May 14, 2020 by Annette Simmons Leave a Comment

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 8 of 8

Ray, Rosa, Ted and me sharing dinner and stories.

Ray, Rosa, Ted Hicks and me sharing dinner and stories.

We need a Magic School for Storytellers

Thirty years before J. K. Rowling created Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series imagined a magic school that taught apprentice sorcerers how to avoid abusing the power of magic. Le Guin points out early in the series that “even to light a candle is to cast a shadow.” Her point is well taken. While the vast majority of storytellers have good intentions (lighting candles), good intentions aren’t enough when practicing the powerful magic of storytelling because the potential pitfalls (shadows) are many. Master magicians (like master storytellers) need guidelines to avoid abusing their power. Here are a few guidelines borrowed from magic school:

Know your own heart and what feels meaningful to you.

Stories without heart don’t travel very far. Le Guin’s magic school refused entry to any student who could not give his true name. Certainly the magic of one who knows his own name and his own heart is more powerful than one who isn’t sure who he is or what he stands for. In Le Guin’s first Earthsea novel, a young wizard is showing off when he recklessly summons his own shadow, which then seeks to destroy him. By the end of the book the young wizard learns that he can never escape his shadow, so he merges with it to keep it safely in check. We don’t have to be perfect, but we do need to understand our weaknesses. It is impossible to art your heart into your storytelling if you don’t know your own heart.

Prove trustworthiness by demonstrating restraint.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Storytellers, like sorcerers, create illusions, transform normal people into heroes (or enemies), and mold perceptions in ways that imitate the magician’s sleight of hand. J. K. Rowling’s character Dumbledore puts it this way: “It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.” His advice applies equally to storytelling. Rowling’s version of magic school is not only interested in teaching students how to do magic, it is dedicated to teaching budding wizards how to avoid (and how difficult it is to avoid) doing magic that causes harm. The success of the Harry Potter books proves just how engaging it is to collaborate for moral reasons. In a commercial environment where storytellers are only evaluated on how quickly they stack up wins, it takes courage to exercise restraint and leave some opportunities untapped. Yet without restraint there is no evidence of trustworthiness. Only a story of what you could do, but choose not to, can prove you are trustworthy.

Tell stories that validate both sides.

There are things that beginners can’t know. It took me twenty years to realize the danger of characterizing storytelling as a tool rather than a resource. Telling a story that connects two adversarial sides and helps them to start building bridges and finding meaning in collaboration is the highest art of the storyteller. Demonizing others in order to win at all costs, silence the weak, or smooth the abuses of the powerful is much easier, but it lacks wisdom, requires very little skill, and strips your practice of meaning. Build your talent by stretching yourself to find stories in which both sides win. Help adversaries see a bigger picture so they can discover solutions that are invisible when their lens is narrow.

The famous Appalachian storyteller Ray Hicks once told me that during a particularly difficult time in his youth he stood near a cliff and the voice of the devil “come upon” him. “It was a fast, urgin’ voice” trying to persuade him to escape his troubles. He stood in the mountains on an “outcrop o’ rock” contemplating a jump as the “devil’s voice” told him to just “get it done, go on and get it over.” Ray looked me in the eye and said, “But then I heerd the Lo-r-r-rd’s voice, and it was a calm peaceful voice—not like that fast urgin devil voice—it tole me, Ra-a-ay, you gonna be just f-i-i-ine. Ain’t nothing that bad. Things is gonna turn around.” Ray then told me my job was to go out and “up the numbers” listening to that calm voice.

So from Ray, to me, to you: “We need to be listenin’ more to that calm peaceful voice ’cause that’s the voice that’s gonna get us through.” That’s the voice that has the magic in it.

Excerpt from Chapter 12, 3rd ed. of The Story Factor (2019) AUDIBLE VERSION HERE

May 12, 2020 by Annette Simmons Leave a Comment

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 6 of 8

The Moral Dilemmas of a Lion, a Scarecrow, and a Tin Man

Frank Baum’s original introduction to The Wizard of Oz, written in 1900, made it clear that he felt children no longer needed the stereotypical “old-time fairy tale” that “may now be classed as ‘historical’ in the children’s library.” Baum claimed the time had come for “newer ‘wonder tales’ in which…the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.” Still traumatized by watching the movie version as a child, I wanted to shout, “Flying monkeys!!”

In spite of Baum’s promise to throw out the bad and keep the good, he needed those scary flying monkeys and evil witches in order to deliver the promised wonderment and joy. The moral dilemmas in this story survived the transition into the movie version intact, even if Hollywood changed Dorothy’s silver slippers into ruby slippers and reinvented the good witch from a “face…covered with wrinkles, her hair…nearly white…[who]…walked rather stiffly” into glamorous Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.

Note that this hundred-year-old story has been farmed for leadership lessons for decades, including a self-published book on leadership lessons according to Toto, Dorothy’s dog. That’s because the The Wizard of Oz is a multi-moral story that illustrates paradoxical truths such as learning to appreciate home by leaving home, that what you seek externally is already inside, that courage doesn’t exist without fear, and risking self to save others can restore ones sense of self.

We seem equipped with emotions specifically designed to override extreme self-interest in favor of love and connections. If there is an evolutionary reason that humans living isolated lives suffer loneliness, then stories celebrate a wide range of feel-good solutions. Most offer blueprints that show how reaching out with love, making connections, and acts of generosity can be much more rewarding than winning as much as we can, as often as we can. The best stories teach us how to balance dueling desires for paradoxical goals like love and power rather than risk the danger of choosing only one over the other (a paradox that spreadsheets don’t reflect).

We learn how to determine whether it is time to connect or disconnect, to be firm or flexible, to tend relationships or go it alone, to use or set aside emotions, to reference past, present, or future, to exert control or invite participation. It takes the virtual reality of plots and characters to successfully toggle back and forth between technically contradictory yet complementary approaches. We find meaning not in choosing one over the other, but in embracing the paradox that we thrive by giving and receiving, by following and leading, by creating rules with exceptions that tend to relationships, and by both revealing and hiding our vulnerabilities.

Excerpt from Chapter 12, 3rd ed. of The Story Factor (2019) AUDIBLE VERSION HERE

May 11, 2020 by Annette Simmons 4 Comments

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 5 of 8

We need trust to survive and thrive.

Blueprints for Building Trust

Learning to drive was fun until I hit the mailbox. I burst into tears, blaming my dad, “You told me not to brake when turning corners!” It wasn’t my fault that he neglected to clarify I should brake before turning the corner so I could release the brakes while turning the corner. Through my face-palmed fingers I could see his wooly eyebrows lower as he stared at me from the passenger side of our 1972 V8 Dodge Charger. He had told me to turn right as we were driving through our neighborhood, and I did exactly that. I turned the steering wheel right without braking, fishtailed, hit a black mailbox, and pulled over to cry. I dreaded the upcoming apology and wondered how much money it would cost me to fix it. I buried my face in my hands and listened as my father got out of the car and his steps crunch, crunch, crunched in the gravel as he walked back to inspect the damage. After a long pause, he shouted, “Get out of the car and come look at this!” I obeyed reluctantly and was confused to see the black mailbox upright and undamaged but slightly swaying back and forth. On closer inspection the mailbox post was mounted on an industrial spring secured in concrete. Apparently I was not the first driver to cut that particular corner too fast and too close.

Telling stories is at least as powerful and dangerous as driving a car. Getting there fast is not always the best tactic. We hit mailboxes along the way. Making mistakes and learning from the mistakes of others is the very essence of all mastery, particularly storytelling. The idea that we might be reengineering evolution’s primary method for moderating greed makes it that much more important to catch bad habits before someone gets hurt. Not all of the mailboxes we hit can bounce back.

For centuries, parents have used stories to teach fledgling humans how to “drive” without hurting others. Stories offer blueprints for interpreting the world, maintaining relationships, and controlling impulses. Not just so the kids don’t burn the house down, but, according to evolutionary psychology, so kids learn the downside of acting like a raging narcissist without empathy, who can see no value in collaborative efforts and no reason to sacrifice for the collective good. Stories train little humans how to balance what to give and take by demonstrating the real-life consequences of immoral actions over time.

Aesop’s fables still circulate after more than 2,500 years because these stories are endlessly relevant and therefore endlessly meaningful and entertaining. Aesop employed animal characters like the wolf to teach moral lessons. Aesop gave us metaphorical scenes that warn us not to trust wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing; to respect a wolf’s warning to balance the prospects of a full belly against wearing the collar of a domesticated dog; and to remind ourselves of the danger of false alarms, with a story about a little boy who cried wolf once too often. When we retell these stories designed to entertain as well as model vital cultural habits, we preserve centuries of lessons derived from human survival experiences.

Evolutionary psychologists now suggest that storytelling might have developed as a result of natural selection. Humans who collaborate in groups consistently survive and thrive better than isolated humans unprotected by a group. Stories that bend human behavior toward collaboration with our neighbors protect us from the danger of letting Rome burn while we argue over who started the fire.

If our bodies only provided a chemical high for individual wins, we’d make far fewer sacrifices for the common good. We might hoard resources and fail to build the kind of infrastructure vital to human progress. On the other hand, if we only got our highs from bonding, we might not venture out to pursue new paths of progress. Only stories can preserve the paradox that we must seek both. In order for humans to survive and thrive, we need stories that don’t oversimplify the difficulties of building both good fences and good relationships.

Because any theory about evolution is impossible to prove outright, we are left to examine our own personal experiences for evidence that validates the idea that we need cultural stories to promote the kind of morals that will sustain collective survival. You already know how doing the right thing usually requires some sacrifice of time, money, or personal goals for the greater good. To keep us making these sacrifices we need vivid storytelling that sustains the promise that doing the right thing is a cost well worth the investment. It’s no accident that our ancestors learned to ritualize sacrifices as a path to renewal. Themes of reincarnation, resurrection, and phoenixes who emerge from the fires of destruction interpret pain and loss as a sacred path to transcendent illumination—not a reason to pick up all your toys and leave or numb the pain with a purchase. Stories that remind us of our shared dependence cultivate the emotional fortitude required to pay the high price of preserving collective survival. These are the stories that will enable us to address climate change.

Excerpt from Chapter 12, 3rd ed. of The Story Factor (2019) AUDIBLE VERSION HERE

May 8, 2020 by Annette Simmons Leave a Comment

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – Part 4 of 8

“Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.”

Brand Stories: Trust Based on Trustworthy Behaviors

Nike has employed corporate storytellers since the 1990s. Their decision to illustrate the “Just Do It” attitude with ads that support NFL star Colin Kaepernick’s decision to call attention to police brutality and racial injustice by kneeling during the National Anthem is an excellent example of supporting a moral story to correlate meaningful goals with commercial goals. While there was a temporary dip in Nike stock price, the stock price soared to new highs within a week. Sales showed an immediate increase in 2018 post Labor Day sales (31 percent) compared with the same time period in 2017 (17 percent). Those who might discredit Nike’s moral stories by pointing out that the company’s record is not pristine ignore the reality that no one, no institution, and no company is morally pristine.

We have to start where we are. That’s why we need stories that teach us how to face and forgive imperfections so second chances keep us moving toward virtues like justice. Gillette’s decision to call out toxic masculinity in a two-minute advertisement illustrating their tagline “The Best A Man Can Get” is yet another example of adding virtues to a product’s value proposition to increase trust and awareness. Public uproar not only increased awareness, it may have increased the trust that women who buy razors for men feel toward Gillette. Budweiser’s 2019 Super Bowl ad promoting wind energy just adds to the evidence that stories that illustrate moral backbone engage listeners.

Excerpt from Chapter 12, 3rd ed. of The Story Factor (2019) AUDIBLE VERSION HERE

May 7, 2020 by Annette Simmons 2 Comments

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 3 of 8

Trust is the story of not doing what you could get away with, because you care about someone other than yourself.

Trustworthiness as Competitive Advantage

If morals need stories to thrive, it might also be true that stories need morals to thrive. Technically the stories you tell do not require moral intentions. Yet practical experience teaches us that few of the stories we cherish could possibly be classified as amoral. A story may not portray your preferred morals, but all stories, at least the interesting ones, embed moral lessons by correlating certain behaviors with consequences. It is hard to tell stories that reward faith in positive consequences like freedom, justice, and trust without exposing the truth that economic reasoning will never be equipped to achieve these kinds of subjective goals.

Few, if any, Hollywood blockbusters could demand our attention without portraying some kind of moral conflict between good and evil. Marvel’s 2018 movie Black Panther reinforces a similar moral lesson to the one Seuss teaches in The Cat in the Hat when the king decides to risk the danger of revealing his kingdom’s extravagant resources in order to clean up global messes. Disaster movies present one moral dilemma after another. Even the stories about characters who don’t know how to clean up their own messes (Thank you, Quentin Tarantino) deliver a moral lesson about the consequences of leaving messes for others.

Brian Boyd makes a strong case that storytelling is a survival mechanism in his book On the Origin of Stories, stating that humans have a “natural appetite” for information, “especially for pattern, and information that falls into meaningful arrays from which we can make rich inferences.” Stories pass along behavioral information that is just as important to our survival as the information passed along in our DNA.

Stories that stress mutual success might be more important now than they ever have been. The suicide rate for Americans is up 30 percent since 2000. Globally, suicide rates are up 60 percent over the past fifty years. According to the most recent Edelman Trust Barometer, the United States shows a “shattering loss of trust” that is the “steepest most dramatic decline in trust ever measured since the barometer began in 2000.” Over two thirds of the markets measured by Edelman Trust Barometer indicate trust levels below 50 percent.

There has to be a reason that “biology turns loneliness into a disease,” according to UCLA professor Steve Cole, who studies the effects of loneliness at the molecular level. The physical costs of isolation for adults is said to be a 25 percent increase in mortality that translates to AARP’s estimate of $6.7 billion annually in extra Medicare expenditures. “Me first” stories aren’t inherently bad, but a tsunami of “me first” stories leads to an erosion of trust when “me first” stories begin to replace “all for one, one for all” stories.

Social media systems designed to siphon off social trust to achieve short-term economic goals surely diminish the trust left over to achieve noneconomic goals, like sustaining faith in our fellow humans. The decision to trust corporate platforms with the care and maintenance of our social connections have revealed the dangers of this misplaced trust. We don’t trust friends who tell our secrets, and yet we temporarily trusted commercial interests that not only told but sold our secrets. Trust in Facebook dropped from 79 percent to 27 percent after customers learned the social platform ignored reports that Cambridge Analytica did not observe consent requirements before harvesting and exploiting the personal data of millions so they could pursue questionable political agendas using coercive stories.

It is hard for us to call out this kind of duplicity when we are overwhelmed with stories that drive us to seek speed rather than slow down long enough to reflect. When a corporation only rewards fast, measurable returns, it unintentionally marginalizes employees’ moral concerns and trains employees to “value growth above trust.” Like billionaire CEO Marc Benioff of Salesforce says, “A company like ours can’t be successful in an unsuccessful economy or in an unsuccessful environment or where the school system doesn’t work.” Benioff blends service work into the company culture so real-life experiences of showing and earning trust ensure employees are better equipped to identify the times when growth means losing trust. It’s a difficult choice to make, but almost always better in the long run to preserve trust by avoiding the option of exploiting “opportunities” that sacrifice trust you will need later on.

Excerpt from Chapter 12, 3rd ed. of The Story Factor (2019) AUDIBLE VERSION HERE

Annette Simmons

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 8 of 8

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 6 of 8

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 5 of 8

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – Part 4 of 8

Stories with a Moral Blueprint – part 3 of 8

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