We learn from our mistakes

Narrating to unite. The (perhaps) forgotten power of stories

Narratives have the power to emotionally engage and influence people's decisions, but the abuse of storytelling can lead to the loss of their intrinsic value and manipulation

4 December 2024

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In the middle of the night, a woman dressed in white wanders around the rooms of an eerie if splendid villa in Vicenza. She has just taken an awl from the drawer of the kitchen table and is soon seen outside the window of the room where a little girl is sleeping. Cut. The same woman is filmed, ten years earlier, as she enthusiastically climbs the stairs of the same villa, showing a man she is kissing and hugging a piece of paper that later turns out to be a confirmation of her pregnancy. A second woman sitting next to the man also participates in the moment of happiness.

This is the opening of Marco Tullio Giordana's latest film, La vita accanto, inspired by the novel of the same name by Mariapia Veladiano. I mention it because it seemed to me one of the many admirable examples of the power of narration when it is well structured, namely that of bringing the viewer immediately into the story by activating a mechanism of full involvement. In this incipit there are many clues and several plausible hypotheses. Some things are shown, little is said, much is left to the work of the viewer's imagination.

The Many Virtues of Storytelling

Storytelling is an extraordinary, ancestral and instinctive tool of human beings that is useful for different purposes, such as entertainment, escapism, transfer of knowledge and values, influencing the behaviour of others, etc.

Jonathan Gottschall goes so far as to say that "stories are conditioning machines, equipped with predictable elements to capture attention and generate emotions with the ultimate goal of exerting different kinds of influence on others" and does so in an essay entitled "The Dark Side of Stories". The title of the book matches what most probably occurred to us when reading the passage from Gottschall's book quoted above, namely that influence and persuasion are fine as long as they have a good ultimate purpose, but become a problem when the purpose is not noble.

Gottschall again points out that 'in the last few decades, a real science of storytelling has emerged to dispel the old superstition that sees stories as something elusive, something that makes them science-proof. Today, a large team of researchers, including psychologists, communication specialists, neuroscientists and literary analysts are applying the scientific method to study the effects of stories on the brain'. And these studies confirm how stories have the power to influence people's behaviour because they strike and speak directly to the emotional dimension of the human brain, which is also largely responsible for the decisions people then make.

The abuse of stories and narratives

"Today, everyone talks about narratives. Yet, paradoxically, the very fact that narratives are used in every sphere is a sign of a crisis of narrative experience. At the heart of this noisy storytelling dominates a narrative vacuum that manifests itself as a lack of meaning and loss of orientation. Neither storytelling nor the narrative turn are able to trigger a return of storytelling. The fact that a certain paradigm becomes an explicit theme and, moreover, it has become fashionable to make it an object of research, is only possible by virtue of a profound alienation from it. This insistent reference to narratives alludes precisely to their dysfunctionality'. In this case, it is Byung-Chul Han in his "The Crisis of Narrative" who reiterates as evident a distortion of the spirit and mechanism of storytelling, which seems to have become the end when it should instead remain a means.

Plato's warning

Plato believed that the mind of the human being is articulated into three basic nuclei: logic, emotions and appetites. In a healthy mind, the first core governs the other two; in a less healthy mind, the latter dominates the former. Plato, therefore, opposed narratives and storytellers precisely because stories primarily stirred the emotions, leading people to act instinctively and not rationally. Now, we are all certainly convinced that stories are capable of engaging us and we think this simply because we experience it at first hand when we read, scroll through social media feeds, watch a film or series, listen to someone talk and so on. However, we also certainly understand how the principle of the Greek pharmakon or poison (this is what this word means in Greek), which in measured doses is beneficial but in excessive ones is toxic, really applies.

If everything becomes a narrative nothing more is

In all likelihood, today we are witnessing an exasperation in the application of the narrative mechanism. And after all, the reasons for this apparent drift are also easy to understand. Consensus on the part of the people (and their attention being the conditio sine qua non) is a fundamental asset. It has always been so for leaders in political or corporate contexts. It has been so for relatively recent times for so-called influencers in whatever sphere they operate. And since the consensus gold rush also requires great speed and timing, stories are the most effective means of capturing attention and winning consensus. And if everything becomes narrative and storytelling, then nothing is. Or at least, to quote Byung-Chul Han again, they risk becoming simply products to be consumed without any intrinsic value.

In this drift, stories run the risk of losing the most relevant and noble power they have, the one for which they were perhaps primarily born in the mists of time, establishing themselves as one of the faculties that distinguish us from animals: transmitting and handing down the positive values that form the foundations of any healthy, cohesive and internally united human community. It would be vitally important to return to narratives this crucial role as the glue of communities (I am also thinking of corporate ones) in order to curb and remedy another often feared drift, namely that of individualism that the new forms of work organisation can sometimes induce or even exasperate.

*Partner of Newton S.p.A..