"Stories become unforgettable when they communicate sophisticated modes of being — complex problems and equally complex solutions — that we perceive, consciously, in pieces, but cannot fully articulate. It was for this reason, for example, that the biblical story of Moses and the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt became such a powerful touchstone for black slaves seeking emancipation in the United States:
Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land
Tell old Pharaoh
To let my people go.
The biblical story of Exodus is properly regarded as archetypal (or paradigmatic or foundational) by psychoanalytic and religious thinkers alike, because it presents an example of psychological and social transformation that cannot be improved upon. It emerged as a product of imagination and has been transformed by constant collective retelling and reworking into an ultimately meaningful form that applies politically, economically, historically, personally, and spiritually, all at the same time.
This is the very definition of literary depth—something that reaches its apogee in certain forms of ancient, traditional stories.
The fact of that depth means that such accounts can be used diversely as a meaningful frame for any process of profound change experienced by any individual or society (stable state, descent into chaos, reestablishment of stability), and can lend that process multidimensional reality, context, powerful meaning, and motivation.
The Emergence of the Unforgettable
How might an unforgettable story come to be? What might precede its revelation? It is at the very least the consequence of a long period of observation. Imagine a scientist monitoring the behavior of a wolf pack, or a troop of chimps—indeed, any group of complex social animals. He or she attempts to identify regularities in the behavior of the individuals and the group (patterns, in a word) and to articulate those regularities—to encapsulate them in language. The scientist might first relate a series of anecdotes about animal actions emblematic of the general behavior of the species. He or she might then abstract even further, attempting to generalize across anecdotes with rule-like descriptions.
I say “rule-like” because the animals are not following rules. Rules require language. Animals are merely acting out regularities. They cannot formulate, understand, or follow rules.
But human beings? We can observe ourselves acting, as a scientist might — more accurately, as A Storyteller might. Then we can tell the stories to each other.
The stories are already distillations of observed behavior (if they are not distillations, they will not be interesting; relating a sequence of everyday actions does not make for a good story). Once the story is established, we can analyze it, looking for deeper patterns and regularities.
If that analysis is successful, we can generalize across anecdotes with the formulation of rules, and then we can learn, consciously, to follow those rules.
Here is how this might happen. We all react judgmentally when a child or adult—or, indeed, a society—is acting improperly, unfairly, or badly. The error strikes us emotionally. We intuit that a pattern upon which individual and social adaptation depends has been disrupted and violated. We are annoyed, frustrated, hurt, or grief-stricken at the betrayal. This does not mean that each of us, reacting emotionally, has been successful at articulating a comprehensive philosophy of good and evil. We may never put our finger on what has gone wrong. However, like children unfamiliar with a new game but still able to play it, we know that the rules are being broken.
Something precisely like this is portrayed in the biblical story of Exodus, the ancient account of the flight of the Hebrew slaves from their Egyptian masters. Moses, who leads the escaping people, is continually called upon by his followers to draw very fine moral distinctions when they struggle with one another and seek his advice. In consequence, he spends a very long time observing and contemplating their behavior. It is as if the desert prophet had to discover what rules he and his Israelite followers were already struggling to act out, prior to his receipt of the explicit commandments from God. Remember: Every society is already characterized by patterned behavior; otherwise it would be pure conflict and no “society” at all. But the mere fact that social order reigns to some degree does not mean that a given society has come to explicitly understand its own behavior, its own moral code.
It is therefore no accident that in this story Moses serves as A Judge for his followers — and does so with sufficient duration and intensity to exhaust himself — before he receives the Ten Commandments:
And it came to pass on the morrow, that Moses sat to Judge The People: and The People stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening.
And when Moses’ Father in Law saw all that he did to The People, he said, "What is this thing that thou doest to The People? Why sittest Thou thyself alone, and all The People stand by thee from morning unto even?"
And Moses said unto his Father in Law, "Because The People come unto me to inquire of God:
When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I Judge between one and another, and I do make them know The Statutes of God, and His Laws."
And Moses’ Father in Law said unto him, "The thing that thou doest is not good.
Thou wilt surely wear away, both Thou, and This People that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; Thou art not able to perform it thyself alone." (Exodus 18: 13–18)
This difficult exercise in discrimination and judgment, observing and weighing, is an integral part of what prepared the biblical patriarch for the receipt of divine revelation.
If there had been no behavioral base for those rules — no historical precedent codified in traditional ethics, no conventions, and no endless hours of observation of the moral patterns — the commandments simply could not have been understood and communicated, much less obeyed.
An unforgettable story captures the essence of Humanity and distills, communicates, and clarifies it, bringing what we are and what we should be into focus. It Speaks to Us, motivating the attention that inspires us to imitate. We learn to see and act in the manner of the heroes of the stories that captivate us.
These stories call to capacities that lie deep within our nature but might still never develop without that call.
We are dormant adventurers, lovers, leaders, artists, and rebels, but need to discover that we are all those things by seeing the reflection of such patterns in dramatic and literary form. That is part of being a creature that is part nature and part culture.
An unforgettable story advances our capacity to understand our behavior, beyond habit and expectation, toward an imaginative and then verbalized understanding. Such a story presents us in the most compelling manner with The Ultimate Adventure, the divine romance, and the eternal battle between good and evil.
All this helps us clarify our understanding of moral and immoral attitude and action, personal and social. This can be seen everywhere, and always.
Question: Who are you — or, at least, who could you be?
Answer: Part of the eternal force that constantly confronts the terrible unknown, voluntarily; part of the eternal force that transcends naivete and becomes dangerous enough, in a controlled manner, to understand evil and beard it in its lair; and part of the eternal force that faces chaos and turns it into productive order, or that takes order that has become too restrictive, reduces it to chaos, and renders it productive once again.
And all of this, being very difficult to understand consciously but vital to our survival, is transmitted in the form of the stories that we cannot help but attend to. And it is in this manner that we come to apprehend what is of value, what we should aim at, and what we could be."
