A Single Story?

If there's only one thing you plan to do this entire week, then please watch this video. :-)


http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

Saturday Stories

This is the story of a Cat, Cow and Horse that were good friends. One day, the Horse who happened to be slightly late in arriving at their regular hang-out found the Cat and Cow quarreling. The Cat was saying "Let's go to the Meow-ies!" and the Cow was saying "No, let's go to the Moo-vies!". The Horse flicked a speck of dust off his collar, snorted, shook his head and said "Let's go to the Ci-neigh-mas!!"


The dog that was sitting at the next table murmured, "Ensure you sit near the Woof-ers".

Krishna and Kurukshetra

If you're interested in Hindu Mythology and wonder often about the existence of God and the like, you must watch this fascinating research video on Krishna, full of scientific (cosmic) and archeological references.

http://www.saraswatifilms.org/movies.php

Froggy on my Bloggy. Outsourced.

Droggy, The Groggy Li'l Froggy

View more presentations from Harish  Shankaran.

:-) Heh heh. I like this. Actually, I hope to learn how to create something of this sort some day. Original story, script, cartooning, music and singing (stop clutching at your heart). I think the story and script may perhaps come easy. It's been a long time since I drew any cartoons...so that's going to be a challenge. Music may be bearable and limited to a few guitar chords and some vessel-made clangs. Finally, the singing....ah...well....err.....I may admittedly have to outsource this part of the creation. But don't forget that I shall be a singing child prodigy in my next life to make up for lack of singing talent in this life. Hmph.

2.5.1 = 10 on 10

I think this is really clever and extremely effective. Ingenious and intuitive are other words that come to my mind. The 2-5-1 method of storytelling. An idea from the Singapore Armed Forces' Learning and Development team. I give it a 10 on 10 = 2*5*1 :-)

Quote:

• 2
  • Who you are
  • Summary of your experience
• 5 fingers
  • Little finger – what parts of the effort did not get enough attention
  • Ring finger – What relationships were formed, what you learned about relationship building
  • Middle finger – what you disliked, what/who made you frustrated
  • Pointer finger – what you would do better next time around, what you want to tell those who were “in charge” about what they could do better
  • Thumb (up) – what went well. What was good.
• 1 – the most important takeaway from the effort
  

Storytelling - 1,2,3,4

Liked this. [I use it often at work. Honestly, many people don't read/listen but those who do are influenced to a certain extent] :-)

1. Introduce the characters. Stories involve people so describe them.

2. Set the scene. This often involves some challenge or difficulty that has to be overcome.

3. Explain what happened next and how the situation resolved itself.

4. Draw out any conclusions or lessons learnt.

Laughing Riot

I watched this 1941 black-n-white movie on TV yesterday and enjoyed it immensely! Makes me smile even now. (I love B&W movies!) I just stopped short of rolling on the floor and laughing at times. At first, it seems like an absolutely lighthearted, silly, slap-stick comedy with no care for logic or maturity. But underneath the veil of comedy, there were a couple of important and not-so-hidden messages for the people of that era (and maybe even for us). A delightful sugar coated pill, in short. Apart from the humor, the content of the messages was another reason why I enjoyed the movie. It appears to be one of the oldest movies celebrating the concept of feminism....or at least equality....and it indirectly celebrates literacy as well. Overall, it was a ridiculous and jolly riot worth every frame.

The hero and his male servant were tremendous with their expressions and the latter's character was that of a typical illiterate and dumb villager who is capable of following orders without any thought whatsoever. The movie has its leading women helping their husbands with their education! :-) I was so kicked about this movie that I decided to check out Wikipedia for information on it and was not disappointed. Wikipedia has everything under the sun! :-) This movie will bring a smile to my face whenever I think of it. Sabash Sabapathy!! :-D

Update: Here's a link to the movie in the IMDB, with a positive review! And I just realized that this is akin to Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster stories except that Bertie has the most intelligent companion in Jeeves.

The Story of a Story...

Just occurred to me. I guess most of us end up looking, or rather intensely scouting and scanning, for lessons in stories that don't deliver them to us in the direct sense. We let out a whoop of joy when we think we have distilled the meaning out of a casual story. We believe that we have understood life and can see beyond the obvious. We are - rightly or wrongly - subjected to delusions of being intelligent and perceiving. But what do we do when the stories are otherwise? Here's what I've observed....we tend to almost dismiss stories that give us the lessons in a 'raw' form, as boring and too obvious. (I am referring to stories that make it clear to us that they are there to teach us something.) But, even amongst such 'raw' stories, I think those that successfully build a meaty and meaningful context and/or use inspiring language escape this trend. What could this possibly imply?

- People love "finding" things on their own rather than being told things directly. Hard situation to set up though. If you have the talent to make people believe they are the ones who are discovering the lessons, I bet you can "sell" anything under the sun. For that, you first need to shoot your own ego and not pine for credit.
- Those of us who do not have such niche talent need not panic. Direct play of (meaningful) context and (inspiring) communication alone can make up for the lack of fun that people get out of "discovering" things by themselves.

PS: BTW, this doesn't mean that the context and communication can be left out of the indirect stories. These stories not only have to be unique & creative but also complete in every sense. How we play around with the context and communication is what would perhaps determine how successful we are in delivering the lesson/moral in an indirect manner.

Paradox-thinking to the RESCUE! :)

I'm not much of a movie-watcher......prefer to mostly watch movies that are from directors I admire and movies that stand the test of time and are recommended by people whose taste I trust. So, I don't really end up posting things on movies...but this one's cool and you'll soon know why.....! ;)

Watched a good movie for the second time this evening and realized something interesting. I like the movie (that's why I watched it again) overall but there's one particular scene that I enjoyed immensely when I saw it for the first time. At that time I did not realize it but today I suddenly understood why the scene is so appealing to me.

Scene: Hero is in the process of helping a girl (the heroine) escape from the villain who plans to marry the latter without her consent. Despite some superhuman feats and all, the hero and the heroine end up bumping into the villain when they just begin to think they're safe. The situation is quite an annoying one for people who tend to sympathize with heroes and heroines. :). The situation is one which looks like it would be next to impossible even for a typical Indian Movie Hero to escape from.....there are hundreds (actually, truckloads) of armed people with the villain and the hero is alone with one small hidden knife.

When you start thinking that the director will either conveniently 'make' the hero perform yet another superhuman feat and escape unhurt or handle it realistically and show the hero being overpowered....the movie springs a nice surprise. The hero adopts paradox thinking to escape from the situation! :) He doesn't really know the girl that he is helping and makes very good use of this.

When the villain nears them, the hero whips out his knife and holds it against the girl's throat and tells the villain that he'd rather save his own life than lose it while trying to save someone he does not even know. Now, the villain falls for it and because he wants the girl alive,gives into the hero's threats and listens to whatever the hero says. The hero smartly gets the weapons of the villain's army packed and asks for the air to be let out of the tires of all the vehicles but one and then makes his escape with the girl in the vehicle that's intact. He switches the knife from the girl's throat to the villain's just before getting into the van and pulls off a trick that most of the audience wouldn't have thought of.

I love the idea.....paradoxical that it is. It literally is a case of paradox-thinking coming to the "rescue". ;) Seriously, paradox thinking can turn around a situation completely!! Try it....and do share your story with me... :)

PS: For those who are curious to know where I am coming from, I am talking about a tamil movie called Gilli - starring Vijay and Trisha....the movie has got some cute family humor too. :)

Expect the Expected!

It was a new place. But the problem was not that it was new. The problem was that it did not seem to be a great place to be in. Everything had happened in a hurry. Most of it was ad-hoc. The maxim "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail" was laughed at by the system. As expected. Some people said it was about having the faith that everything would be fine. Though she saw some merit in that approach, she knew that was not the way things ought to be. Idealism never let go of her. It could be just a dream and 'oh so unrealistic' for many but for her that was what life was about. Life was full of pleasant and unpleasant surprises; The question was whether one ought to let them happen on their own or be personally responsible for them.

As she took another spoon of cornflakes, she looked around and, with a slight shudder, thought there were some strange/not-so-human characters around. Was it her imagination or intuition? She struggled to shake off the thought over the next few days. She had almost deprived herself of the thought when one day she was joined by two women in the lift and one of them said "Thanks for not being a creepy man!". After the laughter had subsided, she had responded "Does that mean you saw one of late?" and the lady had said "No, I am scared I'd see one!". The thought which she had so struggled to discard jumped back and clung to her.

The next day, as she had the same old cornflakes, she observed some of the faces yet again and found herself jumping to the same old conclusion about them being eerie characters. Then, a sarcastic voice from nowhere said "Maybe that's what they're thinking about you!". Everything that she had tried to shake off fell like a ton of bricks. She did not have to struggle. Far from it. A new voice said "The world's great! Everybody is so sweet and kind in this beautiful world!"

The next day, she heard the person at the desk talking to an apparently concerned customer. One of the hotel rooms had been broken into.

PS: Sometimes, fiction is disguised as the truth. At other times, it is truth's turn to be disguised as fiction. Life is an amusing blend of the bitter truth, sweet truth, bitter fiction and sweet fiction. The beauty is that one can make up for lack of the elements of truth with that of fiction because one can be disguised as the other quite easily. With me? ;)

Storytelling...

I believe in storytelling. No two ways about it. I’ve tried it before and continue to derive inspiration from the concept. I’ve written stories (long and short ones) to influence and provoke people, told stories albeit not so well, coaxed people to tell stories, listened to stories – and almost chewed up a few adventurous and exploratory insects because of a sagging jaw in certain situations. So forth. You get the idea. It works wonders (not from the perspective of certain insects, of course). But I want to understand something better. Help me. There’s one possible downside to storytelling. Certain people may get carried away and exaggerate a bit. So, you are looking at a situation where distorted stories are floating around. Over time, the story can get so distorted that it becomes an almost untrue story that evokes unwanted skepticism from the listeners. What can be done to prevent this from happening? Written stories, of course, may prevent continuous distortion that may accompany verbal stories. What else? Any thoughts?

I have a story to tell....

I attended an experience-sharing session in which there were four senior managers that we got to listen to. One of them used a narrative style to share his experiences. It may not have been storytelling exactly but it had quite a few elements of a typical story –

It was a chronologically-based – naturally unfolded - narration,
It came mixed with his emotions, pains and gains,
There were pointers to failures and successes and a lot of people-related information.

In sharp contrast, the others mostly condensed their learnings into Dos and Don’ts. I, personally, liked the narrative style a shade better than the other. Yeah. I am saying nothing new here. Just that I am not talking about the concept of storytelling per se but bringing it out through a real experience.

Going by the session that I attended, what’s fresh in my mind is that his style had the following advantages.

He was doling out advice but it did not seem like he was. This is obviously appreciated by the human ego.
His talk was engaging and involving. I needn’t even say this.
His talk, to many, may have seemed like they had the flexibility and the freedom to interpret it the way they wanted and may have left them thinking that they could make their own decisions based on someone else’s experiences.

I distinctly observed that most of the points that were brought out while summarizing the learnings from the session emerged from what he had shared. What more can I say? :)

The Curse of Knowledge and Language!

My thoughts on Gautam’s recent post on the curse of knowledge.

I myself have often encountered situations wherein I've got a little enthusiastic and come up with something I can't seem to articulate clearly to others. My experience tells me that if you get a little more creative and think of an appropriate analogy....it may be easier to communicate with - convey the message to - others. I believe that analogies are simply wonderful and we need to make as much use of them as possible. And I think the more you use analogies, the easier it becomes for you to ‘find’ them. Analogies do not necessitate the use of exhaustive language as the listener, once triggered off, can do most of the thinking and visualization of the links by herself!

Coincidentally, one of my friends, some time back, brought to my notice two articles which I now realize are related to this topic. These may give us more food for thought.

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One of them is an article in HBR by Chip Heath and Dan Heath - called ‘the curse of knowledge’ - wherein the authors refer to an interesting research. The researchers asked people to tap a well known song’s tune on a table and asked someone to listen to the tapper and identify the song. The tapper thought the listener would easily recognize the song for it was popular but the success rate was something like 2.5%. In the authors own (and better) words…

“When a tapper taps, it is impossible for her to avoid hearing the tune playing along to her taps. Meanwhile, all the listener can hear is a kind of bizarre Morse code. Yet the tappers were flabbergasted by how hard the listeners had to work to pick up the tune. The problem is that once we know something—say, the melody of a song—we find it hard to imagine not knowing it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. We have difficulty sharing it with others, because we can’t readily re-create their state of mind.”

PS: The authors go on to build a case for storytelling and how it can enforce effective communication in organizations.

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The second one is a blog post by Dave Pollard on thinking without language. Well, this one points out how we originally thought without the aid of language and why language-based thinking may be constraining us in many ways.

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Summing up…connecting the dots…methinks….[now, it may turn out to be a curse of blogging….that you’ve to read such summaries as well. ;)]

We can think without the aid of language. We, certainly, can. Language is only for communication and maybe with our own subconscious mind at times. But a picture may be worth a thousand words as we have oft been told. Why so? Pictures normally evoke emotions, not language. That’s why we sometimes use words/phrases like ‘speechless’, ‘dumb-struck’, ‘words fail me’ etc. Emotions cannot be expressed/communicated. Proves that emotions are different from plain thoughts and do not lend themselves easily to language (heart-based vs mind-based thinking?).

Replace analogies with stories in my earlier suggestion for explaining something effectively. Storytelling evokes emotions and may therefore be easier as a communication tool. If language (stories) that tries to connect with a person’s emotions works well, then methods that evoke stronger emotions are those that are more effective, eh? Jump. That’s why I love creative and ‘true’ advertising campaigns which are typically a combination of a story, pictures (still, moving or real-time) and a core message. Not to forget, this is the reason why good movies have a lasting or at least temporary influence on us. Does that connect at least a few dots for you or does it leave you with a clean slate/blank mind? :D

Don’t blame me if the dots are not connected. Language (or rather lack of it) prevents me from explaining it better. :D.

I can perhaps think of a picture to explain this (a mind map?). And yes, this post is anyway intended to read like a ‘story’…..