food for the soul

Food for the soul

Humans have a very important ability. It may be taken as an indication for its high significance, that it often suffers from a bad reputation. I mean our unabating interest in stories. This is more than curiosity. It is our desire to hear what happened to our fellow men and to take part in such narratives by imagining, how we would have felt in a similar situation.

As soon as we are able to understand a basic vocabulary of simple words, we listen with fascination to our first fairy tales. Hopefully, these tales are still directed personally from mouth to ear, usually involving primary relatives as mother, father, or grandma. In our technical days, this situation changes rather early in life.Tale-telling is taken over more and more by electronic devices as TV sets and personal computers.

By that, we listen presently each day to several stories, and almost none of them is told personally to us. Last sunday I saw a movie, fortunately together with 30 other people, so we could hear each other laugh for the same reasons. This story was of an exquisite quality (Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino). Later in the evening, I saw another film on TV, alone; this time, the quality was more questionable; I felt confused and irritated. I was sorry, that I had no occasion to talk about it.

How many stories can we take? Is there a limit? The older I get, the less I enjoy superficial distraction. I need a credible plot. Apparently, after some decades of training you get more sensitive to inplausibilities and contradictions. I still have this feeling of hunger for a meaningful story; but I also start to sense aversion against stories that fail to provide any meaning; or, even worse so: that try to provide something that is meant to feel like a meaning, but fails to do so because of confusion resulting from technical incababilities or simple errors.

We still need stories, and we might need them today more so than ever before. Unfortunately, the majority of us expose themselves inconsiderately to tons of worthless stories day by day. Nobody seems to care about that. Shouldn't we? If story-telling is such a fundamental human faculty, why don't we foster this faculty with more consideration? Don't we see the possible consequences?

On one side, we hold in high esteem the freedom of each single person, allowing her/him to see whatever she/he wants to see. On the other, we allow (almost) everything to be shown. Is this the "free market" of media? We try to keep foodstuff with harmful ingredients out of the market. Stories are food for the soul. We should be more considerate, what kind of stories we make available to the public.

The main problem is the mode of distribution and consumption of media. All media have their anthropological roots in personal communication between 2 or more humans present at the same time at the same place. Already the invention of writing landed a first blow to this basic concept. With the help of writing, I can communicate something to someone, without having to look into that person's eyes.

For many sorts of contents this discrepancy is irrelevant. E.g., it is much more efficient to communicate the chemical synthesis of a new compound to the scientific community in written form, than by oral communication to each single interested individual. On the other hand, fostering altruism by keeping to consensually accepted reciprocal rules needs continued social awareness.

This awareness can only be developed in a social context, that means: as in the old days, in the physical presence of several humans at the same time at the same place, seeing each other, hearing each other, noticing immediately all feedback my own actual behavior might induce. Only in such a (sometimes difficult) context, something like an "educated behavior" might evolve.

Maybe we could also learn at least a few lessons simply by watching from a distance, how others deal with each other, without a chance to take part. Unfortunately, the majority of present day media supply us with examples, how humans should NOT deal with each other...