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Personal History
Do we just follow the road our lives lead us on, existing, deciding, drifting, answering the questions we are asked by fate and dealing with our own individual selves? Perhaps the word “individual” is the key to this question. We think we are individuals, we live as if we are, but things may not be entirely as they seem. At various times during our lives, most of us become, at least temporarily, characters in a story. Unfortunately, we rarely notice that anything of this nature has happened at all, so we can’t fight back. Our culture is full of stories. To an extent, our core beliefs, our inspirations, our myths and even our religions are based on stories. The Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita – all contain a large number of stories. When we teach religion to our children, stories serve as a vehicle for learning ethics. Myths and legends, such as the Arthurian cycle or the adventures of Till Eulenspiegel in the West, the exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin in the Near East (so strangely similar to the Eulenspiegel cycle), the Arabian Nights and the French, Russian, and German classic fairy tales just about everywhere on earth, become a part of the psyche of each growing child in his or her respective culture, and remains imprinted for life on the mind of the adult. However, I suspect there is more to that. It may be said that over the centuries, stories have assumed their own identity, have taken a life and a shape, and evolved into a dominant force that could not only influence, but control and shape our lives to fit their own needs. They have started to grow as soon as humanity started to tell them, and some became very strong, while others must have died, as it happens in evolution. They float all around us, unseen but extremely influential, much like the force of gravity. They engulf us wherever we go, and often we succumb. The tales wish to be repeated, and by now they are so strong that we obey them without thinking. For example, if you are a writer, it will be a struggle to write a fairy tale for children where a silly third son did not triumph after his two wiser older brothers had failed in their quest. And the sidekick of the hero of most Disney movies is most often a small and funny animal – much like the animals that would help a hero in a classical French or Russian tale, assisting him to succeed in his quest. It will be hard to find a story where the gods did not sit quietly, oblivious that a hero stole the fire to give to humanity from right under their noses. You can’t read a story about a young man who is stepping into the unknown and starting a quest, without imagining some Holy Grail or the dragon he must slay. Of course, the Holy Grail and the dragon are cleverly disguised to fit our culture. The Holy Grail may be represented by a great new job in the big city, or by a mysterious “code” that will reveal a treasure or a secret that will in turn change humanity’s direction. The dragon can be the chief villain of a secret society, such as in the James Bond films. He must be destroyed by Mr. Bond, who does it all alone while the entire world is helpless. You cannot make an adventure movie without a car chase – and one of the reasons is that the car chase has taken the place of “Hi Ho, Silver!” which in turn followed the other great, mythical horses, like Bucephalus, the wondrous horse of Alexander the Great. The forms have changed to fit today’s reality, but the core is the same and the story lives on. And every time it is repeated, in real life or in literature, it gathers strength. Let’s look at Cinderella, one of the simplest and most popular stories we have. It certainly belongs to the psyche of past generations. It describes events that are said to have occurred around the 14th Century, depicting a weak and handsome Prince Charming who falls in love with a beautiful and abused commoner of very little brain or personality. Neither of them does much for the fulfillment of their own destinies other than dancing together, but with the help of magic, he raises her to the throne. This passive behavior on both sides was typical in a world in which people did not believe they had control over their own lives, and were submissive to the authorities. |
How remote all this is from the world of today, when women are educated and earn their own living, where men are valued for their ability to act and to lead, and where the only prince still hanging around is a rather silly middle aged men who had badly messed up his job and for whom, if we are kind and don’t go for sensational journalism, we feel a measure of sympathy. Our Western world is full of independent, intelligent and mature women, who, you assume, are in control of their lives. In addition, they are far from the virginal image of Cinderella, and generally do not bother to save their chaste bodies for their Prince Charming who will someday be their faithful husband, lord, and master. Rather, most women have had many sexual experiences starting at an early age and are just as experienced in this world as the Prince. Many women would tell you that they don’t really rely on men either to support them or to even love them on a permanent basis. And none of them expects a fairy godmother to tell them how to land their men. And suddenly, without apparent reason, such a woman breaks down. Perhaps she experiences a professional burnout. Perhaps she is exhausted with the demands of the life of the single mother. Perhaps she is simply very, very lonely, a typical state in our fragmented, isolated world. But the reason is not really important, because we always want, and invent, a reasonable explanation – even when it makes no sense at all. We need explanations to feel secure, to believe that our world is rational, even when it is utterly clear that it is nothing of the sort. Almost overnight, such a woman changes her entire outlook on life and looks for Prince Charming. She may settle for the most unlikely and unsuitable man, simply with the illusion of living “happily ever after” with her protector, who would take her away from all that, whatever “that” happens to be at that moment. Her family and friends are amazed by her choice of a guy who is as far as can be from the image of the handsome prince, but she clearly sees him as such, and acts on her delusion. I have once known a young woman whom I trusted would fulfill her destiny. She was a student in a fine college, preparing for a profitable and interesting career in public health. She paid her own way through a part-time job and tutoring. She was beautiful and highly intelligent, and of course she had many dates, but always with the idea of not taking it seriously until she had established her career. And one day she met a good looking professional athlete – our American version of Prince Charming – and he promised her a life of luxury and eternal love. The castle, the kingdom, and the promise of happiness awaited, and she followed the enchanted path. In three months, she became pregnant. In five months, she was begging him to marry her, which he refused. He agreed to live with her, for which she was pathetically grateful. When the baby was born, she had already quit school and got a full-time, low level job, since Prince Charming soon left their joint apartment, and was not interested in paying child support. Did Cinderella lose this battle? Not really. She won. Our young woman certainly lost her own battle and destroyed her own chances in life. But Cinderella, the old story, won again, and in a big way. The story made a young woman abandon her own life patterns, and sucked her into the vortex of its own patterns. And so the Cinderella story was “fed” with new energy again, and it became stronger, and it will strive again to go on sucking more women into its vortex. And such examples can be given regarding many other fairy tales. Look around you, and you will find many Snow Whites, and Sleeping Beauties, and St. Georges, and Sir Galahads, and the eternal Tricksters, all playing their parts, again and again, feeding the stories with growing energy. There is an old saying that the gods don’t die until they have lost all their followers. As long as one worshipper remains, the god or goddess lives. When all worshippers die, so does the god. Well, perhaps stories are the same. As long as someone continues to play the role, the story lives on, and controls more people. And this leads to another issue of story versus reality, that of war. Wars are said to be fought for many reasons, and the public believes the rhetoric of its leaders. The soldiers prepare for battle, fully confident that they represent Good, and they are about to fight Evil. They know that they have a mission, that if they do not win the war the Dark Side of the Force will take over. The folks at home are supportive of their heroes, believing the same truths. But with very few exceptions (such as the US going into WWII to remove Hitler, the devil incarnate, from the face of this earth) wars are fought simply for financial gain and the control of assets. Had our reality been less well fed with the energy of stories about the glories of war, no one would believe a government who is telling them again the tired tale about such glory. Had the myth of war been missing from our minds, we would all know that negotiations would be a much better way to handle differences, and much less costly. The public would actually laugh at the rhetoric. But the entire body of culture of every single nation on earth is so filled with the energy of war stories, that we have no chance of seeing clearly. And we use the terminology of war even in areas that have no connection to it at all – “a war on drugs” instead of “curing the drug habit.” “A war on illiteracy” instead of “bringing good education to everyone.” War permeates our minds, and the stories of the glories of war are so strong that we cannot evolve beyond them. We are trapped in them. I adore stories, but I fear them at the same time. I wallow in the organic nature of their growth, in the connections that are created from generation to generation, even the horrible ones I have just described. They have a charm that cannot be resisted. But having studied them for years I no longer treat them as mere entertainment, and it is clear to me that in many way they are much stronger than the individual. They are a force to be reckoned with – and most of us do not even know that they are our masters.
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STORIES:
THEIR ROLE AND THEIR POWER