There was something in a Northern Exposure episode where a Shaman comes to town, collecting stories to see if he can find evidence that White Man uses stories medicinally as the natives do. Just as he’s about to give up, the Shaman finds what he’s looking for when he is introduced to movies by Ed Chigliak, a fledgling filmmaker. As somebody who has dabbled in storytelling – song lyrics, comics, animated films, and currently a novel – this subject is interesting to me, as well.
And now, to put a fine point on it, enter RadioLab. Their show of 01 June, 2007 deals with the Placebo Effect, and it turns out a lot of the ways we view the world is due to Story. Take the way we experience pain:
Henry Knowles Beecher was a doctor in WWII and found himself in the great battle of Anzio where the Americans landed in Nazi Europe. He was on the beach, bullets were flying, soldiers were being killed. And some were being wounded.And since Beecher was the doctor, it was his job to treat them. The treatment for pain at that time, as in our time, was morphine. One problem, though. Beecher’s unit was cut off from supplies and reinforcements, and he began to run out of morphine. He had to figure out which soldiers needed it the most.
So, he’s talking to them and asking them about how much pain they’re having. And he would go up to these patients and say to them, “Soldier, as you lie there, are you having any pain?” Now, imagine you’re a soldier, and you’re lying there. These are severe injuries. And you haven’t had any morphine for 7 hours previously. What would you say?
The striking finding was that 75 percent of them would say that they didn’t need morphine. This didn’t make any sense to Beecher, because he knew about pain. Before the war, he ran a clinic in Boston, and he would see people with bullet injuries and gut injuries, more or less the same kinds of injuries he saw on the battlefield. But back in Boston, they really hurt. For some strange reason, the intensity of the pain associated with being shot was lower in the battlefield than in civilian life.
What could explain that? Context. That was Beecher’s very simple explanation. Meaning that the pain that you feel when you’re hit by a bullet is not just about the bullet. It’s just as much about the story that comes with the bullet.
So, consider these two different stories:
Story 1:
You are a soldier, and you’ve been shot. As the bullet passes through you, the first thing you think is “Oh, man, I’m shot!” But the second thing you think is, “Wait a second… I’m alive! If I can be evacuated from here, I’ll have a period of recuperation, they’ll take me to a hospital, there’ll be nurses there… I may get a medal, and a pension, or a bonus, I’ll certainly be acclaimed. Maybe they’ll send me home, throw me a parade!”Story 2:
You’re a civilian in Boston. Maybe you own a shop. And you’ve been shot during a robbery. As the bullet passes through you, this time, the thoughts flashing through your head have nothing to do with Glory. Instead, you think, “Yeah, I’m alive, but what’s going to happen to me now?” You wouldn’t get a medal. You were in trouble; “How am I going to pay the doctor bills? I’m going to lose my job, how am I going to pay the rent?” And if your family was depending upon you, they suffered. “Nothing good is going to come of this,” you might think.One bullet, two very different stories. And it’s the difference in the stories, said Dr. Beecher, that explains the difference in the experience of pain.
Are those stories somehow filtering the pain? Even before it’s felt? Yes. Even as the bullet enters the skin, or within seconds thereafter, you spin yourself a story about what’s going to happen to you next. Not consciously, but way down deep in your head. And the story you tell, that makes all the difference.
Looks like Ed Chigliak was more right than he knew. Stories matter. Amen.
So basically it’s the state of mind your in at the time of the shot or pain.
So if you are in a situation where getting hurt is secondary to what you’re doing, no biggie as in the war: they deal with it better.
If you’re a regular person who can’t afford to be off their feet then it seems so much bigger because it’s more central to what you’re involved in.
Makes perfect sense.
~L~
Seems like. And I guess we are mentally the sum of The Story of Us.
So the stories we choose to tell ourselves have a tremendous impact. Stands to reason the stories we choose to listen to must as well.
Hmm.
Well I have a bad habit of not liking books that are based on reality unless that reality has been watered down enough to make it alot more fantastic.
Basically unless I choose to read non-fiction, I want my fantasy / fiction stories to have VERY little reality in them. Sort of like the new Battlestar Galactica… turned me off as it was way too serious and depressing unlike the original which I love.
~L~