Game of Thrones

Like a few million others, I watched Game of Thrones last night and was completely sucked in.

They’ve created a whole different world and I believed in it, even though I know it’s not real.

That’s the power of creative storytelling.

It seems to me that we have an insatiable desire for stories, we string together random events and ideas to give them meaning. The more creative, compelling and consistent they are, the more we love them.

Stories, wrapped up in language (spoken and otherwise) are how we communicate ideas with others, and stories are how we find meaning and change culture.

Before Galileo we had a pretty good idea of how the earth was the centre of the universe and how our world fitted into the story of creation, but Galileo disrupted the whole story by his observations and replaced it with a new story.

Before Darwin we had a pretty good story for how we came into existence, but Darwin disrupted that story by his observations and replaced it with a new story.

After Newton, we had a pretty good story for the forces of nature, until Einstein came along and changed that story for a better one.

Stories are the vehicles of creative thinking and our unstoppable desire to make meaning out of random events. We use them as metaphors for our ideas, to make meaning out of what we see and what we feel

Stories are how we change cultures.

Game of thrones may not change culture, but it’s damn good entertainment.

CL 25/07/2017