Life is a story.

Life is a story.

I was less than a foot tall, (a Primie) not equipped to survive even three hours without help. I couldn’t see or communicate more than scream for a brief time. Something changed. Twenty years later I could survive on my own and function in a complicated society. How did it happen?

The chief ingredient was and is what I believe. I believe what comes to me from stories. Even what I see or hear remains in my mind in the form of stories I recall and tell myself. Do I remember what happened when I was learning how to walk? Not really, but my parents told the story and I remember it slightly differently. I recall the story in my own words.

Stories shape individuals as well as societies. Stories, which are just words; create. The stories we believe are true make us who we are and even determine what we will do or not do.  There are stories that we treat as an art form while there are others that we believe to be a reality. A superb example in our age are the stories about or by science. It’s proven and we can’t doubt it. The world is a ball of magma hurling through space; we have seen it. We live on the thin surface, shielded by a little bubble we call the atmosphere.

I learned how to read early in life, perhaps around five. The first book of stories, which I still have, was a volume with translated stories by Hans Christian Andersen, a most famous Danish writer. His children’s stories more or less shaped the thinking of the North European people. 

The Little Match girl thought me compassion for poor people, The Little Mermaid was all about love while The king’s New Clothes demonstrated another life lesson. People will believe in any impossible story if they can benefit from doing so. Believing is based on proof, like science, but can be altered by a greedy mind.

The other influence that shaped me came from Old Testament Biblical stories, which I learned in school. Good stories they were until I began to read the Bible on my own. By the age of sixteen, I decided that I didn’t believe in God. Shortly after we moved to Canada and for the first time I had my personal copy of the New Testament and became a convert to my own religion. Here was a story that appealed to me.

In Canada in the late sixties, I purchased a little black and white television set which opened my mind to alternative stories. The most influential upon me was the series of Star Trek. Here was a story about humans becoming an admirable species using technology yet undreamed of. They explored worlds that offered other possibilities that we never considered possible.

Above the fascination with technology, Star Trek dealt with two other major interests of mine. First was the possibility of human beings training themselves to be honorable, curious discoverers, and willing to fight for principles above all peace. The character of Spock was extremely interesting. A superman, in a way, he was half Vulcan. His people had a rough past and learned to suppress their emotions and use logic to solve all problems.

The next aspect I was very much attracted to was the philosophical theories that were dealt with on different planets that the Starship Enterprise visited. The crew of the ship often found themselves on planets similar to Earth but where societies grew to believe in a variety of philosophies.  

I imagine the Starship Enterprise coming to a world like ours today. They discover a world of humans where an elite of wealthy humans is in the process of replacing the labor force with Artificial intelligence and robots. A deadly pandemic is reducing the poorest population who are helpless against an advanced military force beyond their ability to fight against. The elites are drowning in comfort, involved in sex, even pedophilia, and like to keep things as they are. They own the Inteligencia, which in that age are the Theoretical Physicists. The impoverished masses are looking for ways to survive.

In comes, the Starship governed by the old USA constitution trying to restore balance and save billions of innocent lives. In their story “we the people” rule themselves for the benefit of all.

Imagining a story is not easy. The author must present a problem and discover a way to solve it. What would be a reasonable way to solve a conflict of a species immersed in inequality that will destroy a beautiful world? The answer comes from the history of Humankind itself. People value most their own lifetime and life is only precious if it exists relative to all that surrounds it.

In my Star Trek story, the captain finds a few of the elites who are abhorred by the plan to replace most humans and hand the world over to a few lucky corrupt individuals. Some, more humane elites, join up with intellectuals and people of high morals to spoil the takeover attempt. They discover a cure for the pandemic and convince the armies not to fight against the common people.

My memory of the old Star Trek episodes is fading. All I remember is that there were a few that dealt with the exceptional power of faith and belief.  

In one a weapon was used which had no physical means to harm people but in the right hands, it killed. Officer Spock explained that it was similar to the well-proven placebo effect. My studies show that it is possible. My historical observations demonstrate that we are the stories we tell ourselves, but we must “know” that the stories are true. You can’t believe what you don’t know to be true or know something and not believe. 

It has been many years since I read the story about “The King’s New Clothes”.

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