Chapter  3

After the transformation the now "imaginative" modern humans lived on from generation to generation gradually creating more complex cultures as they progressed. Using their highly sophisticated vocal apparatus together with their powerful human imagination allowed the modern humans to create many complex vocal sounds that they could associate with things and actions. Everything they encountered in everyday life, even the mysterious things they encountered but did not understand. They began to use their verbal communication capabilities to invent more and more picture (nouns) and action (verbs) words, languages. They began to think verbally as well as pictorally, a major step in human progress. No other animal has this power.

They connected the vocal sounds they invented into a series of sounds that became crude sentences. This new verbal ability allowed them to convey more complex and sophisticated ideas to one another. Eventually, the sentences became a language, the language of a particular family or tribe. There are thousands of different languages in the world today.

Some imaginative people in the tribe began using the words to tell stories of events that happened to them, perhaps on a hunt or some other incident. Their powerful imagination allowed them to journey into the magical, supernatual world of Gods, angels, devils, faeries, witches, etc. They discovered that if they used their imagination they could embellish their stories with fanciful fabrications. By telling their stories they could influence people to do their bidding, either good or bad. They could dominate other people just by their storytelling. These people have evolved into our storytellers, mankind's most influential and powerful people.

As languages became more sophisticated and complex, people's imagination began to aggrandize. Its hard to imagine imagining without having a language to use. Our imagination works best when it is stimulated by challenges - adversity, exigencies, beauty, new ideas, etc. Its power multiplies when it interacts with other “Minds” (The MIND of mankind came into existence). The power of our imagination depends upon the sophistication of the society we live in. The more words we have at our disposal the better our imagination will work.

Words are mental pictures we have learned to associate in our imagination with specific things and ideas, either by vocal sounds, writing, or signs (hand). They are one of mankind’s most vital tools. (Noah Webster standardized our American language by spending twenty five years working on his “Dictionary of the English Language” which he published in 1828.)

Some stories became myths. Superstitions, rituals and traditions were created. The storytellers told of great encounters they had with animals and other tribes whether it was true or imaginary. The early artists tried to tell their stories by painting pictures on the cave walls or rocks. They told of encounters with their ancestors, of imaginary adventures. Anything they did not understand they rationalized with a fabricated story. Eventually gods were created in the stories to explain various phenomena (thunder and lightning, etc.) that they did not understand or was difficult to explain. (Man always has that feeling of a mysterious unknown in the back of his mind.)

These stories were passed on from generation to generation, embellished and changed somewhat. They became the great myths of the tribes. The storytellers created myths, superstitions, rituals, morals, traditions, rules, codes, laws, religions, from things that they experienced and imagined in their mind. Some storytellers, in order to make a deep impression on their audience, even claimed to have talked with God. Eventually, many thousands of years after the transformation, writing was finally invented. These stories began to be recorded for posterity. They became the "accepted" truths.

The Hebrew tribes are a good example of this phenomena. For hundreds of years their stories, traditions etc. were passed from generation to generation and finally collected and written down in the bible as the word of God. Later the followers of Jesus Christ added their own stories as the New Testament. These were also accepted as the word of God by the Christians but not by the Jews.

Homer's great epics are another example of the tenacity of storytelling and the power of the human memory. Homer created his stories around 1200 BC, long before the Greeks developed a credible, lasting, alphabet. His works were then passed vocally from generation to generation for hundreds of chaotic years by a sect of priests called the Homerides of Chios.

They were devoted to preserving, purifying and reciting these stories. They had to completely rely on their memory to accurately convey these great works through the ages. The stories were finally written down around 700 BC. They became the textbooks in the schools of Greece and the cornerstone of western literature.

Great storytellers such as Jesus, Confucius, Moses, Mohammed, Gautama Buddha and the Hindus' of ancient times created the world's great religious philosophies and moral codes that are followed by billions of people today. Moses and Mohammed claimed to get their stories directly from God. Jesus said he was the son of God. Confusius was more interested in explaining everyday life rather then spiritual life and the mystery of creation. These philosophies, when they are not corrupted by the myths of other storytellers, have a powerful influence on humanity.

The basis of Jesus Christ's story is the simple message that he commanded mankind to obey and that is - “To love God with our whole heart and love other people as we love ourselves” (to respect each other). In order to be a follower of Christ a person must first of all, obey this commandment. There are millions of Catholics and Protestants in this world who claim to be Christians, but do not obey his message so are not, and there are millions of people in the world that do not claim to be Christians but are.

Only the people who actually practice Christ's simple philosophy are true “Christians” whether they are baptized or not. A true Christian is not necessarily a member of a religion, it is a philosophy of life. If it gets us into heaven, that is great, if it does not it is still a good philosophy for mankind to live by.

The Christian religions have done a good job of passing Christ's message down through the ages. They have however, taken his simple message and embellished it with other myths and rituals to complete the story of Christianity. Its message can be a powerful, positive influence on mankind.

In contrast to this positive influence, at the extreme other end of the spectrum, was Germany's famous storyteller, Adolph Hitler. Hitler is a good example of a creative imagination doing its worst for mankind. (The human imagination can create stories that promote tremendous evil just as well as it can create stories that promote tremendous good.)

By writing his book, giving hundreds of stirring speeches, staging tremendous awe inspiring rallies, and telling many stories he convinced the German people to follow him. All of these things put together were Hitler's “story”. His message expounded hope for the German people (they had just lost a war and were in the midst of deep economic strife), the expansion of German “living space”, the superiority of the Aryan race and racial hatred of their neighbors (the cleansing of Germany).

His stories provoked deep human emotions that created tremendous hate and anger against his potential victims. These stories were not original with Hitler, they had been circulating throughout Germany for many years. Hitler was merely the catalyst that brought everything together. This along with brutal suppression of any opposing ideas by his private militia, had an extreme influence on the German people.

He convinced them he was their leader (Fuhrer) whom they should follow no matter what the consequences. The people unfortunately eagerly accepted these stories. This eventually led to the terrible atrocities, suffering, death and destruction of World War II.

Hitler loved war, it gave his aimless life a purpose. He had a great time serving as a corporal in the German army during World War One. He received a couple of medals for bravery and was slightly wounded. Without Hitler's extreme determination and remarkable storytelling ability the European segment of this war would not have occurred. With his stories and charisma he became Germany's tribal leader (the Genghis Khan of Germany). He was a ruthless extreme idealist (anything he did not feel was right for himself or Germany he would get rid of or “cleanse” no matter how much suffering it caused).

He was one of the prime storytellers of the twentieth century and is a good example of the immense power that storytelling wields (along with the total intolerance of any opposing ideas). Hitler was well aware of the power of storytelling, since the very first thing he did when he came to power was burn the books of the other storytellers. He made sure his was the only story being told in Germany. It is ironic that some of the greatest storytellers of all time (the Jews) were prime victims of this evil storyteller.

Although Hitler was successful in completely influencing and dominating the German people in the 1930's and early forties, the basis for his success was aided greatly by another storyteller, German philosopher Georg W.F. Hegal who in the early 1800's expounded the virtues of the “absolute mind”. This philosophy helped lead to the acceptance, by the German people, of the absolute power of a single mind, Hitler.

Democracy and freedom were held in very low esteem in Hitler’s Germany. At about the same time that Hegal was creating his philosophy (that led to the rise of Hitler), our country’s storytellers; Jefferson, Paine, Henry, Adams and their contemporaries, were creating our country's democratic philosophy. Later, Karl Marx created his communist philosophy. Which philosophy would become dominant was determined in the battles of World War Two and with the communist philosophy, in the "cold war".

President Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and General Charles DeGaulle were the storytellers who prevailed in this era. The stories of each of these leaders offered mainly hope to their people and led the way to our post war prosperity. I think Stalin was more of a ruthless power grabber, rather then a storyteller. Lenin and Marx were the storytellers who influenced the people in Russia. Benito Mussolini and Mao Tse-tung were other storytellers whose stories led to tremendous grief for the people of their respective countries and other countries. Mussolini was Hitler's mentor, he followed Mussolini's fascists ideas to gain his power over the German people.

Another example of the immense power of storytelling was when Pope Urban 11 gave his speech in France in 1095, appealing for volunteers to stop the desecration of sacred places in the Holy Land. The response was enthusiastically accepted by the people in Europe and set the stage for the Crusades of the Middle Ages. This story resulted in hundreds of years of battles between the European Christians and the Muslims. (They had been fighting long before the crusades began.) There where probably many stories circulating around Europe that led to the Pope's appeal but his story is the one that got everything moving.

In the New World, thousands of years ago, an ancient storyteller somewhere in central or South America told the story to the effect, that in order to appease their gods and keep them happy they would have to sacrifice people by cutting their hearts out and spilling their blood. This grim story unfortunately was accepted and spread throughout the area. As a result of this story, millions of innocent people were murdered in these regions for hundreds of years. There are countless other examples of storytelling that have had a profound effect on mankind throughout its history.

All families, tribes and societies need resolute storytellers to constantly encourage, inspire and guide their people in a positive moral manner. Storytelling, both positive and negative, is one of the most powerful of all human capabilities. It is surely one of the devil's most valuable tools. (Yes, there really is a devil, but it exists only in the Mind of Mankind.) Storytelling is used in every conceivable way to influence and dominate people.

It is easy to spot the evil storytellers on television and in the other media today spinning (or singing) their tales of hate. People who agitate hatred and anger against other people, who falsely accuse their neighbors of wrong doing, or start false rumors are examples of evil storytellers. The young girls who instigated the infamous witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts a couple of hundred years ago by accusing their neighbors of witchcraft are good examples of the harm this type of storytelling can cause, especially when some foolish people take the accusers seriously. It still goes on today, falsely accusing people, wrecking their lives.

A large corporation just recently decided to investigate its employees for drug abuse. They hired a detective agency to do the investigation. The agency after investigating, accused a number of the employees of drug abuse without any proof other then coercion and intimidation. The corporation promptly fired these people ruining their reputations and their livelihood. There are countless other cases of evil storytellers in the news everyday, some deal with large issues, some with small. If the world finally does come to a disastrous end or simply decays into a place of no-morality chaos, I am sure there will be storytellers inciting the events.

Recently, our country has experienced several disastrous incidents that are a direct result of evil storytellers spinning their tales. One of these was the bombing of the Trade Towers in New York, another was the disastrous explosion in Oklahoma City. Both of these events were incited by evil storytellers preying upon the emotions of their listeners.

The people who carried them out were merely their pawns. Storytelling is an extremely powerful human ability. It is directly linked, through our imagination, with our deepest human emotions. It gives storytellers the power to enter into peoples’ minds and create havoc. The earlier nonimaginative hominids were not capable of being understanding this power.

For thousands of years following mankind's transformation people had only the spoken word to rely on for their verbal communication. Ancient prehistoric drawings and paintings of animals, people and symbols were also early forms of communicating. This type of communicating evolved into pictography and later ideography such as the Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Finally around five thousand years ago the Sumerian tribes in southern Mesopotamia developed the first primitive phonetic (sound) writing called cuneiform. It marked the end of prehistory and the beginning of recorded history. The idea of placing marks on a clay tablet that could be associated with specific ideas was a giant imaginative step in mankind's intellectual progress.

Words, whether they are vocal sounds or marks on a paper convey ideas (mental pictures) to our mind. They are made possible by our ability to imagine. If we hear words or see them written in a foreign language that we have not learned to associate with things or ideas, they mean nothing to us. They simply do not generate any mental images for us. Some of the more intelligent animals have a very limited ability to “learn” vocal sounds but not writing. Writing has given mankind a much greater ability to communicate more accurately and preserve the stories and ideas of the previous generations.

The joy of creating stories, singing ballads, reading, or listening to these stories is also one of the great pleasures of being human. When we read or listen to a story we instantly form mental images of the characters and actions in our mind. We "see" with our mind. We can learn the intimate thoughts of the great minds of the past by reading their stories. We can travel in our imagination anywhere the story takes us no matter where or when. We can go back in time and travel down the Mississippi river with Huck Finn or go into the future, travel out into space to another galaxy.

It makes no difference, as long as we have an imagination we can go to these places. When listening to stories on the radio, before television became popular, each listener had to visualize their own private mental pictures of the characters and locale. We were usually very surprised when we did finally see a picture of the real person who portrayed the character in the story and it did not match our mental picture at all. Such was the magic of radio.

The playwright and movie maker go a step further in their storytelling. They physically set up the scenes, props and assign actors to play the part of the characters. Presenting drama plays is an ancient form of storytelling that the Greeks and Chinese developed long ago. It is a natural outgrowth of storytelling. Although with the play, the audience could actually see the characters and actions of the story, much was left to the imagination as far as the scenery was concerned.

Now a days there is much more elaborate movable scenery to support the story and less imagination is needed to enjoy the play. With the advent of the motion pictures everything is becoming more and more realistic. The present state-of-art technology of computer generated special effects used in motion pictures are so realistic that no matter what situation is portrayed little imagination is needed. With the development of “Virtual Reality” the audience will be going right “into” the scenes in the near future. Someday we may be able to “enter” a Jurassic type park and walk among the dinosaurs in a virtual reality world.

Storytelling has grown immensely in its scope and power from its simple beginning of telling stories over the camp fire. It now encompasses every facet of human endeavor. Nearly everyone has a story to tell. We are constantly being bombarded by stories both good and bad, by our family, friends and the media. Companies spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, trying to get their stories across to us, trying to influence us to purchase their products.

Beer advertisements, for example, have equated partying and having a good time with drinking beer for so long that it now just seems the normal thing to do. Political leaders try to influence us with their stories. On television, religious leaders are constantly telling their stories. In large areas of the world today religious leaders completely dominate the lives of whole populations through their mythical stories.

Satellite broadcasting of radio and television, newspapers, magazines, and now the computer’s Internet are immensely powerful storytelling mediums that spread both positive and negative stories into every household across the world for better or for worse. The editors have tremendous power to disseminate the stories they want made known and to ignore the ones they don’t (not so much power over the Internet, yet). Violence is especially acceptable in the movies, viewers are constantly being exposed to people being killed and battered as realistically as possible.

Their stories generally start out by expounding the bad guy's evil ways, getting the audience to hate the bad guys. Hate and fear are powerful emotions when they surge through our bodies and are used frequently by the storytellers. (This is what sells the tickets and starts wars). Finally at the end of the picture the bad guy is dispatched as realistically as possible with bullets ripping through his body, splattering onto the walls.

Everybody feels good about this and goes home. This scenario may be OK for movies, depending upon who the storyteller makes as the bad guys. When the movies or stories start making various groups of people the bad guys, we are getting into a dangerous area. The hate and anger emotions produced by the storytellers may be more dangerous then the actual violence of the stories. Some “rappers” are continually expounding their hate and anger stories to our young people. The influence of these stories is beginning to be felt around the country.

In real life, the government's storytellers tell stories (propaganda) to arouse the anger in their citizens when they are preparing to go to war against other countries. I witnessed this in our country during World War Two when the Germans and Japanese were the bad guys (they really were). After the war the stories changed from these countries to making the communists out to be the bad guys. At the present time we are sort of floundering looking for some new potential bad guys.

The news media has been a powerful storytelling influence on people since the invention of the printing press. With the invention of radio, television and the video camera its power has increased immensely by graphically reporting their stories on television over and over and getting everybody all upset. The recent situations in Somalia and Los Angles are two examples. As I write this, they have succeeded in getting us more deeply involved in the Yugoslavia dilemma.

It is an extremely dangerous situation that could escalate into a catastrophe. We like to forget about similar situations in our past, when we acted much like the Serbs toward the Indians. It is just another messy case of men determining who is going to dominate in these territories. This is the way mankind determines these things. It has been going on for forty thousand years and will probably continue until someone miscalculates and ends up destroying civilization as we know it.

Its getting harder and harder for men to carry on all their brutality with the whole world looking over their shoulder through a video camera. In this country, if we are going to continue to let this constant brutality concern us and exert our military influence on other countries, we will continue to fill many body bags with the bodies of our young men. I hope we learned a lesson in Vietnam. We should be extremely careful of committing ourselves in foreign squabbles.

Some European countries were thinking seriously of interfering in our Civil War (before the Battle of Antietam Creek - "Sharpesburg"). If they had done so, our country may not have survived intact. But then again, if France had not come to our aid in our Revolutionary War we may not have had a country in the first place. It all boils down to who is going to dominate who.

In addition to violence, the movie and television storytellers relate their stories over and over to the effect, that the “normal” thing to do, if people of the opposite sex are attracted to each other (are in “love”), is to have sex as soon as possible. This has helped change the morals of our young ladies in a couple of generations so much that they now think they are abnormal if they resist having sex until they are married. Hollywood, a city whose primary business is storytelling, has made having sex the socially acceptable thing to do.

Adultery is now more or less accepted as normal (depending upon who is doing it). As the moral ethics code of the motion picture storytellers has deteriorated in the last thirty years, the birthrate of single mothers has risen in direct proportion. Whether we realize it or not, all these stories are exerting a powerful influence on our young people. It is leading to a gradual moral decay in our country.

Some of our inner cities are like war zones. Our young people are killing each other and the young single girls are having unwanted babies in alarming numbers. Families are failing to nurture and guide their young children in a positive direction. (Family values were held up to ridicule by the news media during the last presidential election). Dangerous sexual related diseases are on the increase.

We may not have a Hitler ranting and raving but our ubiquitous storytellers are just as effectively spreading their powerful influence into every nook and cranny across the country (and alot of it is not good). A large percentage of our young people are able to accept or reject these messages on their merit but many are not and if the stories are repeated enough (and are not opposed by positive storytellers) they are eventually excepted as normal behavior.

Our storytellers; family, peers, friends, church leaders, teachers, movie producers, authors, politicians, philosophers, historians, comedians, civic leaders, etc., need to accentuate the positive. They have the power to guide, motivate, inspire and influence our present and future citizens. Right now thousands of our young people are killing each other in certain sections of our cites. They are being influenced by street gang leaders, etc. to carry out these crimes. Their energy needs to be redirected by positive storytellers to motivating them to follow a positive lifestyle.

Storytellers, through their stories, can enter into our imagination and interact with our deepest human emotions. They can inspire us to strive for greatness or motivate us to do senseless evil. They can make us happy, angry or sad. They can make us laugh or cry. Storytelling and human emotion are closely linked, together, from the time of infancy, they strongly influence every aspect of our life. They began with mankind's Special Gift of imagination.

Storytelling includes all types of family and tribal gossip, religious and secular teaching, philosophy, prose, poetry, history, religious beliefs, myths, traditions, propaganda, scientific writings, speeches, news chronicles, periodicals, advertising, plays, movies, television stories, songs, and unfortunately lying. It is one of the most powerful of all human capabilities. Thinking verbally started with people’s ability to create words that they can associate, in their imagination, with some thing or action. Its power can be awesome.

Jules Vernes, the great storyteller of the 19th century, was a master of looking into the future with uncanny accuracy. His unpublished manuscript found by his great, great grandson in an old “empty” family safe, accurately described Paris, as Jules Vernes imagined it would be in 1960. At the time, his editor found it so depressing he refused to publish it.

Go to Chapter 4

Go to Contents