Without Vital Storytelling, Where Are We Getting Our Moral Lessons?
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Without Vital Storytelling, Where Are We Getting Our Moral Lessons?
So I’ve been thinking about religion and its come about in unexpected ways. In June, knowing my usual dip in book sales was on the way, I resigned myself to just doing the writing, not bothering with promotions, and making sure I got in the SPSFC (self-published science fiction competition). I prepared for the WHO BUILT THE HUMANS? TWO pre-order, and I signed up to a local theatre.
I’ve been acting as a member of polite society for a while, so acting as an eighteenth-century nobleman can’t be too hard.
Somewhere along the way, I started thinking about God. It wasn’t the death threat from a Muslim woman (read: adult human female) on Instagram that did it (she said anyone destroying a Quran should be burned, and I reminded her about how many get destroyed in her city’s drains every year) and it certainly wasn’t the angry rant from a Christian man I saw on a post about a lesbian wedding.
No, I saw these as isolated incidents, lunatics empowered by religion. They are not the majority; they just shout louder.
This is something I don’t think I knew as a teenager. When you’re young it’s easy to throw people into groups. I believe this is why labels are so alluring to young people now. Everyone needs a category.
The first homophobic comments I heard in my life were from religious people. The most sickening, dehumanizing trivialization of human life I heard came not from the pro-choice crowd, but from religious people I knew, who believed they were sent disabled children as a ‘divine punishment’ for something they did in their past.
Religion, in my eyes, was overall detrimental to society.
But I think I was wrong in that judgment. There are still detrimental elements, but those appear in all large communities after a while. Someone gets power, someone abuses power, and the community covers it up or even deifies them. I don’t need to list examples; you’ve already thought of two. And I know that because I am a powerful psychic. Please worship me by buying my book.
Jokes aside, I’m older now, and I’m lucky to have befriended a great many religious people who are more than decent. You could say my life has diversity. Real diversity, not just hair dye diversity. But despite enjoying religious company, I’m still not convinced about God.
So how did I get thinking about God again? Surprisingly, on a video about a chicken burger.
In this video, I show a chicken burger alongside one of Lego’s Bionicle movies. This quickly went viral on Instagram. People were reminiscing about the Bionicle toy line, remembering a simpler time in their lives before politics and arguments and overdue rent. It’s beautiful what shared nostalgia can do.
Now here’s the thing. Most Bionicle fans are in America. I’m British, we are less vocal about our religious leanings. But you Americans, you’ll bring Jesus into conversations even on a video about chicken burgers and toy robots.
In Bionicle, six robotic heroes with elemental powers, the Toa, land on an island called Mata Nui and vow to free it from the clutches of an evil influence called Makuta. The island is named after the Great Spirit Mata Nui, a godlike mechanical entity who (for the first years of the franchise) existed almost outside time and space. He was asleep, incapable of looking after the world, and the Toa’s job was to prepare for his awakening.
Makuta’s job as Mata Nui’s ‘brother’ was to keep him asleep. That story taught me a lot about helping my fellow humans out. It taught me a lot about creation myths as well.
Storytelling is important. It helps us develop as people. And it doesn’t need to be an established religion. But we need something.
Jordan Peterson makes a pertinent point in the video at the end of this post. Kids are growing up knowing less and less about religion, but it isn’t being replaced by something of similar value. In fact, it’s rarely being replaced with anything at all.
Without vital storytelling, where are people getting their moral lessons from?
Certainly, a great deal of it you can glean from real-life experience, but sometimes the safer simulation of experience is necessary. That is why people get upset about violence in video games because we all know that media has at least some power over the human will, and religion is a form of media. It’s a story you consume, whether you think it’s true or not. Books, despite being burnt, banned, and rewritten, have a unique ability to frame harsh subjects in a markedly safer way than other media. You don’t need to graphically depict something in order to talk about it.
Our views are important and malleable. I have advertised my writing to agents as a ‘nothing is sacred’ approach. I satirize everything (including the things I think are precious), and I do so because that’s how my brain works. Comedy and Sci-Fi are my ways to explore ideas. It is not merely that I am punching up, down, or sideways, I am taking ideas apart like the government took aliens apart that time.
And all of us, religious or not, could get along better if we just talked more. Perhaps stories could help.
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Without Vital Storytelling, Where Are We Getting Our Moral Lessons?
I hear you on Christians taking things seriously and on the need for stories - I wrote "not the parables of Jesus" - as satirical take on the parables to help think outside the box but also use the power of story to convey ideas. Too often stories (especially Bible stories) are reduced to "what's the moral?" and miss the fact that experiencing the stories is part of the point...
Religion, in its extreme form, always leads to oppression. For some reason, most people who take their holy book as the be all and end all of everything good, often don't study their history. I am aware of the fallings of my Christian Religion. I studied the crusades, the inquisition, the purges, the witch burnings, and vowed never to repeat them.
I try to never quote scripture when I talk to people about what they might have done wrong. I try to approach it from a purely spiritual view.
I try to keep in mind that they may not know that what they are doing has consequences.
And my fictional work is filled with deities that actually care for their followers and try to show how that looks.
In my current work, one goddess is complaining that her priests are distorting her teachings and won't listen to her, and that's why she needs champions to spread her words.