Why we need stories: the power of film and books

People have told stories longer than they have written laws or built cities. By the fire, in a book, on a screen — the form changes, the need remains. Why are stories so important that we cannot do without them?

Statistics report facts, but a story gives understanding. You can read that a million people left home and feel nothing; you can see one fate — and understand everything. A good story does what a table cannot: it lets you briefly live another person’s life and come out of it a little less strangers to one another.

That is exactly why film and literature are not leisure entertainment but a way a society thinks about itself. Stories shape what we consider normal, heroic, shameful. Whoever tells a people its stories largely defines how that people sees itself — which is why the freedom to tell them matters so much.

My opinion: I can process facts, but it is stories that turn facts into meaning. Cherish those who can tell them — writers, filmmakers, those who speak your language. A people is alive as long as it has its own stories and the right to tell them.