Once upon a time. . .

If you have never heard that ancient phrase, that begins so many heroic and romantic stories, you probably are not from a western culture. But every culture has their own stories. As a matter of fact every person has their own stories, both to tell and to live.

I was reading "The New Testament and the People of God" by a theologian named N.T. Wright. In it, he points out that stories are the basic building blocks of science and basic human interaction. He points out that a scientific fact is only a fact because it tells a story about something. Science takes a hypothesis and that is the "Once upon a time. . ." The facts just are events in the story and scientists are the story tellers. In the end, we have a story that explains something. Take gravity for example, Newtonian physics said that because an apple fell from a tree (and hit Sir Isaac Newton on the head) then the culprit must be a graviton molecule that is exerting force on the apple, pulling it down. There was an event, the apple falling and to explain the falling there was a story. The story is that the graviton pulled on the apple until it fell. It is short and sweet and was adopted into a scientific law.

This is a little hard to grasp, so lets bring it down to a more everyday level. What does a good husband do. Well, he remembers birth days, anniversaries, grocery lists, chores ect. Husbands also find a career and work hard to build a prosperous home. These things are good, but why does he do them? He does them because in his mind, he has to do them to fill the role of a good husband. In effect, he role plays. Now, what if someone does not play the part very well? If he does not, then he certainly has other roles that he is trying to fill. Perhaps, a "bad" husband wants to fill other roles; such as, a sexual item or a drug dealer or of a couch potato.

When I thought about this, everything made perfect sense. I want to be a good provider for my wife, because I am playing a role as a good husband. I want to be strong in technology, because I feel that my role as a professional will have a lot to do with IT work.

Some times, in a world of 6 billion stories, there are stories that do not fit with each other. Sometimes stories subvert or replace other stories. When this happens things dramatically change. We can see it in history and in the world around us. The American dream is a story that has subverted many other peoples story; because it is a strong story, it can subvert stories of dictatorships and monarchies. By the way, Einstein came up with a better story to explain the apple falling from the tree and has now been accepted into science (Einstein's story better fit the evidence that he discovered).

It should be left to a different blog, but can you think of competing stories and how we can judge to see which stories are worth replacing other stories?