Shaped by Stories: The Ethical Power of Narratives

Chapter Three

31 Chapter Three Y For Good or Ill Stories as Ethical Education Stories Swallow the World Whole We find stories useful because they swallow the world whole, and in fact the domain of stories may be the only form of human learning other than religion that makes the attempt to encompass the entirety of human life and experience. Many people deny that they are getting an education when they engage with stories as “merely passing pleasures,” but this denial is as unrealistic as the common claims of chain smokers and sun bathers that smoking and sunburns don’t seriously increase their odds for developing lung cancer or melanomas. Passing pleasures can be many things besides passing; they may, in fact, become permanent habits of the body or mind. On the other hand, consuming narratives is not a negotiable practice for human beings because narrative education is indispensable to all of us almost all of the time. Do not misunderstand the term “ethical education” in the subtitle of this chapter. Most people would probably understand this term to mean something like “teaching people to be good, as in not robbing liquor stores and not punching other people’s noses.” You know from reading chapter 2, however, that my definition of “ethical education” is not that narrow and is something more like “any kind of education that helps shape our ethos, whether that shaping power leads the learner to behave ‘properly’ 32 s h a p e d b y s t o r i e s or not.” Not only is my definition of “ethical education” broad, but so is my understanding of the sources from which that education is derived: firsthand experience, the models we see in our companions and friends, the models we encounter in novels and biographies and histories, the lessons that we pick up from songs and jokes and family tales, the interpretations of life offered to us by movies and television, and so on. As developmental agents trying to make our way in a complex, mysterious , and, at times, overwhelming world, we need all the help we can get, which is why we turn for assistance to science, history, philosophy, religion, and so on. But people who turn to science and religion for help in learning how to live usually don’t mind admitting that they do so—in fact, they think that doing so demonstrates their sagacity—but when anyone suggests that this same educational motive explains their constant engagement with stories, many of these same people will vociferously deny the suggestion. This is when they offer the “stories are mere entertainment” rebuttal, as if entertainment and education never have anything to do with each other. People often forget that when they were children, the lessons they learned the fastest and deepest were the lessons that were the most entertaining. Our predilection for learning while being entertained does not diminish as we grow older, but it seems childish to us to admit this as adults, so we conveniently deny it. Most forms of learning investigate the world by slicing it up into pieces. The three-hundred-year-long development of specialization in the academic disciplines offers the easiest example of this trend. Slicing-anddicing has proved to be an immensely powerful strategy. From the ideali­ zations of the natural sciences through the grammars of languages to the questionnaires of social scientists, the strategy of slicing the world up into discrete domains of inquiry that can be examined in great depth has proven itself to be spectacularly successful. However, when the knowledge that you and I most want is not specialized knowledge, but guidance about how to answer that ancient but always pressing question—“how should I live?”—then slicing-and-dicing becomes less useful. Where in the world do you and I turn for information, guidance,­ models, and knowledge if the things we most want explained are how to live a whole life from beginning to end, including how to find happiness, how to spend money, how to love and what to love, how to have great sex, For Good or Ill 33 how to find rewarding work, how to deal with neighbors and relatives, how to think about the existence or nonexistence of a god or gods, how to deal with the perennial passions of life such as lust and anger and envy and pride and fear, how to balance the impulses...