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Stories are in, under, and behind almost everything.
Our identities, our beliefs, our friendships and families, our societies, and so on
Stories have a way of not only entertaining, but training us.
They can be incredibly powerful and beautiful devices that form and assist
our perception and understanding of the world.
However, according to twentieth century American author Kurt Vonnegut
Stories rarely tell the truth.
After studying stories from an anthropological standpoint,
examining their relationships with various cultures,
Vonnegut found that stories and myths across many cultures
share consistent similar shapes that can typically be broken down into just a few main categories
These shapes can be found by graphing the course of a protagonist's journey through a story
along an axis of good and ill fortune.
In all stories someone or something starts somewhere
Either in a good place, bad place, or neutral place.
Then things happen related to that person which are conveyed as good or bad
bringing the character up and down the axis of fortune as they traverse forward through the story.
Then, the story ends and its shape reveals itself
Vonnegut discovered that many popular stories follow common, consistent curves and spikes up and down the good/ill fortune axis
and that most end with the protagonist higher on the axis than where they started.
However, what's perhaps most interesting about Vonnegut's analysis
is his argument that these shapes, and consequently most stories, lie.
Vonnegut proposed that a more honest, realistic story shape is simply a straight line.
In a story of this shape, things still happen and characters still change
but the story maintains ambiguity around whether or not the events that occur are conclusively good or bad.
One example of a story that Vonnegut references with this straight line shape is Shakespeare's play Hamlet
A play that has and continues to be regarded by many as one of the best and most famous plays,
and perhaps literary works in general,
of all time
In which the story moves forward and things happen but none of the events are conclusively good or bad
and thus the audience is left unaware as to what is.
Which, according to Vonnegut, is the closest literary representation of real life
We are so seldom told the truth
In Hamlet - in Hamlet, Shakespeare tells us
We don't know enough about life to know
what the good news is and the bad news is
and we respond to that
One story medium that seems to inadvertently coincide with this idea
is the medium of the television series
The goal of a TV series is to keep viewers watching as long as possible.
Each episode must be an engaging enough story to keep the viewer watching until the end
but each episode must also be left unresolved enough
so the larger season-long and series-long stories continue
and the viewer is interested in watching all the following episodes.
If enough people watch all the episodes in a season
the show gets renewed for more seasons
and the cycle continues for as many seasons as possible.
In order to keep the whole thing going, none of the stories can reach a conclusion
and thus, the main characters can't find ultimate peace or freedom from the uncertainty between good and ill fortune.
Of course, most shows don't qualify as the straight line shape in Vonnegut's analysis
because most shows attempt to convey conclusively good and bad fortunes within them.
However, merely by the requirements of the medium
TV series are forced to self-impose the same sort of universal truth that Vonnegut suggests.
That neither the viewer nor the characters in a series
can ever know what anything that's so called 'good' or 'bad' in one episode
might cause in the next.
And that on a fundamental level
the changes in each episode are futile because they are a part of a never-ending cycle of change
through conflict and resolution
for the mere sake of its continuation
with no aim of final resolution or reveal of what's ultimately good or bad.
Of course, eventually a show reaches its series end
when it stops working or runs its natural course.
But the show fights its whole life to stay away from this moment.
A good TV series, a series that we don't want to end,
is only a series that we don't want to end because it can't seem to resolve itself.
In this, the format of a TV series also shows us that there is meaning,
engagement, and entertainment within the endless cycle of change
regardless of its potential universal futility.
And that perhaps change in life can exist
not for the sake of some conclusion or ultimate state of peace
but a continuation of itself for the sake of itself.
A continual adaptation and movement in life, so to keep life alive and interesting.
And perhaps the ability to be in this cycle of continued change for the sake of change
is the actual good fortune.
Renowned twentieth century mythologist, writer, and professor of literature Joseph Campbell said:
What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another.
Over and over again you are called to the realm of adventure,
you are called to new horizons.
Each time there is the same problem:
Do I dare?
And then if you do dare, the dangers are there
and the help also
and the fulfillment or the fiasco.
Stories help us see and understand various micro-moments and aspects of life.
They help us better connect and share ideas, lessons, and meaning.
They are a beautiful, essential device of conscious life.
And stories don't always have to be real or accurately representative of life
to be helpful and important.
But the truth is we appear to so often see life the same way that our favorite stories do.
It is no coincidence that most good stories share the same basic structure, ingredients, and shapes.
They're a reflection of how we often like to think
and how we often want the world to be.
However, when we assume that our entire life can fit neatly into the templates of our favorite stories,
or the Hollywood films we are so often inclined to believe and try to model our life after,
when we expect or pretend to always know what ultimately good or bad fortune is
we create an expectation in every decision, action, and event
that carries so much pressure
we are likely to fear any decision or action at all.
Perhaps the nineteenth century highly influential philosopher Søren Kierkegaard said it best when he said:
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
This unknown can be rather terrifying
but the fear is only intensified to an unnecessarily immobile state of paralysis
when we maintain the assumption
that there can ever be a perfect, right decision in anything
that will lead to an ultimately noble resolution of everything.
Rather, we should perhaps work to simply have the fortitude to make decisions at all
to forge onward through our story
trying our best to navigate with decency, effort, and honesty
Accepting whatever our decisions might cause
and whatever events might occur onto us
And understanding that so long as we are still alive
our story will go on and maintain the qualities of all stories:
an opportunity for further experience, adaptation, and triumph.
Even though we can't know what the good or bad news is within the bigger picture
Vonnegut believed that we don't need to know
to be able to look around and know when things are nice amidst it all
To recognize the happy moments in our life, however big or small
and stop and say:
If this isn't nice, I don't know what is. Music, please!
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Of course, thanks so much for watching in general, and see you next video.