Krish Parikh Week 16 - Storytelling and Memories
In light of the True War Story assignment, I've been thinking about storytelling. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word "story" as "a fictional narrative shorter than a novel." However, the word "story" has different meaning in the context of human evolution: a necessity for survival.
Written language was invented 5,500 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, yet humanity has survived for the last 300,000 years. How were our predecessors able to pass information to the next generation? Storytelling.
As students around the world are all too familiar with, memorizing factual information is hard. Memorizing the plot of your favorite movie or novel, however, is much easier. Early humans were able to figure out this nifty trick hundreds of thousands years ago, and they used stories in the form of fables or folktales to pass crucial information down to their children—including information about where to hunt, what to hunt, and what to run from.
As civilization advanced, these stories transformed from not just providing information about survival, but also about morality and understanding the world. The principles of prominent Indian religions today, including Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, were all initially preserved through oral tradition. This can be seen in the Bhagavad Gita, a pillar of Hindu religion, where the ideals of man from Indian culture are laid out in the form of a story of a supernatural war.
Though our modern civilization no longer needs stories to preserve information (that's what the Worldwide Web is for), they can still pose as a helpful asset for students. If you ever find yourself struggling to memorize a tough scientific concept or topic, try creating a simple story to memorize its meaning. You'll likely find the same effectiveness in remembering as our ancestors did.
Hey Krish!
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree that connecting things to stories make them more memorable. Its like how we are able to recall an event that happened a long time ago but we may forget the equation we learned in math the day before. This reminds me of how certain albums do better in the music industry because they have some sort of story telling aspect that brings all the songs together. Good examples of this as good kid m.A.A.d. city and IGOR, both albums of great success and reverence. Thank you for a quarter of great blogs!
Hi Krish,
ReplyDeleteAlthough I have never been successful in it, solving a Rubik's cube blindfolded uses a similar principle. The colours of the edges and corners are memorized separately and assigned letters from A-X. Then, to memorize the orientations, stories are created using those letters. For example, a 3 letter sequence of KWB could translate to Krish Writes Blogs. That's much easier to memorize! If you ever get into solving for fun, I can help. Cheers mate, hope we keep in contact next year!
Sincerely,
Sean Wang
Stories are best told through the mouth because something so captivating is heard through voice and dialogue to the point that elementary school english spoken under the frame of a thick Chinese accent can make for a more riveting story than phrases deliberated under heavy scrutiny. I want to capture that simplicity. In a sense, that simplicity is the power of the myths and legends warning of incoming disasters. I remember seeing a Ted Talk where this man introduced himself to every person in the audience, and demonstrated to them in the speech that he could remember everyone's name. This was because he created a character profile by looking at their clothes or behavior patterns and then connecting it to a name. Maybe I can avoid failing finals if I could do this properly.
ReplyDeleteHi Krish,
ReplyDeleteIn my psychology class we learned about ways to better retain information, and finding meaning out of concepts is a way that I feel relates to storytelling. When hearing or telling a story, we not only imagine what is going on in our mind, but we are bringing it to life by discussing it with others. Stories hold meaning and they are important to be shared down and preserved.
Hey Krish, now that you mention it, I do seem to remember stories a lot better than random displaced facts. The structure of AP Art History consists of ten different units, so that's 250 art pieces to memorize over the course of the year before the exam. When I first heard that our success on the exam would be determined by how many pieces, artists, cultures and time periods we memorized, I was quite intimidated and I wasn't sure I would do that great in the class after all. But Ms. Olson made sure to put in the time and explain the history and story behind each art piece/artist; for example, Kandinsky had synesthesia, and he needed to make sure his paintings had musical harmony, as well as harmony in composition. Because of these little anecdotes and personal bits of information, I am proud to say that I'm 90% I passed the exam with a 4 or better. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteHi Krish,
ReplyDeleteThat is an interesting way to remember things. In a way, it makes sense, because I use a similar method when I'm trying to memorize things for a test. I think of the terms in a way that is pretty stupid and would only make sense to me. The stupidity of the phrase I create from the term is what keeps the meaning in my head. How I define a story is a retelling of events, real or made up. Those events could have occurred in one's mind or in real life. In any kind of story, there is the voice of the author, and that is what makes many of them unique from each other.
Hi Krish,
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting about the fact of storytelling. It does makes sense that the best way to memorize things is to make a story, however, this technique never works for me. I tried to do that as a freshman and I would immediately forget the story itself. I really have no specific way of remembering things: I just remember them.
Sincerely,
Vivan Waghela
Hi Krish,
ReplyDeleteThe topic which you describe is very fascinating. The way that I see this topic is the usage of fables to pass on moral messages. While the fables are longer than the message itself, the story helps the message be more easily remembered and understood than if it was a single sentence. I have tried to follow a similar principle, using stories to remember topics that I have difficulty memorizing in classes. Unfortunately, it seems to work best for facts and does not help me much with math equations.
Sincerely,
Raymond Yu
Hi Krish,
ReplyDeleteI really like how you were able to tie so interestingly the current event of the war story with the topic of memory. It is really quite sad how stories have faded away as a form of passing down information. However, I feel like with this development, stories now carry a new weight. I myself am a pretty big storyteller. I love telling friends anecdotes with a punchline at the end; it really feels like my calling. I hope that even as information becomes more readily available, stories are still told to pass down not just information, but memories to the next generation.
Yi-Kuan C.