Stories

 Dream a Little Dream of Me

Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you

Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you

But in your dreams whatever they be

Dream a little dream of me

Story-telling is making telling our dreams more convincing. 

The average life  expectancy in the United States is less than 80 years.  And yet the Constitution of the United States was adopted in 1789, more than 230 years ago.  Greece, Rome, China, Japan, etc. have even more ancient roots.  The point is that societies endure much longer than their members.  The way that societies last is through the stories that are told.  Warner Media’s latest slogan is  “The stuff that dreams are made of” which is a quote from the Warner Bros. 1941 film the “Maltese Falcon”.  That is perhaps a paraphrase  of a line in Shakespeare’s Tempest: “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Story-telling is very, very old, even if the person telling the story is not.

Stories are not told only to amuse ourselves. They are the way that people pass on the stories, dreams, that are their truth.  The tools of story-telling have become so powerful, in the form of virtual production, that it is often hard to distinguish reality from fiction. Dragons are not real,  but virtual story-telling can make it appear that they are.

While the best use of story-telling is to pass along truths so that society endures longer than its members, the tools of story-telling can also be used to amplify lies. Malicious gossip and falsehoods become more dangerous if they appear to be true.  As our ability to tell convincing stories becomes more powerful, society needs to remember that while there are lots of stories there is only one truth.  Stories that are used to convey “alternative” facts are an abuse of the art of story-telling and are not dreams, but nightmares.