Tag: mind control

The government is researching storytelling

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Just a tidbit today. I’m afraid the paying job has used up my quota of brain power for the week. But I ran across this fascinating fact a couple of weeks ago and wanted to share it:

A U.S. government agency called DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), which develops new technology for the military, put out a request for research on narrative – that’s right. Storytelling. And I quote:

DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the areas of (1) quantitative analysis of narratives, (2) understanding the effects narratives have on human psychology and its affiliated neurobiology, and (3) modeling, simulating, and sensing-especially in stand-off modalities-these narrative influences. Proposers to this effort will be expected to revolutionize the study of narratives and narrative influence by advancing narrative analysis and neuroscience so as to create new narrative influence sensors, doubling status quo capacity to forecast narrative influence. [check out the source here]

Okay, aside from consternation over yet another thing our tax dollars are paying for, this gives me three different feelings:

  • Fear. This is a power I don’t want the government to have.
  • Comfort. If I had to pick one country to have this power it would be mine (sorry my non-American friends, I admit I’m biased).
  • Self-satisfaction. I TOLD you storytelling could be a powerful weapon! See? The government agrees with me!!!

What do you think? Tell me in the comments!

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How to destroy an idea

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Last week we discussed how words are tools that make complex ideas portable. And ideas are powerful. Ideas create change. Ideas founded the country I live in. Creating ideas can be dangerous. But destroying ideas can be even more so.

So how do you destroy an idea?

Just kill the word.

George Orwell, Rose Macauley, and C.S. Lewis all wrote about it.

It starts out harmlessly enough. First, change the word from an objective fact into a subjective insult or compliment. For instance, the words villain and gentleman both used to refer to specific positions in society. A villain was a worker of a country estate. A gentleman was a man who lived off the interest of his property. Then people began to use gentleman to mean a person of good breeding or manners. Soon, the signs of verbicide appeared:

“As long as gentleman has a clear meaning, it is enough to say that So-and-so is a gentleman. When we begin saying that he is a ‘real gentleman’ or ‘a true gentleman’ or ‘a gentleman in the truest sense’ we may be sure that the word has not long to live.”  -C.S. Lewis, The Death of Words

A word that becomes nothing but a compliment soon becomes overused and meaningless. Gentleman is now nothing but a polite term for male. Conversely, as soon as a word gains negative connotations, we avoid it. Think of all the harmless, factual descriptors that have become naughty words: Illegitimate. Dog. Excrement. And villain may not be “naughty,” but it certainly isn’t nice.

So, when a word becomes a synonym for good or bad, its original meaning fades.

As Mr. Lewis puts it:

“The vocabulary of flattery and insult is continually enlarged at the expense of the vocabulary of definition. …so words in their last decay go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad. And as long as most people are more anxious to express their likes and dislikes than to describe facts, this must remain a universal truth about language.”

Here’s the scary part.

Now, the first time I read the essay quoted above, it got me thinking. But then I read 1984, and it freaked me out. Because Orwell talked about good and bad synonyms, too. Listen in on this conversation about Newspeak (Big Brother’s idea of a language):

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning; or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still…In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words—in reality, only one word.”

And the punchline:

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.”

Mr. Lewis sums it up:

“…when, however reverently, you have killed a word you have also, as far as in you lay, blotted from the human mind the thing that word originally stood for. Men do not long continue to think what they have forgotten how to say.”

…

Now let that sink in.

…

When words die, ideas die. We are not only the creators of words and ideas; we are their caretakers. Our job is about more than using proper grammar. It’s about fighting for meaning.

What words do you see dying?

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How to control people’s thoughts with words

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Photo by David O'Driscoll

Photo by David O’Driscoll

I’m almost afraid to publish this post.

It feels like passing out a loaded gun to every random stranger that passes by.

In the wrong hands it could be very dangerous.

But when I think about it, it’s already in the wrong hands. The hands of con artists and cult leaders and politicians. And there is no way to take that power from them except to make everyone else aware of it.

Have you ever thought—I mean really thought—about the power of language? Most of us take it for granted. Not only as a tool to tell our families we love them, or to ask where the bathroom is, or to get anything done at all, but as the only way to transmit complex ideas.

It can take a whole book to explain one concept, but assign a name to that concept within the book, and you create a shortcut. Then, if a person has read that book, you can speak one word that conjures up an entire world in their mind.

Quixotic is a simpler example; in Don Quixote, Cervantes (albeit unintentionally) created a word which combined two previously separate ideas: chivalrous and foolish.

Back in 1948, “big brother” meant nothing but “older male sibling.” Then Orwell came out with 1984 and more than 60 years later, we still use the phrase to mean an all-seeing, all-powerful totalitarian government.

Or take the word hnau from C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, used to differentiate between animals and intelligent lifeforms in a universe where humans are not the only intelligent lifeforms. That’s an inadequate explanation, because the distinction involves far more than intelligence, or even spirit or soul—you’ll have to read the book to understand it.

Point: words are more than labels. Words are the means of wrapping big ideas in small packages, so we can hand them off to each other almost effortlessly.Collapsible concepts. Portable philosophy.

This is possibly one of the most powerful things on earth. Why?

Because you can use it to change the way people think.

Take a simple example. Consider the difference between the synonyms said and claimed. “Bob said he saw Linda at the store,” is neutral. But change it to “Bob claimed he saw Linda at the store,” and suddenly you doubt Bob’s honesty.

Or go the opposite direction and put “Bob confirmed he saw Linda at the store,” and suddenly the statement is fact.

Now apply it to one of our portable philosophies. Say there’s been a break-in at your condominium and the homeowners’ association votes to put up security cameras in all the corridors, so they can monitor who goes in and out of every condo. The cameras go up and everyone feels a lot safer. Then somebody graffitis “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” on the wall beneath one camera. Suddenly you’re conjuring up images of emotionless masses in jumpsuits being presided over by a giant television screen that never shuts off. Suddenly you’re worried a little less about security and a little more about privacy. And the next time someone proposes a measure “for added security,” you’re a little slower to agree. You might flat-out oppose it.

Why does it take a whole book to explain?

It only took me six words to define Big Brother at the beginning of this post. So why aren’t we creating collapsible concepts left and right? Because it has to be more than a label. If we’re going to remember it later, it needs to strike a chord with us. It takes the emotional journey of Winston Smith to solidify Big Brother in our minds. That’s the power of stories.

Of course, chances are, you knew what Big Brother meant even if you haven’t read 1984—even if it never “struck a chord” with you. That’s because it struck a chord with so many other people that it became iconic. That’s the power of storieson a world-changing scale.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen every time anybody writes a book.

But it can happen.

Remember that next time you’re reading a dystopian novel, or watching the news, or starting a new paragraph in your WIP. Listen carefully—and write even more carefully.

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Learn about something even more dangerous: the death of words.

 Read more about mind control here.

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Voice Week: why it totally rocked

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You guys are awesome.

I don’t think I’ve ever read such a wide variety of such high quality work that fascinated and thrilled me as much as the work the Voice Writers did last week. We heard the voices of animals, trees, supernatural beings, a park bench, and dozens of unique humans. We watched a bride prepare for her wedding, and a man on death row prepare for his execution. We questioned and pondered and loved and hated—and learned.

Here’s a few of the cool things that came out of it / that I learned:

Everyone interpreted the project a little differently. The variety of ways people’s pieces fit together made the project fascinating—some used different viewpoints to progressively tell more of the same story or more about the same character, some showed how different personalities would react to the same situation, some were linked only by prompt or by setting and showed the subtle contrasts between personalities. It made me glad I wasn’t too specific about what I thought I wanted for this project–it allowed the participants to be much more brilliant than narrower parameters would have allowed–creative minds need structure, yes, but they also need the freedom to be unique; that’s the same reason Inspiration Monday works as well as it does. (InMon is returning one week from today, by the way!)

He said, she said. Many pieces throughout the week had us guessing whether the narrator was male or female. We inferred gender by deciphering situation and analyzing word choice, and simply by how the character struck us. Sometimes we were right, sometimes wrong. A bit of a debate started over my first piece; in the comments, “female” currently leads the vote eight to three—and the majority is correct! With that in mind, here are some things to consider:

  1. Keeping the main character’s gender vague can be interesting, even profitable in a short story where gender doesn’t matter; readers of either gender can easily place themselves in the head of the narrator.
  2. Keeping the gender of a main character vague for too long, however—such as several paragraphs into a full-length novel—can also throw a reader off if they guessed wrong to begin with.

We can use bias to fight bias. I found myself relating to characters I normally wouldn’t like. I found myself disliking characters I’d normally relate to. I was irritated by the responsible bookstore manager, but I loved the nonchalant killer. I formed opinions, read others’ comments, read the rest of the week’s pieces—and second-guessed myself. I stopped to think about why I felt certain things toward certain characters—and whether that was justified by truth or clouded by bias. A well-crafted voice in a well-crafted story can show your reader the humanity in his enemy—the vulnerability and even the likability.

The mystery of the other side of the story. Possibly the most fun was the switching of views within the same story, a method several of the Voice Writers used to create suspense. In each character, we got a limited perspective—each one saw things the others didn’t; each one told us something new about the story. We got to piece together the clues to reveal a bigger truth than any one character could see.

Actions speak louder than words. One of the finer points of “Show Don’t Tell” hit home for me last week, too. When all was said and done, one of the most powerful illustrations of character was not the words they chose but the actions they used to respond to others. Giving a hot drink to a homeless man, or ignoring him. Locking a door and drowning out what’s on the other side, or taking a deep breath and opening it.

The Internet is the greatest invention since before sliced bread! Twenty years ago we couldn’t do this. Most of us, lacking the support of a writing community (not just here at BeKindRewrite, but all over the social media sphere) probably would’ve died out as writers by now. We would’ve given it up as a silly hobby nobody else cared about. And something precious and beautiful and potentially world-changing would have been thrown away. The Internet connects us across continents and oceans and helps us learn, inspire, and grow together.

So I want to thank each and every one of you for making this week so incredible. I may have gotten it started–but it was you guys who made it happen. Again and again I was blown away by your talent. I don’t think most of you realize just how talented you are. Every one of you contributed something unique and worthwhile. Every comment was encouraging, useful, insightful or all three.

I wish I could send you all books in the mail, but two’s the limit for now! The first random number is 12 – which is R.L.W. over at SnippetsAndScraps. I’ve sent you an email to get your mailing address and choice of prize!

What was your favorite part of Voice Week? Shall we do it again next year?

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A Defense of Happy Endings

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Let’s get down to it. What’s better: a happy ending or a sad one – and why?

First, let’s define “happy” and “sad” endings. It’s not as simple as whether or not the hero survives; Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Lewis’s The Last Battle both end with everyone dying, but one leaves you in despair and the other brings you incredible joy.

I think it’s more accurately measured by the presence of two things: meaning and victory. Compare Sydney Carton’s death in A Tale of Two Cities to any Nicholas Sparks book. Everything that happens in Two Cities leads up to, even contributes to, Carton’s death, and he dies nobly (meaningfully), to save a friend (victory). Whereas Sparks’s M.O. is for two people to find love, only to lose it again (defeat) when one of them unexpectedly (senselessly) dies in a car wreck, in a shipwreck, or of Leukemia. We cry an awful lot at Sparks (at least the movies; I never deemed the books worthy of my time) as well as at Dickens, but one leaves us sad and the other, satisfied. Dickens’s ending is meaningful; Sparks’s is a parlor trick.

Sparksstirs up emotion, sure – but tears are cheap. It’s easy to get our characters into scrapes, to beat them bloody, to take away everything they care about; it’s harder to get them out of trouble, heal them, and give them their hearts’ desires while making it meaningful and believable instead of nauseatingly cheesy. But the fact is – and Dickens proves it – it can be done.

Happy endings sometimes seem cheesy because they are unrealistically glossy – like nothing bad ever happened again. These are either simplified to reinforce the style of the story (perhaps for younger readers), or are just badly written. But some people lump all happy endings into the same “Unrealistic” category. They call themselves realists, preferring books that speak the “hard truth.” They scorn stories that end with weddings, saying the marriage would never last in real life. But that’s not realism. Realism is acknowledging that some marriages end in divorce; cynicism is assuming they all do.

And the funny thing about cynicism? It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. How much of what’s wrong in real life, failed marriages included, is that way just because people have given up fighting? If you write about a “realistic” failed marriage, what good is it? You’re not revealing anything your readers haven’t seen already. You’re only reinforcing hopelessness. Why not write about a struggling couple that fights to save their marriage? You can empower your readers to hope and to fight without being cheesy or unrealistic.

Don’t be silly, you might say; everyone knows it’s just a story. Readers don’t take it to heart.

That’s a lie. Even the cynical marketing world I work in acknowledges that the story is one of the most powerful forces on earth. A well-crafted story doesn’t just claim that a bad situation can turn out well—it shows how a bad situation can turn out well. Stories can make people see new possibilities. Stories can change people’s minds. Stories can inspire or discourage.

What will your stories do?