Storytelling

In  oral tradition cultures, where literacy is minimal but articulate expression is ubiquitous, it is said when an old man dies it is as if one is burning a library.  Perhaps to paradoxically modernize the expression, when an old man dies in an oral tradition culture, it is as if one is destroying the internet.  Older men are often the storytellers of such cultures and thereby the harbingers of vast accumulations of knowledge, wisdom, traditions and particular expressions of such.  Stories are gripping and captivate even the simplest minds while rejuvenating the interest of the most learned ones.  That is why well-written books (or, I suppose, now well-produced movies, more often) command the attention of a wide scope of demographics, young and old alike.  Everyone loves a good story:  one with a hero, a villain, background context, conflict, tension, progression of character, rising action, climax, and resolution.  Stories have shaped history, especially stories ‘based on a true story’, or even more, just simply true stories.  One may feel incompetent to contemplate Kant or Rousseau or Locke or Aristotle but one can be inundated into the realm of philosophy unaware with a story as simple as the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’.  One may not have explored the ethics of political structures in depth but can be inadvertently immersed in them alongside the ‘Little Red Hen’ or ‘Animal Farm’.  One may have little comprehension of the natural sciences or principles of logic and deduction or psychological theory but one can be a mere three years of age and enjoy not just the lurid but even the auspiciously minute details of ‘The Great Mouse Detective’.  One need not have a degree in science or philosophy or literature to be moved by stories and see the immanent implications and corollaries to life. It has occurred to me that great stories often involve the anthropomorphization of animal characters, endowed with human sentiment, consciousness and soul.  Perhaps that is why the greatest storyteller of all time, though he called these snippets of stories parables, so often spoke of sheep and goats, lions and lambs, and horses and dragons.