A couple of weeks ago, Dave Pollard on the blog How to Save the World quoted his own earlier article in which he said:
I am coming to believe that all stories, … [lots of descriptive stuff here trashing various types of stories] … are propaganda.
Why?
Because stories, Pollard says, “distract us from discovering what is really going on in this world.”
Really?
Rationalizing what he calls “Pollard’s Law,” Pollard writes:
Lit Match ca. 1990s
Stories, whether they appeal to the intellect or to the emotions, rarely alter behaviour… Stories just don’t have that much power. They don’t precipitate real change, only (at best) changes in beliefs and attitudes.
How can you precipitate real change without changing beliefs and attitudes?
I’m short-changing Pollard in the following. He gives a bulleted list of his beliefs about stories and offers a paragraph for each one to justify his beliefs. You can read his reasons for yourself:
- Stories are addictive.
- Stories are manipulative.
- Stories give us false hope.
- Stories lead us to live inside our heads instead of in the real world.
- Stories are excuses for inaction.
- Stories are only stories.
Some of these, I actually believe (like “stories are addictive”) — but I don’t see them as negative. “Stories are manipulative” reminds me of Stephane Dangel’s characterization of France’s perception of storytelling: “There is only one and major book dedicated to storytelling in French, and it has been written by a man who hates storytelling (Christian Salmon: Storytelling)! His message is very raw: ‘storytelling = fiction = manipulation.'”
Pollard undermines his thesis with the way he ends it: a bulleted list of all the things that we need to change in the world. Arguably, he tells a story with every one of those bullet points.
Story practitioners, how would you convince Pollard that stories really do have power and can inspire change?