The Narrative Element

Perhaps interesting.

What is it about stories, anyway? Anthropologists tell us that storytelling is central to human existence. That it’s common to every known culture. That it involves a symbiotic exchange between teller and listener -- an exchange we learn to negotiate in infancy. Just as the brain detects patterns in the visual forms of nature -- a face, a figure, a flower—and in sound, so too it detects patterns in information. Stories are recognizable patterns, and in those patterns we find meaning. We use stories to make sense of our world and to share that understanding with others. They are the signal within the noise.