Roger Schank's Argument about Listening to Others' Stories of Struggles and Triumphs

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Roger Schank argues that usually, stories told by other people have little to no effect on us. That in fact, such stories only function in making us think of our own tales that happen to be much sadder than the ones being told. In the end, it is impossible to learn from the stories of other people. While it is indeed true that sometimes we could be having much sadder stories, it is wrong to conclude that nothing can be learned from other people’s stories. In real sense, much of what we achieve in life and most of the approaches we take in dealing with life issues stem from the lessons we learn from listening to the stories told by other people. Therefore based on the above, this paper focuses on the idea that stories, which show the struggles by human beings and how they overcame them in the end, are bound to capture the hearts of the audience in a way that makes it possible for them to be motivated and persuaded. Since the brain is involved too, it also means that the tendency to remember and learn from these stories is high unlike the idea presented by Roger Schank.
Stories told by other people about their own experiences have the ability to motivate the listener to do the same thing or even better. Evidently, human beings tend to share in the emotions of the person telling the story if the story evokes some tension within the listener. This tension could be in form of a struggle with an illness or how a person tried hard to stay fit and eventually succeeded. It is from this tension that a listener can be able to develop the feelings of empathy towards the storyteller. For example, business people who wish to teach others about how to be successful entrepreneurs can start by telling personal stories of how they began their own businesses. They can especially emphasize on the challenges they faced during the initial stages and how they overcame them. By giving such compelling stories with emotional content that people can relate with, it makes it easier for the audience to focus on and understand the key points presented. Notably, it also becomes easier for these points to be remembered by the listener many days after. Ideally, these emotional stories are able to make an individual feel pain for the speaker and hence, they become more interested in how a stated problem was solved. At the end of the day, the brain tends to respond more to these types of stories and therefore, proving the fact that indeed, we have a lot to learn from listening to other people’s stories than from just our own.
Listening to other people’s stories makes it possible for people to cooperate voluntarily thereby making it possible for them to learn from the same. Ideally, the ability for human beings to stay happy, fulfilled and survive, all depend on our interaction with others. This interaction is possible through sharing stories with others particularly about personal experiences as mentioned before. As the sharing goes on, the level of trust and feelings of kindness between the person telling the story and the listener keeps on increasing. This situation is all thanks to the sense of empathy that comes naturally to human beings who also happen to be social beings. When this empathy ...