It’s Not Facts vs. Stories, It’s Factual Stories

The answer to ignorance and regression is not getting people to be more rational. It’s not piling on the facts, the info, the data. It’s to tell better stories to beat the people telling the bad ones.

One issue we have in our times is that we associate stories with falsehood. It looks something like this:

facts, truth, no stories (good, smart) - disinformation, lies, stories (bad, unintelligent)

When it really looks something like this:

facts, truth, constructive stories that resonate and guide - disinformation, lies, stories that disconnect people from self and others.

It’s easy to think that the right response to the ignorant or the manipulative is facts. They’re persuading people with lies, so the opposite of that must be to persuade people with facts. (Or worse, to not persuade people at all). But what you do with that approach is you destroy story. When you destroy story, you move away from the flow of life. This is just my personal opinion, but…I don’t think that’s ever a winning strategy.

All life lives on and through the framework of story. All life is fundamentally transformation, growth and movement, not stagnant, isolated fragments of facts and classifications. Story isn’t a lie, entertainment, or delusion, it’s something you step into to live.

A better story is a truer story—factual in foundation, but most importantly more deeply resonant.

A good story comes from the ultimate synthesis of facts and emotional truths and touches something true, the part of us that rings. It reaches deep within to awaken what is inside of us, what inspires us, what we want our lives and the world to look like, the positive future full of growth and meaning we want to step into.

Scientific observation, analysis, and facts are the raw material that you build the resonant story from (if that is your worldview—it gets complicated). They are the masterfully built, finely-tuned instruments, and the story, the part that matters and motivates, is the viscerally, emotionally experienced harmony of the actual symphony played.

So. Who wins? Who gets to claim stories and therefore our world? People who want to whip up a gullible crowd’s psychological weaknesses to serve their own selfish, ego-fueled agendas? Or everyone else who wants to build a world where people get to create and be themselves and actually just enjoy this place with one another?

If you want the latter to have a chance, don’t pile on the facts. Tell better stories.