(24) 'Tell a Story or Die'

We are in a world of mad kings. The ones that destroy life, extract more and more, leaving Earth empty. 

Lately, I keep asking: What shall we do? What are we doing wrong?

If I had asked that question in the medieval Arab world, they might have said: Tell them a story. And they might have told me the story of Shahrazad, the woman who changed the mind of a mad king by telling him a thousand stories.

Stories can change minds, worldviews. And worldviews shape our actions: toward care, kinship, and love for the natural world, or toward detachment, conquest, and destruction.

So, what are the stories that could save humanity? And most of all, how do we shape them, as the storytellers we are? Why was the medieval Arab world, like many ancient cultures, so devoted to storytelling? And how did they understand the precious power it held?

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Sources:

• The Arabian Nights, translation by Malcolm C. Lyons

• Ocean Vuong, 'A Life Worthy of Our Breath' On Being Podcast

Cover: Die Favontin by Adolf Seel, 1883

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