The Human Brain and Stories
Computers store information as bits, zeros and ones, humans store stories, a body of connected information.
Information 1: “Borno”
Information 2: “Borno is hot.”
Information 3: “Borno is hot, it will burn your bones.”
Information 4: “Borno is hot, it will burn your bones and you will still not die – eternal burning.”
What are the odds that you will remember, in 12 months, information 1 over 4?
Minimal. Maybe 1 percent?
Why?
Information 1 is for computers. Information 4 is for humans.
Why?
4 has a story to it.
Meaning?
4 takes the bit-like, computer structured 1 and 2, and turns it into human friendly format, which incidentally also contains 1 and 2.
Note that, information 3 is also structured for humans but 4 has an important human element to it – exaggeration – what in the world does eternal burning mean on the surface of the earth?
Pick up your math text book to read, see how long you last.
Pick up your romance novel, marvel comics, or Telemundo to watch, see how long you last.
Why?
The math text book cannot be made into a story, each important part of it stands alone. Not the romance novel, not the Telemundo, every part of it is interconnected and tells a single story.
Why do students put off reading till it is time for exams?
It is because most courses or subjects cannot be told as a story, so that the biggest motivation students have is the fear of an F9, which only becomes vivid as the day of the exam approaches, hence the last-minute cramming marathons.
Now those who read ahead and those who cram at the last minute, be they first class or last class, what percentage of them remember what they read after the exams? How about after school? But all remember the stories and lies their parents, teachers and religious leaders told them to scare them into obedience as children.
Dynamically, the implication of this is that the human brain was made for interaction not retrieval, hence stories are more of a natural to it than independent data.
One key activity that confirms this is the ease of recall.
Once we recall a bit of a story, the odds of recalling the entire story from memory is pretty high, seems the little bit pulls it’s brothers and sisters along. Not so with independent non-story like data, which even if we remember bits of it, we will very likely need other sources (books, blogs, …) to catch up on the rest.
The human brain is built for stories.
Tell stories.
Thank you for reading.