One of the most common questions I get about my own book is whether the people in the story really believed what they said. The short answer is, absolutely (more on that later).
The longer answer, which Jonathan Gottschall takes apart and puts together so well in his book, The Story Paradox: How Our Love of Storytelling Builds Societies and Tears them Down, is that stories bypass reason in direct proportion to their appeal. We don’t believe facts, only the stories that hold them together.
If we love a story it changes our outlook on life. From the story of some carpenter who got crucified to Russia’s involvement in the 2020 Presidential election, stories that compel us also implicate us.
We work to make sure the truth of them sustains in our lives, even if the facts of them sometimes elude us or are in dispute.
Throughout my life, I’ve believed that stories will change someone’s mind better than any facts can. I’ve compared facts to pool noodles, unwieldy things we hit one another with to no effect. It isn’t that facts don’t matter, only that the connective tissue between them is more tenuous than we realize. There are always going to be competing narratives and, if we’re going to believe some facts, it will have to be at the cost of believing others. They don’t all fit together in the way we might like to think.
What Gottschall points out is that the only reason a good story works is conflict. This is not news to anyone who had taken a writing course or who paid attention in high school English class. Taking it a step further, though, that means we need a villain. We have to root for the protagonist at the expense of the antagonist.
The clearer the good versus evil bit is, the stickier the story. Add in the fact that we are storytelling creatures who are the protagonists in our own story and things get so much murkier.
It saddens me when I hear people say, “I don’t care what someone believes as long as they’re not hurting anyone.” I don’t begrudge them their admirable sentiment. As far as I can tell, trying to say they’re not prejudiced against people of faith.
It’s also a lie. We do care what people believe and we know deep down that belief underpins action.
Just because the Catholics are such an easy target, their belief that abortion is wrong is tied pretty closely to the continued persecution of women, the spread of AIDS in Africa, and even the occasional bombing.
So, do we not care what Catholics believe when they don’t happen to be hurting anyone? Or do we like our grandmas (I love my ultra-Catholic grandmother very much) and want to give them an excuse to walk around with ash on their heads once a year. It’s a more critical question than we can ask or answer comfortably.
Take the case of Matthew Coleman, who knowingly killed his young children to save the world from the Reptilian menace. Coleman isn’t crazy, he’s behaving rationally in his reality. He’ll go to jail with the calm of the righteous. He knows he’s an undiscovered martyr, and he’s perfectly OK with us calling him “crazy.”
In Stephen King’s book, The Dead Zone, a person who claims he can see the future tries to kill the person he believes will be the next U.S. President. We know he’s the good guy because King told us he was. We know he is the genuine article and not some madman, but the people in his world don’t and he seems fine with that. He dies knowing he’s the hero, while the rest of the world thinks he’s a crackpot.
Sherry Shriner’s story could be written the same way. If she was God’s daughter, most of us will have a lot to answer for on Judgement Day. It is more comforting and makes a lot more sense to think she was a crackpot or a liar, though. The alternative isn’t something we even could begin to live with.
Keep the faith,
Tony
Other places to find me
It looks as if I’ll be contributing occasionally to the Delaware Independent, a news organization the exists on Substack (the same newsletter program you’re reading this on now).
I can’t tell you how much I love the community-supported journalism model. Briefly speaking, this organization will be exclusively (or at least predominantly) reader-supported. It’s a gutsy move and one that implicates us all.
You see, we can’t really complain about the “corporate-owned” media and not support (with money) independent reporting.
It may be a couple of weeks before I get anything up, but they’re publishing stuff pretty much daily over there. It’s free to subscribe (like this one), but there are support levels and, as I understand it, eventually there will be a paywall.
Toddcast Returns
Day Drinking on Delmarva is back to its regular schedule. We probably should have just taken the summer off rather than publishing one show per month in June and July.
You can subscribe to the show here or anywhere you listen to audio.
Yes, I Saw the Reptilian Murder Story
What a terrifying response, Tony! And I agree. I'M Catholic, however, I couldn't call myself strict because I'm not against abortion for everyone and do believe in the death penalty for some, etc etc (a career in Law Enforcement and seeing the horrors of society affected my reasoning). I have seen what you describe as the good vs evil battle, rather than facts, prevailing more and more in today's society. And Stephen King's "The Dead Zone," what an amazing example! I'd never considered that. Most cult members (some would include religions) DON'T believe what they're doing is crazy or wrong, even though the general public can't believe members could find it anything BUT crazy! Just as you mentioned Sherry Shriner's cult. How could anyone believe such nonsense?! But reading your example, and thinking about Stephen King's book, it terrified me! They find it perfectly reasonable.