HOW-OF-WHY

© 2005 Michael John Moynihan

If I ask what is the most unique characteristic of the human species, what would you say? Homo sapiens, the tool-making animal, the social animal, the language using, communicating animal. Other creatures do some of each of those things. But there is one thing that no other species does: tell stories.

The human ability to tell stories is fundamental because we live by storytelling. We invent our world with the stories we hear and tell. Our reactions are seldom in response to the immediate physical environment. We experience what we call reality as we exchange stories. Our reality has been acquired not through direct experience but through stories we hear and tell. Each story makes us adjust our sense of who we are.

Stories emerge from and then animate our imaginations. The only tool humans have to figure out how things work, what they are, and what to do about them, are stories

Basically, there are three kinds of stories.

The first kind of story illuminates one of the most important parts of life: invisible relationships. It reveals how we relate to each other – the hidden dynamics of the relationships in which we live. These stories tell the truth about how things really work, because how things really work is not apparent, is not visible. "Make-believe" is the construction of a story that allows us to see what is usually covert. These kinds of stories – what we call fiction, myth or fairy tales – are often dismissed as unreal or fantasy when they are in fact the unique and indispensable ways of clarifying not that which is, but that which shows how things work.

The second kind of story is that of factual explanation and illustration. Histories, documentaries, the news – these are all examples of the second sort of story. By themselves, these stories are meaningless. A news story – a story of fact – makes sense only as it is fitted into a framework that is erected by the first kind of story of how life really works. Once we understand that we can use the facts, we can fit in the facts to confirm our fantasy we call reality and say, "Yes, that is real." If it doesn't fit, we discard it, or we say it is biased or false.

The third story is a story of value and choice. It asks, "Well, if this is how things work and if this is how things are, then what should we do about them?" These are the lectures, the instructions that present a little tale about a style of life that says, "This is how it works, how it is, and this is a desirable outcome for us (or an undesirable outcome that you want to avoid), and therefore you should choose this particular direction.

These three kinds of stories are interwoven together to create what we call the “culture”. A system of stories that regulates human relationships, into which we are born and which we absorb and acquire as we grow and become socialized into our place in a social structure. They have been woven together in very different ways at different times in history. More on that next time.

© 2005 Michael John Moynihan

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas.
I'm frightened of the old ones."
– John Cage

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."
– Pablo Picasso
Almost summertime, and a few years into this new century. What better time to attempt to clarify THE WHY OF HOW. What is the purpose of calling a monthly column THE WHY OF HOW? Stay with me here.

HOW we do things is very important. Part of any discussion or proposition involves HOW something is created, HOW it works, HOW you and I can master it. But HOW is always a secondary understanding. Its a good question, an important question. Its also a question that should not even be asked until the most important, primary question is answered. WHY?

WHY is always the first and most important question. HOW is meaningless and silly unless we know WHY. HOW will be determined by the answer to WHY. Leave out WHY and you create HOWS that are at best useless, at worst, ignorantly destructive.

Lets look at several examples. Take education. Please. Public schools, school choice, charter schools, for profit schools, vouchers – all of these are HOWS, none of them are WHYS. And so the entire school/education debate in Milwaukee (and the nation) is basically useless at this point, because we have not started out by asking the very simple all–important first question: Why do we want to educate our children, here and now at the beginning of the 21st century. To be compliant and productive future workers? To be curious adults and life long learners? To be critical, intelligent and informed citizens of a democratic republic? To keep young children and adolescents out of the job market until they reach a specific age? To sort and authorize children according to intelligence, talent or class? To help all children reach the optimum potential as individuals and members of society. Advocates of educator John Dewey will have quite different answers than most members of a chamber of commerce. There are many possible answers, but since educational policy and process is public and societal, we have to come to some agreement on WHY. Once that is agreed upon we could try all the HOWS we could think of as long as they supported the WHY. But first we must ask WHY.

How about Politics. WHY make politics the main way we determine public policy. Given that we can all observe and study history, its not hard to make a case that the WHY of politics is and always will be the seizure and maintenance of power. Is that compatible with the WHY of social order, economic stability or cultural progress in a democratic republic?

It should not be hard to see that we, as a people, have confused HOW with WHY. Many of our best and brightest only talk about HOW, never venturing into the realm of WHY. It is as if we assume that the WHYS are all a given, worked out by our ancestors. Of course that is nonsense. Each generation, each culture, each individual needs to ask WHY anew. Actually asking WHY every seven years or so is the most functional way of keeping any organization or association alive and vital.

So, WHY the present electoral process? What is the overall purpose of the process in light of the relatively new and rapidly converging and developing technologies? What purpose could print, broadcast, cable, satellite TV and the Internet, be in the electoral process? To merely sell the attention of the viewer to the highest party or corporate bidder. Or should the HOW of this unprecedented set of advanced communications technologies serve a less pedestrian, more democratic, more socially progressive, more ecologically sustaining, more educational and more humanly scaled guiding ideal? Mass communications as it now is commercially employed primarily sorts and markets human attention for a reductive industry called Marketing. What would it look and sound like if its main purpose was to interconnect the minds of people in order to advance human understanding, wisdom and progress?

Pick any topic of public concern and apply the WHY/HOW equation. The viability of the human race is now in question largely because of HOW we employ our extraordinary abilities to create and apply technologies. It is high time for every discussion to begin with the question WHY.