I first read the StoryCology idea on Tom Atlee's "The Evolving Storycology Project."
It hit me like a bolt of lightening, but then I was left to piece together, “Why?!” Why did it have such an effect on me?
I think the “lightening strikes” feeling is something that causes several lines of reasoning to activate all at once, (ThinkingGoo,) but it remains to go, “Okay, … Now just what exactly were the circuits that were triggered here..?” That can take time.
So, if this seems chaotic and odd and strange, … Well, … please (A) criticize it, and (B) let me have some time. I need some friction with others, to help me figure out how all the pieces work together.
Onward!
Central points:
“Story is the thread that stitches our efforts together.”
So, “this is obvious,” no? We have all seen, at one point or another:
But, I want to propose something stronger than that.
I want to say: “Where things hook up together, there’s a story behind it. If you want to hook things up together, use a story.”
Here on CommunityWiki, we have wondered, through the years, “How can we increase InterCommunityCooperation?”
I believe the answer is to build a story, and to share a story.
Think about how SlashDot has existed. Has it built a story? It has. Has it shared a story? It has. Story is the thread that stitches our efforts together.
We have taken stories for entertainment, (and they are, because they cut out the boring parts, and take us straight to the essential drama, which brings us happiness,) but they are far more than just the little box we have put them in; It seems to me that there is a basic connection between story, drama, and contact with the basic forces of Life. (Hopefully I will not fall too far out of social grace by speaking in the tongue of EvolutionarySpirituality.)
If we are to stitch efforts together into something larger, we need to live, understand, and wield Story.
Stories unite without force.
Anybody can deny a story. In fact, it’s even easier than denying an argument. You just say, “There’s something I don’t like about this story, and I’m not going to participate.” And that is perfectly fine! We’re not interested in forceful unions.
But if sympathetic people would benefit from a union, a story is the thing to do it. People can make a choice, consciously or consciously, to participate in the linking story.
Stories unite without force, and they respect the twin principles of hierarchy and autonomy, the ranked, and the egalitarian.
There is perpetual struggle within progressive organizations, between the impulse to economize on people’s power, skills, intelligence, money, time, (resources,) and the egalitarian impulse, fairness, equality, sharing, (humanity.)
But one of the neat things about a mobilizing story, is that it can talk to everyone. Whether an individual or a group (AreGroupsReal,) whether powerful or weak, whether deeply involved, or of only slight interest – there are many many roles in a story, and each person or group of people can play a part in it.
Projects have a membrane, but stories can reach even past the membrane.
Stories are powerful organizers.
Stories weave fact & fiction.
The idea here is to harness that.
Take a story. Now find overlap with reality. Report on that.
This technique is common in the futurist literature. Often times, they have footnotes that say, “You can see this line of thought being developed over here,” or work in history into the story, history reaching to today. 1
It’s also common in cause-based news reporting. SlashDot reports on things that are “in line with the cause.” So does Fox News. So does CNN.
The idea here is something a little more explicit, though. “Here’s a story that we’re sympathetic to,” a press site says, “…and here’s news that meets that story.” There’s a sort of MetaPhysics effect, where the action of tracking the story rewards the story, and makes it more likely that the story can manifest.
And it works in reverse: To make a greater effort to ground our stories in the present. Name specific people, name specific works, name specific projects, name specific events, and so on. Ground it in the real. (I don’t know if there are legal issues here, though; I know many books have disclaimers specifically saying, “This is just entertainment, a sheer spasm of the mind written to induce pleasure; This isn’t based on anything even remotely real, …” …even though in many cases, it obviously is!)
TomAtlee? calls this the “StoryField?,” and I understand there were people using that phrase before him.
The story-field is the set of influences, causations, actions, reactions, relationships, commitments, emmanating out from a story or idea that’s active.
I think of it like a magnetic field: It both aligns bits of iron, and comes from the alignment of bits of iron.
If something happens, regardless of the reason, and it contributes to the story, then it contributes to the story field. And if the story field is strong, then things will come to align with the story.
(See also: MetaPhysics, which really needs to be renamed.)
Having a story, and telling a story, are two different things.
WikiIsDocumentBased. And yet, stories are told, not just referenced. (DocumentsVsMessages.)
This may account for the unpopularity of wiki as a genre, compared to blogs: Blogs are all about the telling. Wiki are about the referencing. Only a small percentage of communications are referenced, and nobody has time to read everything in a wiki.
Regardless: If you have a story, and you think it is good, and if you think it will lead to beautiful things, then it is absolutely essential that you tell the story to people.
…and then, see how they react. See what happens!
The story may change, through the tellings, for various reasons. (Perhaps you change it in response to the audience, perhaps the audience changes it for you, perhaps it’s misinterpreted but the misinterpretation works out better than the original story..! Anything can happen.) It is an evolutionary process. Stories can take on a life of their own!
But tell them, to those who are interested, or may be interested; Especially if they are valuable.
In ThePhenomenonOfMan?, TeilhardDeChardin wrote that the next stages of evolution were social, and in the minds of people, not genetic. This is the development of the NooSphere.
TomAtlee? developed a question, “Supposing that the next stage for the social organisms to “wake up,” to themselves, what could that possibly look like?”
After thinking about it for a while, he figured, “Well, it’d look like this,” where “this” is something like the StoryCology project.
The StoryCology project, as far as I understand it, is the idea of an OpenSource collaborative story telling.
Shared universes, multiple media, and so on.
This idea made a ton of sense to me, because it combines the rest of the ideas in this page, with one I was nurturing myself: FabricatingFreeGames, by formalizing the OrgansOfWorldBuilding and InvolvingCommunities. (FreeGames? wiki, ~2004.)
Basically, work with others to build stories together, fork stories, recombine them, tie them to the world, implement them in various media – RPGs, straight fiction stories, characters on the back of solitaire cards, Tetris themes, and so on. Organically connect it all together, and reinforce the story(ies).
If we were in a world where people were collaboratively writing their own futures, what would it look like?
We already do it today, but we do it substantially unaware. Can I imagine a world where people consciously thought about it?
The media is exploring bias in itself, and reports on that.
I don’t know if it’s true or false– it would be interesting to do a study to see, “How self-reflective has the media been, over the last 300 years?” How much visioning into the populations thinking was there in media, say, 150 years ago? I’m immediately thinking of polls, and so on.
What would an “awake” media be like? One where the media was fully cognizant of it’s role in the story telling process, and in which people were collaboratively contributing to that media?
These are interesting questions to ask, and I have a few different imaginings of how it could go. But I’m going to leave it as a question mark for now, because (A) it’s late, (B) it would take a long time to write out, anyways, and (C) it’s good to leave something for readers to contribute.
Yikes! I was hoping to write 6 articles today, but it seems that just this one has required all of my hours today..!
(sigh)
The other articles I wanted to write were: StoryMode?, PoliticalSoftware (as differentiated from SocialSoftware,) TagConstructionSite?, ElectroObjectOrientedProgramming? (and I’m now thinking specifically of MPMD architectures such as AlanKay?’s visions and the amazing Parallax Propeller,) and last but certainly not least…
…SaturdayHouse! (see: http://saturdayhouse.org/ …to see where the people are that have attracted Lion away from spending all his time on CW… But don’t fret, I’m still committed to CW!)
Mattis, Sam, I’m particularly interested in your thoughts on this, though I’m soliciting from everyone.
I think you are having an interesting line of thought and resonates with many others I am aware of.
I will try to contribute at least a few supporting and parallel points, but I can’t do so just now since I am about 30 minutes away from having to start a week long trip. I’ll place a few “reminders for myself…
Gotta run… Back in a week…
Lion, you told me about StoryCology earlier. I really like the “BackCasting?” (telling story about how we got from here to there via an imagined plausible futures narrative).
I have lately actually become interested in why stories are such effective arrangements for the human mind. I’ve come to an early conclusion that well constructed stories emulate the “Prediction/memory/modelling” system that is constantly active within the mind. An engaging story, at it’s core, includes:
These five elements drive almost all stories. This is what they teach you in fictional writing classes, of course.
I agree that story telling can really possibly increase InterCommunityCooperation, particularly in trying to help guide CollecitveAction? via examples in a story.
I’m also interested in “hacking” the basic classic structure of stories, much as when I was involved in music I was interested in “hacking” the basic structure of music and song writing. I’m interested to see if certain elements in stories can be found to have evolved beyond the elements above, or if conditions can be created to encourage the evolution.
Also, of course, I am interested in using stories to convey meaning, even using the basic classic structure.
Define external redirect: BackCasting AlanKay TomAtlee StoryField TagConstructionSite CollecitveAction FreeGames StoryMode ThePhenomenonOfMan ElectroObjectOrientedProgramming