When I was a little girl, I believed in magic. Not in the magic of fairies or witches, nor in the more mundane magics of astrology or numerology. Rather, I believed that written words, and more specifically books, were magic.
Books transported this little country girl to cities, or to distant lands. A whole series of books brought me to Disneyworld, which I would not visit until I was in my thirties, while others took me to the beach or the mountains or – best of all – to the past, where I could have knights do my bidding, or be a knight myself. They introduced me to George Washington, Betsy Ross, Charlemagne, Cleopatra, and Caesar. They gave me a glimpse into the minds of other people living and dead – a feat I particularly valued, as I had little insight into the minds of those around me.
Or they taught me how to do things – needlepoint and crochet, caring for injured animals, identifying mushrooms and wild plants. The set of Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia I read voraciously taught me about things I couldn’t even pronounce, and an old French textbook even taught me how people in a nation a world away spoke.
Magic.
The most powerful books of all were fiction or fictionalized narratives. These books didn’t just teach a skill or facts – they crawled inside your brain and let you experience the reality of other people, if only for a little while. Arguments weren’t necessary – instead, you experienced the frozen fingers of the little match girl, or the agony of Eliza crossing the Ohio River to escape slave catchers, or the impotent rage of a woman accused of witchcraft in colonial Salem. Well-told stories circumvented the logic of your brain, as described in Jonathan Gottschall’s The Story Paradox. Instead of talking about Jewish people hiding in attics and secret rooms in Nazi-occupied Europe, they brought you into the world of Anne Frank, where you could grow into young womanhood with her, fall in love, dream about Hollywood starlets, and hide in silent terror when the house was periodically searched by German soldiers.
This is powerful, incredibly powerful. Gottschall talks about the science behind this mechanism, how levels of dopamine and serotonin rise and fall when a reader is seduced by a story, how the brain waves change, how watching movies together bring people’s minds into sync. And I wonder how we are possibly surprised when Hollywood takes advantage of this magic to reach into our minds and change them? How is it that we are shocked that gay marriage, for instance, transformed from unthinkable to ordinary over the course of only a couple of decades when Hollywood has been manipulating us with stories throughout that time?
Right or wrong, this is what has happened. The depiction of positive black characters on-screen has likewise created an environment in which races are accepted as equal – the depiction of career women has led to the equality of women in the workplace – the depiction of priests and preachers as frauds and cheats has led to a precipitous decline in respect for Christian men of God and, concurrently, in the Christian faith as a whole. It’s a powerful tool, storytelling, and it can be used to great effect in our mass media world.
Conservatives have been foolish enough to discount it for far too long.
We will fight with logic and facts, not that silly storytelling humbug, our leaders told themselves. Stories are unimportant – they are frivolous, ephemeral, just for fun. Business and science and truth will win out in the end, for people are ultimately logical and sensible.
How’s that working out?
Not so well, I think. Our two most talented modern presidents, insofar as pure populist leadership goes, were both storytellers and entertainers – Reagan and Trump. Beside these monumental figures, our other leaders tend to seem pale and emotionless. Oh, they may have good ideas, but they are eminently forgettable for most people. Obama – that was a talented storyteller, and his life story – mythologized – made an excellent tale as well. Clinton was a talented storyteller. Even our current fabulist-in-chief was a fine storyteller in his day, which I suppose makes him an excellent liar today.
Stories are powerful. They have the ability to sway minds without logic (yes, I know it makes me cringe a little too) and bring people together – or force them apart. The best stories create a national or tribal myth that people tell over and over. Who is creating myth for us today? A hint – hands up, don’t shoot! Well-told stories can create lies even more easily than they can reveal the truth.
Conservatarian Press is just a baby, but we hope to bring this power back to the conservative and libertarian people of America and ultimately the world. We, too, can tell stories that tear at your guts, make you cry, make you laugh, make you proud. We can rescue our national myths and make them great again. All we need is the support of a good audience and a handful of dedicated, talented writers.
We can spread our stories outward, one reader at a time. That is how you win hearts and minds.