expensive attempt to reach rather trivial conclusions.”

My narrative: When I graduated from HS in Philly in 1954, scholarships were merit- not need-based. I was essentially a B+ student with SATs about 1300. Tuition at Penn was only $700, at Temple about $500, but my family didn't have anything like that amount of money. Looking for a job, there was a newspaper ad for a lab tech. Since I hoped to study chemistry, I answered the ad. The interviewer explained that this was a lab at Penn and they were looking for someone full-time who could attend Penn as a part-time student, taking 3 courses every full term and one each summer term, taking 24 credits each year and earning a degree after 5 years. I jumped at the opportunity.

By the beginning of the second year, I realized I was not cut out for lab work. But I overheard a conversation between two graduate students about a peculiar kind of math, called modern algebra. I started learning about it and fell in love. I stayed at Penn and got a PhD in math. I have spent most of the following 65 years teaching (until 2000) and researching math, all modern algebra based.

How could this have been predicted in 1954?

My friends would probably say I like films with downbeat endings. I'm English and on an antidepressant. Coincidence?

Unfortunately the article missed the opportunity to highlight the potential for practical application of the brain studies, without which the experiments read as a rather expensive attempt to reach rather trivial conclusions. I would have loved to learn how we are using neuroscience and narrative psychology to treat memory loss, PTSD, dementia etc or mechanisms underlying these conditions, instead we have a weak and lengthy article concluding I am not sure what - that people like stoties?

Regarding the redemption narrative, the article glosses over the negatives of societal pressure and jumps into ill defined productivity gains.

I have always dreamed mostly in color and often with smells, and temperatures. I would dream the same dream with slight variations off and on for years until I solved whatever problem the dream was hinging on.l Many of them were scary dreams and repetition helped me to become comfortable with the things that scared me and also helped me understand why they were scary and most importantly the "monsters were almost always as scared or more scared than I was... Some literally disappeared after I experienced a very very similar situation in real life. Some were just fun to watch and I often am able to switch to a different dream by turning from left side to my right or from my right side to my left. I actually look forward to my dreams because they become silly, ridiculous and often explain how to solve problems. They are sometimes scary but never, never boring and I remembers lots of parts of them. I also recognize repeat dreams or reruns. No I am only on non-psychedelic drugs. Pain killers almost always bring very dark dreams and I try to avoid pain killers, sleeping pills, etc as much as possible. Not sure what that says about me, but probably nothing very important.

I’m wondering if dreams are often difficult to remember because they are images that we put together to form a memorable story.

I listened to all stories carefully as a child, whether from my mum and elders or popular culture on tv, books etc. I was never really a fan of hero stories as I thought them to be unrealistic and were usually male, so as a little girl I could not see myself in the pop stories or was a role that I was not interested in. Nevertheless, I was searching for my place in this world ( and still am ) while always believing in the value of human connection. Funny enough, I was always attracted to stories with animals...

Heuristics and biases out of psychological research (q.v., Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman, 2011): Cognitive ease and causal coherence seem to be a preferred state over randomness and chaos. Underpinning that is the Free Energy Principle, more fundamental to any self-organizing system.

On the human level, stories like conspiracy theories, provide the illusion of control and agency. The narrative fallacy makes us see inevitability in hindsight and also makes us believe from the past we can reliably predict the future. On the other hand, this way of perceiving and conceptualizing has been selected for because of notable advantages on average.

However, in our social relations there is more injustice and delusion than advantage in the stories and attribution of responsibility. Most of our successes and failures are as much or more a matter of luck than of anything we did or didn't do one way or other.

And the chaos of a nature, the branches and leaves of trees for example, seem to have a positive influence on our mental state. The irregularity of natural landscapes appeal to us in a complementary way to the order of lab or room in which we work and feel differently.

I am not sure how much we can map this to the difference in the hemispheres of our brains. Too much can be made of these differences, just as the division between mental and physical seems to disappear the better we understand. We are corporeal and our minds rely on physical structures and our bodies for understanding and engaging with ourselves and the world.

But that's another story, isn't it? The poet's constant cry for order?

It's a known fact that children don't enter into causality until after 5 years old (give or take).

Thus, more than a trait, causality & story telling are intertwined as instrumental both to build our reality. That the reality we build must, in some way, be connected & shared to other people's reality building is what we deem social living.

A shared story narrative is the glue that holds the fabric of society.

As a child I loved when the older members of my family would tell their stories. Even then I saw the thread weaving all of us into the Greater Tale. Heroism and failures; bravery and adventurers, they cemented my life-long love of stories. Now, as a senior member of the family, I can see the influence they have on our life choices and many-storied paths. We keep our generational memories alive in our storytelling.