A post about story

            This past week proved to be very substantial, in large part because of an interesting read; Peter Forbes’ lecture titled The Power of Story in an Age of Consequence.  This talk mainly discusses how stories affect and are affected by people’s ever changing lives and ideologies. Forbes’ intent with this discussion is to try and tie this idea to the global issue of environmentalism and conservation. Being of certain religious/ethnic/occupational persuasions, I found that I held some disagreements with Forbes’ semantics, but that I agreed a great deal with his intentions and assertions.

            Besides discussing how stories can strengthen the cause of environmental conservation, Forbes first discusses how stories are the vessels which we use to share our values and beliefs. Hopefully not to be too personal, dear readers, but it is important to know that I am a Mormon. Now, being Mormon means that we have a subset of narratives (both of an apocryphal and factual nature) which, like stories are often used, we use stories as tools to bridge divides of doctrine, culture, and/or generation in order to relate to one another or people not of our fate. For instance, a friend of mine once commented that Mormons were very “tight wad-ish”, that there was no self effacing nor ability to view themselves as people sharing this world. As a way to counter balance this I can recall telling a Mormon legend concerning Brigham Young and bobsleds. This narrative wasn’t meant to illustrate any doctrinal inclinations, nor would it probably have been the best example to use, but nonetheless it was an attempt share the humor that people have about their own cultural roots.

            That being said, as I read this lecture by Forbes, I began to think about stories I’ve heard in my life and how they hold my values. Something that I considered was how stories told from my Navajo side of the family often held certain thematic similarities. As a generality, Navajo people tell stories that are didactic, and rarely feature people either real or fictional. These stories are necessary for a Navajo’s identity, as Forbes quoted from Nigerian novelist Ben Okri, “Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves”. However, something that nagged me was that Forbes seemed to prefer oral or printed mediums of story. In the case of Navajos, there is trouble with this preference; for the most part, there is a generational gap of linguistic and ethical knowledge. This gap wasn’t created through introduction of any commercial enterprise or through trauma, but rather it the process that happens between parents and children, no matter the culture. In this case stories cannot be related with efficiency through oral means. And, since Navajo didn’t have a written counterpart until the 20^th Century, printed medium causes confusion even amongst native speakers. How then should these stories be preserved? The use of media that Forbes might consider commercial becomes one of the only viable solutions to this predicament. Where oral stories once were the norm, podcasts, vlogs, and other visual/aural methods can now codify principles that were threatened.