The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down

by Jonathan Gottschall

Overview

Storytelling, a tradition that built human civilization, may soon destroy it

Humans are storytelling animals. Stories are what make our societies possible. Countless books celebrate their virtues. But Jonathan Gottschall, an expert on the science of stories, argues that there is a dark side to storytelling we can no longer ignore. Storytelling, the very tradition that built human civilization, may be the thing that destroys it.

In The Story Paradox, Gottschall explores how a broad consortium of psychologists, communications specialists, neuroscientists, and literary quants are using the scientific method to study how stories affect our brains. The results challenge the idea that storytelling is an obvious force for good in human life. Yes, storytelling can bind groups together, but it is also the main force dragging people apart. And it’s the best method we’ve ever devised for manipulating each other by circumventing rational thought. Behind all civilization’s greatest ills—environmental destruction, runaway demagogues, warfare—you will always find the same master factor: a mind-disordering story.

Gottschall argues that societies succeed or fail depending on how they manage these tensions. And it has only become harder, as new technologies that amplify the effects of disinformation campaigns, conspiracy theories, and fake news make separating fact from fiction nearly impossible.

With clarity and conviction, Gottschall reveals why our biggest asset has become our greatest threat, and what, if anything, can be done. It is a call to stop asking, “How we can change the world through stories?” and start asking, “How can we save the world from stories?” 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541645967
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/23/2021
Pages:	272
Sales rank:	369,158
Product dimensions:	6.60(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Gottschall is a distinguished research fellow in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. He is the author of The Storytelling Animal, a New York Times Editor's Choice and finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, and The Professor in the Cage, one of the Boston Globe's Best Books of the year. He has written for or been covered in the New York Times, Scientific American, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and The Millions. Gottschall has also appeared on popular podcasts like Star Talk, The Joe Rogan Experience, and Radiolab. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 "The Storyteller Rules the World" 17

2 The Dark Arts of Storytelling 41

3 The Great War for Storyland 71

4 The Universal Grammar 97

5 Things Fall Apart 123

6 The End of Reality 149

Conclusion: A Call to Adventure 185

Acknowledgments 195

References 197

Notes 229

Index 241

Editorial Reviews

11/01/2021

Gottschall recycles many of his previous claims about the power and danger of narratives in this tedious and self-contradictory sequel to The Storytelling Animal. Contending that “all narrative is reductionist” and that storytelling is humanity’s “essential poison,” Gottschall cherry-picks dozens of examples to build his case, noting, for instance, that Plato’s Republic “condemned storytellers as professional liars who got the body politic drunk on emotion,” and that Tommy Wiseau’s notoriously bad 2003 movie, The Room, fails to convey its misogynistic message because it doesn’t generate “narrative transportation.” In Gottschall’s view, historical storytelling “frequently amounts to a kind of revenge fantasy, where the malefactors of our past can be resurrected, tried, and convicted for violating moral codes they frequently hadn’t heard of.” But he downplays contemporaneous evidence of people risking their lives to, for instance, resist the Nazi Party and end slavery in the American South, and he doesn’t acknowledge any social and cultural histories that do not “wrench real-world facts into line with the most powerful grammar of fiction.” Though his sharp sense of humor entertains, Gottschall’s overly broad and reductive argument falls flat. This study is more provocative than persuasive. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

[a] thoughtful and entertaining investigation on a critical question: ‘How can we save the world from stories?’… Fresh insights about the ways we understand reality.”—Kirkus

“Jonathan Gottschall is not only the deepest thinker about the powerful role of stories in our lives, but a lively and witty writer. The Story Paradox offers much insight and many pleasures.”
 —Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and Rationality.

"Jonathan Gottschall has written a gripping and thoughtful book on a neglected but urgent topic: the dark side of stories. With crisp prose and an array of fascinating examples, he demonstrates how our innate ability to spin tales can lead to distortion, dissolution, and destruction. The Storytelling Paradox is a bracing call to action to become more empathetic and to deploy narrative as a force for good."
 —Daniel H. Pink, #1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive

"In this provocative and insightful book, Jonathan Gottschall shows us why dangerous stories spread so rapidly, and how they lead to division and distrust. But our storytelling instinct can also be harnessed for good, and Gottschall draws on a trove of research and compelling stories to show us how we can stop conspiracies, bigotry, and misinformation. The Story Paradox couldn’t be more urgent."—Jonah Berger, Wharton Professor and bestselling author of Contagious

“This fascinating book explores the dark power of stories, arguing that they are an essential poison—necessary for human life, but too often a force for irrationality and cruelty. The Storytelling Paradox is provocative and original and a delight to read—and ironically enough, Jonathan Gottschall is a hell of a story teller himself.”—Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at University of Toronto, and author of How Pleasure Works, Against Empathy, and The Sweet Spot.

"We constantly modify one another's brains, and the surgical tool we use is storytelling. In this luminous and incisive page-turner, Jonathan Gottschall takes us deep into the world of stories: what we tell, how we receive, and why it matters so deeply for our world."
 —David Eagleman, Stanford neuroscientist, author of Livewired

From the Publisher

2021-09-22
Why humans need to tell new stories.

Literary scholar Gottschall, who celebrated humans’ propensity for telling tales in The Storytelling Animal, now considers ways stories “sway us for the worse.” Why, he asks, thinking of conspiracy stories (which are not, he insists, theories), climate change deniers, and news stories that produce feelings of despair, “do stories seem to be driving our species mad?” Given the ubiquity of stories in every culture and their potential to create conflict, he focuses his thoughtful and entertaining investigation on a critical question: “How can we save the world fromstories?” Drawing on philosophy (Plato is a recurring figure), psychology, anthropology, neurobiology, history, and literature and interweaving personal anecdotes and snippets of popular culture, Gottschall acknowledges that stories have powerful emotional impact. From ancient times, they emerged “as a tool of tribal cohesion andcompetition,” structured with a “universal grammar” that is “paranoid and vindictive”: Characters try to solve predicaments, facing trouble and often a clearly defined villain. Such stories generate empathy for the characters in peril while creating a kind of “moral blindness” regarding villains. This paradigm, Gottschall argues, shapes our stories about society, politics, and even history, “a genre of speculative narrative that projects our current obsessions onto the past.” Rather than depict Nazis or White supremacists as villains, Gottschall suggests that they were not “worse people than us” but had the “moral misfortune” of being born into cultures which mistakenly defined bad as good. When we villainize, he warns, we dehumanize, sinking into sanctimony and hate. With “folk tales” erupting and spreading “with incredible speed and ease on the internet” and with a political figure he dubs the Big Blare reigning as a supreme storyteller, Gottschall exhorts readers to become aware of storytelling biases and to learn to tell a story “where we are protagonists on the same quest.”

Fresh insights about the ways we understand reality.

Kirkus Reviews